back to article UK.gov to tech industry: Hands up who can help cut teachers' admin

The British government has admitted teachers need help tackling lesson workloads and admin burdens – but wants tech firms to fix the problem. In a speech to the World Education Forum, education secretary Damian Hinds called on the industry to revolutionise UK schooling. His department is looking to startups and Silicon Valley …

  1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

    "has to be solid".

    I think the older IT school kids were sort of spoilt there.. Is any modern hardware going to last as long as a BBC B?

    1. jaduncan

      A raspberry pi in a metal case should be insanely robust. No moving parts.

      1. Chris King
  2. codejunky Silver badge

    Quick solution

    Get the politicians out of teaching. That way they dont need to keep making sweeping changes all the time in the hope of winning votes and instead time can be spent teaching. Put an outright ban on PC feminism and other stupidity on school property for the purposes of actually teaching, hearing multiple and varying views and not sugar-coating, no-platforming and erasing reality.

    School is for learning. Not learning how to pass a test but learning how to participate in the real world and productively.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'Get the politicians out of teaching'

      Yeah but 'The Metrics' man. Metrics that nobody even looks at!

      Its the same all over the world, just different degrees of 'worse'.

      Tech won't fix this, as long as PHB's keep adding to the admin!

      SO has to do 'individual' attendance reports by pupil, everyday!

      That's unteaching, its robbing pupils of better designed courses.

      PHB's don't care they've no room for improvements to teaching.

    2. katrinab Silver badge

      Re: Quick solution

      "Put an outright ban on PC feminism and other stupidity"

      So we go back to the supposedly good old days when tech was only for boys, and cooking was only for girls [1].

      [1] This attitude still seems to exist despite the fact that the vast majority of Michelin starred chefs are men.

      1. sabroni Silver badge

        Re: Put an outright ban on PC feminism and other stupidity on school property

        Feminism isn't stupid. Assuming that someone's gender has a massive impact on their ability is stupid.

        Teaching respect for others regardless of gender, sexuality and religion is not "PC stupidity", it's basic common sense. Judging on the upsurge is discrimination in public it needs to be taught in schools.

      2. codejunky Silver badge

        Re: Quick solution

        @ katrinab

        "So we go back to the supposedly good old days when tech was only for boys, and cooking was only for girls "

        Not at all. Instead the success and victory of the feminist cause that has achieved its goals and has been resolved pretty much throughout the west should be taught. That we are already equals and even that the needle has gone the other way.

        And while we are at it the toxic perceptions that men are predators and women are not needs to be dislodged. A good way to do that is more male teachers at the younger ages, without the fear of being reported by some vindictive child wrecking his career especially when proven innocent. How much teaching time is wasted walking on eggshells asking female staff to do basic chores (e.g. taking a child to the loo) because as a bloke it can land you in serious legal bother.

        Instead of trying to manipulate more females of all ages to take certain 'politically fashionable' subjects kids regardless of gender should be encouraged to find what they enjoy and encouraged to pursue it. Ditch the discrimination, it doesnt belong in a classroom meninism nor feminism.

        I expect such changes would be easier without politicians trying to gain votes at the expense of education.

        1. John H Woods Silver badge

          Re: Quick solution

          I'm torn because I absolutely agree with you that politics should be removed from education but feel that your focus on "PC" is entirely wrong.

          I would argue the problem is more to do with setting curricula centrally, micromanaging teachers and setting, and trying to achieve, fairly arbitrary targets.

          1. 0laf

            Re: Quick solution

            More male teachers in early years would be a great thing. My own boy was lucky enough to get a male P1 teacher. A rare thing indeed. He also had a male student teacher in P3.

            It may not be PC but it is true, boys respond differently to men than they do to women. And boys do seem to response positively to being taught by men. I don't think it's anything to do with talent or skill. I think men just know how to deal with boys because they were one once. Also it is a positive role model that many young boys are missing.

            I'm not saying that female teachers cannot be effective teachers of boys (I was married to a very successful teacher) but I've observed a difference in my boy's (and his peers) attitude and behaviours around male teachers. And in early school years it makes a difference.

