Status of ICT in Irish education in 2007

The primary rationale for the introduction of ICTs into Irish education was to affirm the professional skills of teachers and the personal growth of students. This would mean the integration of ICTS into educational aims at a national level and at local level, ICTs would have to work in tandem with the development of school development plans. This is not currently the reality. There is no discernable policy of integrating ICTs into the curriculum. There have been four years of in-service at primary level and there has been scarcely a mention of ICTs other than in passing.
Furthermore school development planning cannot take place in a vacuum! How can any principal teacher plan meaningfully, for the integration of ICTs into curricular areas, when s/he has no idea from year to year if there will be funding to replace obsolete hardware or to replenish/replace software?We are now in the ludicrous situation of broadband and networks being placed in schools that for the most part are equipped with a stock of ageing computers that date back to 2002 at the latest, or in many cases, right back to 1997.
The role of the National Council for Technology in Education (NCTE) has been emasculated from the beginning. NCTE was never established on a statutory basis. Personnel in the NCTE are retained on annual contract; there is no guarantee of employment from year-to-year. Personnel are on secondment from their teaching positions and may be recalled by their boards at any time. A primary task that NCTE was charged with was to deliver in-service training to teachers. This has been successful in producing training courses and putting “bums on seats” in attendance at courses. However there has been no corresponding transfer of skills to the classroom.
Too many NCTE courses concentrated on the acquisition of computer skills, and insufficiently on the use of ICTs as a tool for teaching and learning. There has been a change in the content of courses being offered in recent years, with an increasing emphasis on using ICT as a teaching and learning resource, and the acquisition of skills as an integral part of the process of doing the course. However the experience of teachers in the early years of NCTE courses has meant a sharp decline in numbers attending courses.What needs to be done to ameliorate the situation?Planned funding in line with industry’s best practise; technical backup regionally from education centres; ongoing in-service that will place emphasis on the use of ICTs as a teaching and learning resource; integration of ICTs into curricular in-service; curricular developments that encourage the use of ICTs ; funding for new technologies e.g. interactive whiteboards.
The question of planned funding is fundamental to the development of ICT. Schools must know what funding will be available to them on an annual or two yearly basis. it is no longer sufficient to starve the system for years and then to pump in some funding because there is an election pending, this helps only to politicise the system and does absolutely nothing to encourage good planning and prudent spending. The DES needs ot be cognisant if the old adage "as ye reap so shall ye sow"