Interview with KB

Teacher Training agency

Portland Place, London

12th November 1999

1. KB: Your study, is it a comparative study in relation to policy as it affects its children in schools, serving teachers, trainee teachers or all three?

2. AF: Well, my main focus is upon the policies for the use of computers across the curriculum by pupils in schools, from cater grade 12. That is my focus. I have talked in the last couple of days, with BM from the Open University, and MR. BM made it quite clear that you cannot, as of 2000, strip out the policies that are for the kids. Because you have Ofsted and these training initiatives coming in, having a fairly direct relationship.

3. KB: Yes

4. AF: So I have that understanding. But obviously your perspective is what I'm hoping to get today.

5. KB: And you understand who sets policy?

6. AF: Well, the national curriculum Council, now QCA, that is my understanding in terms of that bit of the policy.

7. KB: And you know that QCA is a non-departmental public body?

8. AF: Yes.

9. KB: And you understand the relationships between those and ministers.

10. AF: No I don't. That would be good. I have an e-mail outstanding with Clare Johnston whom I know from when I was working at the SEMERC, and she has undertaken to answer the same questions as yourself.

11. KB: Okay. So in essence, QCA and TTA have slightly different roles. But in essence, but they are non-departmental public bodies. QUANGOs some people say it, quasi-autonomous. So we are able to make advice available to ministers, who can accept or not. And then publish advice. It may come out as a government circular. Or it may came out as a QCA, or TTA. But in essence, the QCA will handle the schools curriculum area. What we currently do, we handle the rules and regulations and requirements for trainee teachers. We also, until very recently, handle the rules and requirements for serving teachers, in a whole range areas, in parallel with the Department of Education. The other thing we do, which Mike Rumble will be working on, is the training of serving teachers through the lottery funded training initiative.

12. AF: That is the part the BM was talking about.

13. KB: Bob is one of the training providers. So that is what we do. In many ways.... I've brought a packet of things ((produces a cartoon of TTA documents and CD-ROMs)) many of which I'm assuming that you have seen.

14. AF: I have seen them on the web. But at haven't actually.... I'll pull this one out here, because when you are talking about the Standards for initial teachers, this is the document that I believe is appropriate.

15. KB: Yes. So that is part of a much larger document, that is called circular 4/98. It has the whole range of the things....

16. AF: BM said that I should look at the be outcomes for the training program which he is involved in.

17. KB: Yes I have got them here.

18. AF: Okay

19. KB: What is effectively happening is that the requirements of teacher Training specify the standards that trainee teachers need to achieve, the curriculum they need to cover, and a set of requirements for course design. Now that is one of the curricula that they have to cover. And what has happened is, that which is the curriculum training program, because what it implies is; this is what trainee teachers have to do and to demonstrate they can do in the classroom. Whereas for serving teachers, it doesn't require them to demonstrate that they can do it.

20. AF: Okay

21. KB: So to pass as a teacher, you have got to demonstrate you can do this. Now serving teachers are already qualified. It is clearly inappropriate to say that you now have to do another set of things, under current policy arrangements, you know. One never knows what will happened to current policy. But what that is, is a set of outcomes that serving teachers would be advised to be able to do, but they are not required to demonstrate it.

22. AF: Now, we noticed that there was an advert for a tender for an automated way of testing.... This? Is that correct? The outcomes for this teacher Training ICT capability?

23. KB: Well, you have seen these presumably?

24. AF: No, I've got these down as things that Mike asked me to look out for.

25. KB: Right. So you will need those ((hands over assessment CD-ROM's)) I think these are possibly the best-selling, if you can sell something that is zero in price, the best-selling Education product ever, in the UK. I think they have done 200,000 copies. But they are free, you can have them. So what they are doing, is enabling the teachers to identify... it's all the usual interactive CD-ROM stuff... following secondary, down to subject specific stuff. It enablers them to identify what they need. They identify their needs, and having identify their needs, they then select the appropriate training provider to meet their needs.

26. AF: So this action mentions specific training providers?

27. KB: No. There's a separate document published collectively on behalf of all training providers.

28. AF: Right, okay.

29. KB: So if your needs were that you didn't know how to operate an interactive whiteboard, you log it on that, you would have a printed record, you can then look in the manuals for which training providers offer about what training is available. You then select who you want to go with, they all have different prices in a competitive environment, and then one would assume that at the end of that, do is a set of outcomes that one should be able to achieve, which are derived from the curricula associated with the ICT training initiative. So that is the process.