        2. katrinab Silver badge

          Re: Quick solution

          "Not at all. Instead the success and victory of the feminist cause that has achieved its goals and has been resolved pretty much throughout the west should be taught. That we are already equals and even that the needle has gone the other way."

          In the UK, 17% of girls study tech subjects.

          In Iran, 70% of girls study tech subjects.

          Iran are not generally considered to be world leaders in feminism, and we have a long way to go just to catch up with them. So when describing the situation in the UK, I wouldn't use words like "success", "victory", or "achieved its goals".

          By the way, if you look at the number of men doing supposedly women's jobs or studying supposedly women's subjects, that is even worse.

          1. codejunky Silver badge

            Re: Quick solution

            @ katrinab

            "Iran are not generally considered to be world leaders in feminism, and we have a long way to go just to catch up with them."

            You really dont seem to be making your point but mine. Lets assume your numbers are right (I dont honestly care) you have just gone out of your way to claim that we need to catch up to X (in this case Iran) which I expect you mean we should have more girls being made somehow to do the topics you deem right. This is the flawed political thinking I am talking about as we are at a stage of equality where boys and girls are taught equally and choose what to do... and the womans right to choose was one of the points of feminism!

            We do not need to catch up by making the appropriate number of genitals attend specific subjects or even all subjects.

            "By the way, if you look at the number of men doing supposedly women's jobs or studying supposedly women's subjects, that is even worse."

            Ok. I still dont suggest forcing a predetermined number of genitals attend a subject. Instead we have a system where kids are educated together in the same classes, and then go on to choose the subjects that take their interests.

            If we had 50/50 classes of genitals in subjects that were not naturally brought about I would consider it a backward step and a move away from the success and victory that has been won. And that would be an administrative task piled onto the rest where the point is to reduce such workload.

          2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Quick solution

            >In the UK, 17% of girls study tech subjects.

            >In Iran, 70% of girls study tech subjects.

            Ironically this is a sign that the UK is doing well.

            Studying valuable technology subjects is a sign of poverty.

            If you are the first of group X to get the chance to go to college - you study science/medicine/engineering, because that is your only chance to escape the poor life your parents/grandparents had.

            If you are at public school and you know daddy will get you a job at the bank then you can safely study art-history.

            It's well documented across the world, first generation immigrants/women/working class do STEM, their kids do arts.

    3. Al-Noor Ramji

      Re: Quick solution

      Private enterprise has produced lots of tech to help schools, but constant cherry picking and undercutting (it's hard to compete with free) by the state mainly in the form of the BBC makes anyone with any sense pull out.

      If the state stopped doing this and left buying to individual schools a healthy dynamic market would emerge.

      1. Primus Secundus Tertius

        Re: Quick solution

        Politicians have a legitimate interest in seeing a healthy education system as a part of a healthy nation state. Sometimes they do have to intervene: by the end of the 1970s it was clear that "progressive" schemes for teaching reading were "failing the nation" (to borrow an old slogan from the Labour Party).

        One mistake has been to turn schools into social services. Another has been to ignore the statistics: only about 1/6 of children are genuinely bright, and a corresponding 1/6 will always be seriously below average. But I suspect none of the arts graduates in the Department for Education understand what a standard deviation is.

        It is absurd to ask the techies to resolve the problems that are caused by bad policies.

  3. 0laf
    FAIL

    The workload is driven by politicians who just cannot help but meddle in the education system.

    How about a concerted effort to teach in a way that works and is sustainable without teachers filling forms for 50% of their working weeks to ensure they deliver on government targets. then maybe you'll get talented people coming into teaching and kids won't be taught to pass tests just to give politicians a sound-bite every summer.

    1. SkippyBing

      Exactly, the Govt could save themselves a fortune by cutting back on the form filling they require teachers to do. Less forms to print and no IT to be paid for.

      Of course that would involve the Govt machine* admitting it's made a mistake or two...

      *I don't think it matters which party is actually in power.

  4. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Asks the tech industry

    But will award the contract to the usual suspects

    1. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: Asks the tech industry

      ... the big accounting firms who see software as a way of churning out money.

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Asks the tech industry

      Well, given the assumption that everything will be done using devices: "for instance, Microsoft recently used the BETT trade show to launch "tough" devices for kids to doodle on."

