Rational and informed planning has never been the forte of large bureaucratic organisations.
The planning agenda is more often driven by political and budget considerations, rather than the needs of the “client”.
This has been clearly demonstrated yet again by the NSW DET’s proposed implementation of the Federal Government’s Digital Education Revolution initiative.
In brief, this program has provided $1000 funding for each student in Years 9 – 12 to have access to a computer.
In NSW public schools, the Department of Education and Training (DET) has taken charge of the distribution of this funding, and has defined how the funds will be spent (by the DET) in schools.
One would expect that any educational organisation whose primary purpose is the delivery of education, would have learning outcomes at the heart of any planning process considering the distribution of such a large allocation of money.
Unfortunately, not so.
The Director General of EDUCATION provided an insight into his major considerations with a memo to public schools. Here are some quotes from that memo….
“The aim, of course, is to use the available funding to effectively increase the numbers of computers available for students in years 9 to 12.”
“…… providing more computers or other ICT equipment has big and potentially costly ramifications for us like compatibility within the system, software licensing, power supply, storage and security, just to name a few.”
And on it goes.
Notice something missing from these planning considerations?
Once this program has been implemented, how do we measure our success?
Based on the major “aims” specified by the Director General, it would appear that once we have ticked the box to indicate that we have “increased the number of computers available for students in years 9 to 12”, and satisfied the “potentially costly ramifications” and “software licensing” requirements, then the implementation program will be deemed to have been successful.
But will student learning outcomes have been improved?
Will the tools necessary for a Quality Teaching environment have been provided?
Will any student learning objectives have even been considered?
Eventually, maybe. But not until after the die has been cast, defining the hardware and software parameters that will make up “the solution”.
Then teachers in individual schools will be left to bash their learning environment into a form that best fits in with “the solution”.
Rather than planning the project around student learning needs, which should be the starting point for any planning process in schools, we will again see an ICT infrastructure being built around, and constrained by, the knowledge and skills of accountants and technologists, with educators shoe-horned into the whole show right at the end of the process.
Why can’t we build our school ICT infrastructure plans around the learning needs of students, and create a quality teaching environment and professional development program that supports these needs, rather than the other way around?
Where 2 Now? 