30. AF: The other thing that MR asked me to talk to you about were the exemplification materials...

31. KB: Right.....

32. AF: .. I'm sorry that the only notes I have!

33. KB: Now what we have done, is we have done two things. And I think I have brought the illustrations for those which will make it clear..... Well this is a whole set of them. Basically what we...

34. AF: These are the exemplification....

35. KB: These are the exemplification....

36. AF: He said little pamphlets, and that is all I was expecting....

37. KB: Well, they are relatively small. Relatively small. Now if we take as an example, I'll take these two for illustration. What we have got here are typical of what we've done. These are secondary religious Education, but they are for serving teachers. We have also done a whole set exemplifying the outcomes for serving teachers. We have also done a set that exemplifies the standards required in each of the primary and secondary subjects for training.

38. AF: Okay, now if I had both the religious Education ones here, to what extent would they differ, the one for serving teachers and the one for trainees?

39. KB: They won't differ a great deal. But where they'll differ is that to get qualified teachers status, you have to demonstrate that you have met the ICT requirements. So this for trainee teachers gives you the level associated with demonstrating that adequate standard.

40. AF: Right

41. KB: Because the problem with having a statement such as: "can use spreadsheets effectively"...

42. AF: Hmm it's pretty woolly...

43. KB: Well it doesn't mean an awful lot. You can make as much or as little of it as you want. But actually those that are better at spreadsheets think they can't do it. Because they know what they can't do. And those who are useless, think they can do it. So what this tends to do.. It seeks to set the standards or a level associated with the generic statements within the curriculum document. So if you pick one of those at random....

44. AF: That information has to be stored somewhere....

45. KB: So information has to be stored somewhere... well how does that really apply in primary art? So in here there will be some illustrations of what you would have to do as a trainee teacher of primary art to say, with confidence, you have met that requirement.

46. AF: Fantastic. So you might have to save a picture file as a bit map?

47. KB: That might be a bit-map-save in Primary Art. Obviously saving a bit map is unlikely to be appropriate for history.

48. AF: Yes, I understand.

49. KB: So it might be saving a database...

50. AF: ... or family tree?

51. KB:... or family tree. Something like that. So that's what those do. As I say there are loads of them in every primary and every secondary school. So you might want a set of those to keep you going.

52. AF: You have been busy in the last ten years that I have been away!

53. KB: Yes. They are good.

54. AF: Yes. Bob Moon was saying to me... he used to be my headmaster when I was teaching at Stantonbury campus in Milton Keynes.

55. KB: Oh no! You were there!

56. AF: He said to me that "you have chosen to come just the right time", because they had just got their materials for the training program off the press. "Look at our new flashy stuff!" he said. He was very much full of excitement with the news. There's an awful lot of money going into it.

57. KB: There is. There are huge amounts going into it. There's a very strong agenda associated with .... There's a policy direction that is coming from the 10 Downing Street, that we cannot be in a situation where people entrring the profession, trainees, and serving teachers are significantly disadvantaging pupils because the level of expertise associated with ICT is inadequate.

58. AF: Well to give you an idea, because it may be useful for you to know what the Australian situation is, I have been asked by the Tasmanian state government to try to find well researched studies of integrated use of computers in the curriculum. Basically you have gone before us. You have accepted the research, and you are saying right we're going to go with a big program.

59. KB: But we'll also made some very fundamental policy decisions. I.e. ICT is a tool, it has no value per se, but the point of all this is that it enables all teachers of all subjects to use ICT effectively in the teaching of their subject. So research will show, you'll know better than me, it's been years since I did research in this area, that too many teachers when they use computers think that they are teaching their subject, but the pupils think that they are learning about ICT. So there's a miss-match between the teacher perceptions, and the pupil's perceptions of what is being taught, and what is being learnt. It is significant. Therefore the focus of the materials are to enable teachers to use ICT as one tool in the usual armory to effectively teach their subject. And if there is teaching of ICT per se, then it should be in the ICT lesson, not the geography, history or Maths lesson.

60. AF: Yes, Yes

61. KB: Now that's quite a... fundamental policy direction are in terms of English, Welsh and presumably Scottish provision. And it is not the case in all countries.