      This does suggest the usual solution....

      Offshoring of all the marking!

  5. steelpillow Silver badge
    Linux

    >Cough< Open Source >Cough<

    Proprietary lock-in? What could possibly go wrong?

    Seriously - connect the codies to the teachers and then just get out of the effing way!

  6. James 51
    FAIL

    Underfunding is the biggest problem schools face. More bungs for business won't help the eduction sector on a national level to improve.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Underfunding is the biggest problem schools face.

      Really, you're sure? Really, really sure? Sure that countries like Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, they all spend more than the UK, do they? No, think again. You're really, REALLY sure that underfunding is the biggest problem UK schools face? C'mon, one last chance to admit you're talking rubbish.

      The UK spends notably more than any economy comparable in size, composition and development. And there's other data sources that corroborate that one.

      Which suggests that (1) the biggest problem facing schools is how they spend an entirely sufficient budget, and that (2) they're currently churning out people willing to spout rubbish without checking their facts (that's you, by the way).

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

        Well full fact says budgets have been cut in real terms over the last couple of years.

        And private schools skew the figures. My back of the envelope suggests we'd be level with Ireland without them. (The average state funding per pupil is around £5200 (by eye from the graph). But 7% of students are in private schools and average private fees are £17,000. So that raises the per pupil average over £6000.)

        That's before we take into way all the ways money has been used for non-educational outcomes.

      2. cbars Bronze badge

        To teach a subject, you need to understand it, and understand it well.

        So no, it's not acceptable that a class at GCSE level is taught by someone with only A Level or equivalent qualitfications. No, Maths should not be taught by someone with a Politics degree. Actually enforce standards on the teacher qualifications that mean something.

        Kids need to be taught Science by people with Science degrees (and preferably someone who earned above a third in the respective subjects). Across the board, so yes I include the humanities in this.

        I once had a GCSE science (Physics) class taught by a History teacher for a month - we learned nothing. Thankfully that wasn't the norm and the class did well in the end.

        But if politicians admitted that, they'd have admit they're utterly unqualified to be making decisions on their respective 'committees', especially as those have real world consequences.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The British government has admitted teachers need help tackling lesson workloads and admin burdens"

    I know a few teachers and it's quite clear that, outside of lesson prep, the rest of the admin comes from the British government.

    get rid of ;

    - the SATs,

    - constant testing,

    - political interference in subjects (no politician is a subject matter expert in anything other than philosophy, politics and economics degree level material - there are a few exceptions),

    - change of curriculum - just have a broad definition of what is needed

    - school scoring

    lower school classroom sizes

    increase school funding

    AND finally - allow teachers to tech things that students will be interested in and provide students with the ability to debate, question and engage away and allow that rather than teaching students to pass the exams (in order to retain a school score)

  8. katrinab Silver badge
    Windows

    I would like to bid for this

    I have developed a blockchain based system which embeds the admin tasks as smart contracts, and runs seamlessly with cloud-enabled internet-of-things devices that utilise machine learning to leverage the most optimal learning experience.

    Please subscribe to my TeachCoin ICO and I guarantee you will make a return of 50% per day. What's more, this return will be paid in TeachCoins giving you the opportunity to make further gains over and above this 50% guarantee.

    1. DavCrav

      Re: I would like to bid for this

      Is there any way we can exploit synergies? We need to employ 360-degree feedback somehow as well. Going forward, we need to solutionize in order to move the needle on this.

  9. Chris Hills

    Is anyone keeping track of all the failed government IT projects.

    1. katrinab Silver badge

      It is exactly the same as the list of government IT projects.

      1. Flakk
        Pint

        Dizzam! That was industrial-grade burnination. For you --->

    2. 0laf
      Holmes

      there is no need when it is all of them

  10. Herring`

    I reckon the tech industry can solve it

    If we all lob in a tenner, we can get the "senior leadership teams" of most schools bumped off.

    When I was at school, we had one headmaster who taught part time. Now even the smallest school has 3 or 4 "senior" people who don't teach at all but just demand reports and paperwork from the actual teachers.