62. AF: After my next trip I shall be on my way to Canada where we shall be having an APEC forum looking at ICT in initial teacher training. And it will be quite interesting for me to compare some of these documents which talk about initial teacher training in the UK context, with the Chinese and the Canadian and all those other countries. I know that another question which we might come to later perhaps, where we start going to the numbered ones, is that the national curriculum, that is the definition of what students should be doing with ICT, has preceded this huge training initiative quite considerably. However in the Australian context we have training programmes such as this emerging, but we have as yet no definition of what the kids should do!

63. KB: What the children have to do, they have to do IT, or as it is going to be known, ICT, as a subject. They don't have to use ICT in geography, history or French for instance.

64. AF: Right

65. KB: So in that sense there's a split between requirements for pupils to do IT, which they can do with a specialist IT teacher, and they the traditional, if you can have ten years of tradition, that is what's been happening in schools. Often very ineffectively. You can use Ofsted evidence to show how very ineffective it has been. But this initiative is quite different, because this is saying it is not the preserve of the IT teacher, it is the responsibility of all teachers. Whatever you are teaching. So in that sense it's a step forward from what's been happening with pupils.

66. AF: Alright. Can we go to the questions that are numbered?

67. KB: Yes, I have filed them. Here there are.

68. AF: Thank you for the background information we have covered so far. Really I'm looking at this from an historical point of view in some respects. I think you said that you have been here for about 15 months...

69. KB: That's a long time.

70. AF: OK, so if you take number one. How would you describe this policy framework?

71. KB: It depends what you mean by students here. Do you mean pupils in schools?

72. AF: Yes, that is correct

73. KB: Then it's 19.... Presumably... for pupils it's the 1985 national curriculum...

74. AF: 1985! Is it that far back?

75. KB: I think so, I'm guessing. (Laughter) I think the pupil's curriculum was 85. The first one. It could be later. There's a pupils curriculum from 85, but for trainee teachers then it all starts in September 19... would it be 1998 or 1999?. I.... No it's 1998 for trainee teachers, what for serving teachers this programme started in April 1999.

76. AF: Right, okay. It is amazing how much you have going into short time.

77. KB: And there is more to come. In the three areas.

78. AF: Number two then. Are you happy to move on?

79. KB: Oh, Yes. Now the current form and jurisdiction again for pupils, it is England and Wales. You know it is all maintained schools, in England and Wales that have the statutory responsibility to deliver the national curriculum.

80. AF: Right. Now that excludes independent schools? Which should be about 4% of the schools? Is that correct?

81. KB: Well, there are 7% of pupils that go to independent schools. What percentage of schools there are I don't know, but that's the percentage of pupils.

82. AF: The degree to which these mandatory... now I know that the DfEE reports don't give the rates of attainment in IT, they restrict their reporting to key stages in the core subjects. Now I'm not quite clear... I know that IT is in the national curriculum, but it is obviously not something that had to be reported upon in that sense. Can you clarify this?

83. KB: Well, it is in the national curriculum, they don't have a choice, schools don't have a choice in terms of delivering it, but how they deliver it, whether they do it cross curriculum, a carousel arrangement, or a fixed amount of time, or blocked, there's a lot of variability in how it is delivered. And it is possible that it is all done through permeation.

84. AF: I see, so they don't actually have to have an IT lesson, it could be done in English, French...

85. KB: Well indeed it could be. They have to teach IT, but how they do it is up to the school.

86. AF: Now that reporting thing, IT attainment is not reported upon to the same degree as the core subjects. And

87. KB: I'm surprised at that. Because I would have thought that as it is a national national curriculum subject that the Ofsted inspectors.... Would have to report on it.

88. AF: Yes I have been told that the Ofsted reports might have it, not the DfEE ones. There's no national testing, am I correct?

89. KB: No there's no national testing.

90. AF: Right. So it is not quite as important, so to speak, in that it is not nationally tested.

91. KB: I'm not sure that you would necessarily associate importance with whether it was tested or not. But clearly it has not been an area where ministers have wanted to see information coming through tests.

92. AF: It is interesting in terms of its growth, that testing could well come if it continues to gain importance in the way that it has so far.

93. KB: Don't know, don't know. It depends what ministers decide in that area.

94. AF: Fair enough. Number three? Now this is where I was talking about your period here. We're talking about what happened when this national curriculum IT capability was first conceived. What do you know about it?

95. KB: For pupils? Almost nothing. Almost nothing for pupils. Have you had any discussions about the key skills debate that is going on, the 14 to 19 key skills? Because obviously ICT is part of the key skills which come in the vocational qualifications area.

96. AF: Right okay

97. KB: To the NVQ areas. So key skills are very live in the vocational area, and IT is obviously one of them. I can't remember if I was to working in schools in 1985. Can't remember. It was years ago.

98. AF: Like childbirth, it was painful, but you forget about it....

99. KB: No, no, it was great fun, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that a lot. But because the subject I teach is not a national curriculum subject, I am an economist, a lot of stuff that was going on in terms of the gestation of the pupils national curriculum, you just missed.

100. AF: I have been referred to Neil Maclean at BECTa....

101. KB: Oh BECTa, yes.

102. AF: And I have been told that he was probably one of the guys that was around when this was set up..

103. KB: Neil would have been at QCA or SCAA as it was known, all the national curriculum authority or whatever. Yes. Neil would have been around then.

104. AF: I had better chase that up then. This is quite important, and this may have flowed through. What did those people hoped would come out of the IT in the national curriculum? Do have a feeling for that?

105. KB: It would be interesting to know whether they even knew! (Laughter) what could come out of it. In many ways some people tend to go with a vision thing with ICT, that's my suspicion, and they are not absolutely certain what it means.

106. AF: Yes. One of the questions I'm testing is to what extent is the economic well-being of the country tied into a universal understanding of ICT?

107. KB: Well, there is significant evidence in my area. I know, I did some work on this a few years ago. There is significant evidence that the use of bespoke packages in Education is declining, and the substitution of industrial standard packages in secondary schools is very significant. So you're getting kids being trained in the use of Excel, and Word and Microsoft packages almost as standard. All through the Eighties there were lots of little educational packages, little games and things that people played to teach a subject. And you would have a special history package, or something. If you actually look at what is going on in schools, I suspect that an awful lot of that is disappearing, and industry standard stuff is coming in....

108. AF: So you are saying there is a vocational Education link..

109. KB: I think so. And I think that this notion of.... It comes into the key skills agenda, about the vocationalisation of what is actually happening in the upper secondary school which is noticeable.

110. AF: Right. To what degree do you think there is a theory that making students universally more aware of ICT will increase consumer demand for that range of products?

111. KB: (Pause) I don't know that it actually increases demand for them. I suspect that shifts an existing demand pattern, where people have higher expectations of the sort of software and the sort of hardware that would be regarded as acceptable.

112. AF: "We know that it should be able to do more..."

113. KB: Yes. I doubt that it would create the demand. I suspect that it leads to switching behaviour.

114. AF: Right. The other question is, to what extent will a universal understanding of ICT stimulate production of products in that arena?

115. KB: Well, there has been a lot of .... I mean there is a lot of stuff going on at government level. You may know that in September there was an e-commerce bill presented in Parliament.

116. AF: I had not heard about that.

117. KB: There is now a government position on e-commerce. That is significant. As an economist I've been hearing about it. There is a sense in which it is thought that ICT is a prerequisite for a successful, driving, dynamic internationally competitive economy.

118. AF: Yes. I wonder if you have ever heard of Trumpet Winsock?

119. KB: No.

120. AF: This was the programme that allowed Windows 3.1 computers to connect into the internet...

121. KB: Yes, yes.

122. AF: It came from Tasmania. (Laughter) and certainly our government is aware, because we do not get many millionaires in Tasmania, but the guy who invented that became a millionaire, very, very quickly. It was only done out as shareware. They would quite like to see some more, but they don't seem to have the knowledge of how to stimulate it.

123. KB: Right.

124. AF: Good. That is useful. That is good. Number five -when was the policy authorised? Well I think we have already covered that..

125. KB: It would have been a ministerial, I would think.

126. AF: Yes

127. KB: I mean, this is a number 10 initiative, ICT.

128. AF: Yes. Okay. Implementation. So we are looking now at the IT capability in the national curriculum. How was it got into schools, and how successful has that implementation been?

129. KB: Well, (pause) I suspect that as with all the areas of the national curriculum, there was the usual consultation process, the usual announcement; this is the curriculum, it will be introduced....