    Mrs. H. is moving from full time into supply so she doesn't have to put up with this crap.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I reckon the tech industry can solve it

      This "administration bloat" is also a significant problem in the American education system. We spend more per child every year, but results continue to decline. In some school districts, the administrator-to-teacher ratio is as high as 3:1. I strongly suspect that this is the problem.

      I am all for using tech to streamline the process of administering education. Employing three expensive admins for every underpaid teacher is insanity. It's a self-serving system that misuses education as a jobs program rather than focusing on providing our kiddos with competent educators and quality materials.

      1. Herring`

        Re: I reckon the tech industry can solve it

        Like most of the evils in the world, I blame management consultants. The obsession with measuring, metrics, spreadsheets and all that bollocks. It's very easy to measure how a child does on a standardised multiple choice test. It's very hard to measure anything like creativity or engagement. So the focus becomes almost entirely on things that are easy to measure.

        When I was at school, there was a lot of music going on. Two orchestras, a couple of productions a year, concerts, stuff. You don't see much of that sort of thing in schools anymore - because you can't turn it into a number in Excel and draw a chart.

        Has anyone also noticed how, 20 odd years ago, an appraisal was a half hour chat with your manager. Now appraisal systems are massively bloated and complex (and pointless as, in IT, half the projects that were your "objectives" will have been canned by the next appraisal). Makes me glad I turned to contracting.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: I reckon the tech industry can solve it

          "So the focus becomes almost entirely on things that are easy to measure."

          That's by no means confined to teaching.

          On the subject of measuring in general. I remember a long time ago an article in a motoring magazine about engine tuning. One approach was "if you can't measure it you don't have it". The other was "if you need to measure it you don't have it".

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: I reckon the tech industry can solve it

      "When I was at school, we had one headmaster who taught part time."

      And with the assistance, if it was anything like mine, of one secretary. There was was also a senior mistress who did teach more or less full time.

  11. SVV

    overworked, under-funded schools

    His department is looking to startups and Silicon Valley giants to solve the problems facing the UK's overworked, under-funded schools.

    It's your job to solve the problems, Hinds. If you're incapable, resign. I doubt they'll provide the funding for you.

  12. andy gibson

    The tech already exists

    Thanks to Edugeek and other groups for powers that be in school, such as deputy heads and business managers who make the decisions, discussion on existing tech to make teachers lives easier is already in place.

    The tech already exists - behavioral and classroom progress trackers, & online homework systems, are easier than they've ever been, and seamlessly link with the schools MIS already in place.

    We in our respective groups mentioned above, discuss these systems - which ones are fantastic and which ones are rubbish.

    The problem is that teachers don't have the time to use these systems.

  13. bigfoot780

    The real solution

    Increase funding. Raise support staff pay (and numbers) particaulary IT Support which is being outsourced and strectched due to budget cuts. The increase in tasks that teachers and support staff have to do thanks to the government means more people power is need not less. Theres no easy fix with technology. The level of IT confidence is quite suprising. People storing emails in "Deleted Items" or not doing email alltogether and missing out on vital information. 10 year old PCs in use to deliver lessons, IT Staff taking on more device management iPads etc but no time to proactively maintain the environment. Funding needs to be in line with inflation.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The real solution

      "Increase funding."

      Why?

      There's a very poor correlation between funding per child and measured educational performance, and strong data to support the idea that there's a ceiling on educational performance - you can achieve that at around half the level of UK funding per pupil, and after that all you do is increase costs with minimal additional attainment. I'm sure you'll disagree, but I'll let you take that up with the OECD who've studied this for longer and in more depth than I have, and I'll wager than you have.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: The real solution

        "measured educational performance"

        See discussion above about what's easy to measure vs what's important to measure.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm a mathematician and an IT guy. Oh, and I work in schools.

    My degree in Maths would get me an instant bursary to train as a teacher for a year.

    However, I looked into it back when I graduated, and I instead have worked in IT in education ever since.

    You couldn't pay me enough to bother with all the paperwork and hassle and social-care necessary to sit 30 kids in a room and teach them maths. If it was just that, just teaching, I'd be in there like a shot and could teach almost all the "most needed" subjects - maths, physics, IT, etc.