130. AF: Yes, once you got to that stage, how then was it made into reality in the classroom?

131. KB: I don't remember. I don't know what sort of funding was available to training teachers. Remember that ICT then was a special subject, there wouldn't have been an across curriculum pedagogical approach, as it is now. It was a separate subject.

132. AF: In your opinion, I mean you know what this pile of documents (points to training initiative brochures) is leading towards... we would not have this pile of documents, if it was already happening in schools. So, can you quantify for me, if that is possible, the state of play in schools at the minute? Obviously we are going to see that changed radically if this lot gets branched out.

133. KB: In terms of actually using IT to teach your subject....

134. AF: Yes.

135. KB: I would suspect that.... variable would be a compliment. I would think that there would be whole areas where there is almost nothing happening. And you'll find that a teacher in geography will use two lessons a year where he uses IT. They might do some weather work using IT. You could have whole Art departments where nobody uses any ICT at all. And I suspect that there is a significant problem in many areas where ICT is not used extensively in subject teaching. That is not to say that it should be used all the time, because there are obviously times when it is not appropriate. And you'll see that all through our stuff that the issue is when, and when not to use it. But you need to know an awful lot about ICT to make a sound decision as to when, and when not, to use it. But I suspect, that if one was to two quantify it, it would be very difficult to find illustrations of good, effective use of ICT in the teaching of the subjects, where it genuinely adds value to teaching a subject. Vis-a-vis using a different approach. There will be a time....

136. AF: Let us take that geography fellow you were talking about, that uses IT for two lessons a year now. When this initiative has gone., what would your feeling be, if you were to measure that classroom again, which is to go up to... ten a year? Is that success in your terms?

137. KB: Quantity is not the success indicator. The indicator of success is that he knows enough to decide when it is, and it isn't appropriate. That maybe he knows enough to decide, in the circumstances that he has in his school, and the pupils that he has in that particular year, that this is a year where it would not be sensible to use ICT. But then again he might actually use it in 100 lessons in a year.

138. AF: Let me take another approach. One assumes there is going to be some evaluation of this enormous training project. That evaluation must be coming from somewhere, and they must have some baseline data to go with...

139. KB: Mike Rumble is one of the people involved in the quality assurance of the actual training, which literally just began in April. I don't think we have got to the stage of having an evaluation. We haven't agreed a methodology. It may well be that the evaluation is taken through Ofsted inspections, but it may not be.

140. AF: Right. I might have to did through there to see if there is the equivalent of some baseline data.

141. KB: They won't have anything yet. Because the training started in April 1999...

142. AF: Well baseline stuff is what you measure before the training starts...

143. KB: Yes, okay. That means they must have an understanding of what the baseline is, and I'm not sure, in as much that it has not been agreed, that there will be an evaluation by Ofsted. Or any evaluation, but one assumes that there will be. But we don't know who's doing it. You wouldn't in a study expect one organisation to actually be seeking any baseline figures because they may, or might not do any work on it.

144. AF: Fascinating. I should keep my ears open for this. Onto number seven.. No I think we have skated over that one, haven't we?

145. KB: Yes, I suppose so. I mean, I'm not quite sure.... You have not really formalised it, as if there was an implementation process.

146. AF: Well, there are always is. But in a particular classroom in a school, there may be a completely different process to what happens in another school...

147. KB: Alright, so you're going down to individual school level rather than national strategy in terms of what is the national approach to implementation...

148. AF: Yes, what I'm hoping to do is to visit a couple of schools what I'm here. I did the same thing in America, and I went from the University in Eugene where they talked about the national strategy which had been funded by the Federal Government, and I went to one of local schools, where they had never heard of it! (Laughs)

149. KB: Yes (laughs).

150. AF: They were doing significantly useful things with their computers, I mean, you know.... Okay. We're going on to....

151. KB: I mean, what we are probably looking for, if we are honest, is about a significant shift in attitudes to use of ICT. It could therefore.. It could also be a significant shift in behaviour, but I would think that the attitudinal factor would be more important. It is not acceptable, basically, for teacher to say I can't use ICT. The 11 year-olds in my classroom know more than I do. That is not an acceptable situation. And it is not excusable.

152. AF: We have that is well

153. KB: It happens. We know it happens, of course it does. But it requires us to actually have this large significant training program to move away from the sorts of attitudes where it is acceptable. Nobody would say "I don't know how to use a whiteboard". "I don't know how to use a blackboard, and that's okay! I don't know how to do group work, and that's okay!" You know, I would have real difficulty if teachers were saying those sorts of things.

154. AF: I should have brought a copy of an editorial that was in our teacher's magazine, for computing teachers. And basically the president of the computing teacher's association was saying, well, we have sat down with the government and even they are beginning to say the same as we. But so much money has been poured into training, you know? I think it was provocative, in that it was saying "let's give it up! Let's do something else!" This of course is quite a contrast. You were saying it is a significant problem to get existing, in-service, teachers to accommodate to IT, and we're going to throw an awful lot of money at it to change the situation, to change those attitudes.

155. KB: And there are obviously major political issues, and decisions to make, if evaluations show that it has not been necessarily as effective as one would want. Because it is not obligatory for serving teachers to even undertake the training.

156. AF: I was speaking about this to Bob Moon, and the process by which the money is to be distributed I understand, is where schools make a competitive bid to access the training. I said, what if the school does not make a bid? And he said that, in essence, they can elect to do that, if they want. They may look a little bit silly with the Ofsted reports little bit later down the line, but there is no compulsion.

157. KB: There is no compulsion. Whereas there is, for trainee teachers.

158. AF: Okay. We are up to number 10 revisions of the policy.

159. KB: Well, I've received the school pupils curriculum changes for September 2000. There will be a new school policy. There will be a new... it is confidential, and it has not yet been announced yet, but there will be a new teacher training policy, and curricula from September 2002. But the Education world does not know that, so you can't make it public yet. That will be made public in about a month. Just before Christmas. But, the pupil's one is 2000, the teacher training one is 2002.

160. AF: Good. Right 11. Okay this is the one I was talking about before. Can you comment as to whether teacher professional development initiatives have in general preceded, or followed, curriculum strategy announcements? This training programme for teachers, I'm basically saying, has come up to 10 years after the first announcement of the national curriculum as it applied to students.

161. KB: I don't think that is quite fair. Because the curriculum the pupils was very much about having a specialist subject called IT.

162. AF: Yes.

163. KB: And you could have delivered it through your specialist IT teachers, your enthused individuals who are good personally at IT, and they would have taught spreadsheets, word processing, the usual IT subjects. This is a different issue. This is about saying that you teach your subject through IT. So in that sense it is not running 10 years behind the initiative which was about IT capability. However it would be fair to say in the subsequent pupils' curricula, there was a sense in which teachers would use ICT in the teaching of their subjects. But it was not 10 years ago. It was in subsequent revisions.

164. AF: Right.

165. KB: And in every subject besides physical education, there is now a requirement to use ICT in the teaching of your subject.

166. AF: That came in the 1995 revision did it?

167. KB: That would be 95, yes. So this is running... some years to gather evidence, to actually look at what's happening, to begin to realise that it is not happening extensively, but when it is happening it is happening with variable quality. And therefore now they are doing something about it.

168. AF: Now that omission of IT in physical education, is that being addressed in the year 2000?

169. KB: My understanding, is that that is being addressed in the year 2000.

170. AF: So from 2000 onwards, IT using every single subject?

171. KB: Yes.

172. AF: Yes it is in the pamphlet. This will take off at home! Okay. You have given me some guidelines, but are there are other things, people, places that I should go to, to get more information?

173. KB: You presumably have got a meeting sorted out with BECTa. You need to talk to NM. Is it worth going to University at all? To talk to anybody at the University?

174. AF: Well I did talk to BM... but he may not necessarily be pivotal.

175. KB: Well, if you are not interested in initial teacher training, per se, then Bob is as good as anyone to talk to. Are you talking to anybody at Ofsted?

176. AF: No.

177. KB: Gabriel Goldstein is...

178. AF: Old Gabriel is still there!

179. KB: He did do a report about a year and a half ago. The state of IT or ICT in schools. I would suspect it would have to be Gabriel.

180. AF: I used to work with Philip Lewis,....

181. KB: I don't know where he is now.

182. AF: Gabriel always gave the impression that he knew everybody, which I thought was amazing. Because I was working for NCET at the time..

183. KB: Oh, right..

184. AF: He must have a very good memory for faces. Okay. Can ask I you some subsidiary questions?

185. KB: Of course.

186. AF: To what degree does the statement of IT capability incorporate understanding of that students may use computers to learn independently?

187. KB: Oh! (Long pause) if you go through the illustrations that we have put in our materials, there are dozens and dozens of examples of actually enabling pupils to find things out. They are not all just web-based examples, but there are lots of illustrations about accessing CD-ROM. Using on-line databases, to run e-mail networks, to have conversations with other people in other countries, and in other schools. That is all sort of pervasive.

188. AF: When I try to describe this sort of thing with my own people, I say "when the CD-ROM purports to teach you something, and offers an opportunity to verify that you have indeed learnt it, then that is what I call an independent learning system."

189. KB: As opposed to the normal situation of somebody accessing say a page, whether on a CD-ROM, or on the web or somebody else's down loaded it.

190. AF: But there is no pretence that that page is going to teach you something. It is not going to go through several learning steps, verifying each one.

191. KB: No.

192. AF: You can use a web-site that is of that nature. There are the ILS's which have been evaluated by BECTa, which take that to the ultimate, I suppose. Are those things incorporated?

193. KB: Yes. In terms of how to overcome the problems associated with those particular issues. In your subject.

194. AF: Right. Yes. Many people have the belief that ICT has the potential to dramatically transform the nature of schooling, and / or, to radically change what is actually talked in the current curriculum. So for instance if we take our history, we could actually change the sort of history we can teach because of the presence of ICT in the classroom environment. To what extent of those changes anticipated?

195. KB: It is already happening. If you look at the September 2000 pupils curricula, things are in the September 2000 pupils curricula that without ICT would not be able to be taught. Obvious examples are computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing, some of the Mathematics that you can do with logo, particularly. You know those things that without the ICT, they could not be in the pupils' curriculum. They are already there. Those are some examples, and I'm sure you'll find things in our secondary Art where you look at people like David Hockney making extensive use of ICT and computer in as a medium in the construction of art. which obviously would not be there, without the ICT technologies.

196. AF: That is taking half the question, saying that there is a change in the subject content,..

197. KB: Absolutely, yes.

198. AF: .. What about the nature of schooling?

199. KB: Well there are different views on this. And you get the contrast with the Stephen Heppell view, at the Anglican Polytechnic University, UltraLab schools of the future model, which is well-known I suppose. Then on the other hand there is the Chris Woodhead, Chief HMI, view which I suppose is at the other extreme, which is saying that schools in the next 20 years will be completely recognisable as schools. You'll not have any difficulty in saying this is a school, this is what is going on in the classroom, it will not be... you know in the same way that if you were to go into a school now from a hundred years ago, there isn't a lot of difference. Now that is the other extreme. And I suspect that you have all the views in the middle.

200. AF: Right. So no clear idea about the changing nature of schooling?

201. KB: Individuals have clear ideas. I don't think it would be right to say there is a collective consensus on what ICT's will actually do to the nature and type of schooling.

202. AF: Yes I know we have a couple of classes in a school in Tasmania which are called virtual classes. That is, the notes are all on-line, and you don't have to attend lessons and so on.

203. KB: Yes, we have those as well.

204. AF: And they have worked out what to do with those student who don't have to be in the classroom, because they are in the virtual class.

205. KB: Well there are illustrations in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, where they do their A levels on-line, and through video conferencing. They are doing it in North Wales to small secondary schools. It carries on from the work that was done in Helsinki University with remote parts of Finland, with remote schooling going on about 5 - 6 years. And it also happens in England.

206. AF: Yes. The experience in the USA, one particular town, wired every home, and they found that school attendance in High School dropped by 50%. Have you got any experiences like that?

207. KB: No. There's no experience like that. But there are digital cities being created in Britain, where every school, every library, every public facility, are all going on-line. All exhibits in museums and libraries are being digitised. You know that kind of multimedia city concept, they are being created.

208. AF: It will be interesting if studies of those show the same relationship between school attendance and bandwidth.

209. KB: It would depend partly on bandwidth. The those things are beginning to happen. Brighton is the most well-known digital city in Britain.

210. AF: Right. So, if I was to look on the web for information about that...

211. KB: You would go to the Brighton and Hove web site. For the digital city.

212. AF: OK. That's it. Thank you.