    But I don't wish to spend half my life filling in paperwork, working to strict frameworks that allow no innovation in the classroom, be assessed purely on what mark the kids get in a dumbed-down exam (which you could teach them to get an A on in a couple of lessons if they cared, but they wouldn't actually learn any maths, and you wouldn't actually be able to do, and wouldn't fulfill the criteria of the curriculum - which you have to prove you covered every unit, which is a good thing, but ridiculous that it then has no correlation to the exam), and assessed literally while being told to teach to the individual needs of progress (so bad kid gets better grade than he would have before you ever taught him? That's still a D, mate, doesn't appear on the league tables, you're a crap teacher), and literally spending 50% or more of my time herding children, doing "playground duty", supervising the lunch queue, ticking bits of work and making little comments on them as per strict "marking schemes", dealing with the idiots, throwing kids out of class (only to have them thrown back in and disrupt the lesson twice), and endless gumph on everything from anti-extremism to bullying, while being a substitute family and social care worker.

    It's time we let teachers teach the kids, and those children incapable of sitting still and being taught put somewhere else instead, by someone qualified and employed to do that. Then watch as the taxpayer reels in horror to realise that every school in the country pays far more people far more money just to line kids up, sit them down quietly, fix their boo-boos and keep order than they do on any of the subject experts whose results determine the "success" or not of the school.

    Other countries manage it. Teachers from other countries tell me all the time that the UK follows the "US model" of teaching, which is nothing to do with imparting knowledge except in an incidental capacity. It's universally derided as producing poor results, unruly kids, and unskilled adults.

    Teaching isn't teaching. It's 50% paperwork and political-correctness-training, 30% social work, 15% absolute nonsense (e.g. standing in a playground watching balls being kicked about), 5% teaching.

  15. GrumpenKraut
    Devil

    "...the problems facing the UK's overworked, under-funded schools, .."

    Hmm, this is a hard one. What could one possibly do about this? Sufficient funding?

    Communist ideas!!!argh!madness!!!! ------------>

    P.S.: similar problems exist in GrumpenLand, including but not limited to buildings in bad need of repair.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When I was at school every classroom had a blackboard and a whiteboard, most had chalk and some had rather overused blackboard erasers that just spread the chalk across the board. The teachers managed perfectly adequately with this, as their predecessors had for approximately the previous two thousand years.

    I have seen pictures which suggest that every classroom now has a interactive whiteboard screen, plus projectors and other gimmicks. I couldn't possibly afford a tenth of this equipment for one of our meeting rooms and i'm working for a business with a thereotically unlimited spend available, limited only by practical cost benefit decisions. The school break out areas which in my time were simply a hall with everybody sitting on the floor, or random tables etc are now decked out in a way that Starbucks would probably envy. The kids get issued with laptops, or the "chromebook for education". The costs involved in this are eyewatering to consider given that kids will be in the education system for 13 years, which means that on a 3 year replacement cycle they are going to go through 4 devices, or 3 on a 5 year cycle in their time at the school. (and I suspect that kids aren't exactly gentle with the kit so it probably would be lucky to survive 5 years...)

    Meanwhile, the "temporary" portacabins that were installed as additional classroom space seem to still be in use, despite being older than the children in them. One can't help but wonder if the budget is being spent wisely on what is required for educating the children, or if so much of the budget is going on luxary equipment that we can't afford the basics.

    Has tech been acquired without any plan for how it would or should be used, and what benefit would be delivered through delivering it? were small scale deployments of the technology been done to establish the benefit claimed by the salesdroids were deliverable before then rolling out a huge programme? Are we really about to spend a lot more money on random tech without established use cases and neglect basics again?

    I do wonder if we would be better off sticking to the technology absolutely required and requested by teachers. It would seem to me that the teachers would have gotten more benefit from a 1970's FTP system that let all teachers share lesson plans than they have from all of the tech that they now have available.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      I work IT in schools (always have, primary to further education, state and private, 20 years experience):

      Yes, almost every classroom has an interactive whiteboard, projector, PC (of some kind), sound system, etc.. The cost isn't huge. About £5000 per classroom, at best? A whole school upgrade would generally be done every 4 years, on average (or 25% a year, etc.)

      Now they are old-hat and being replaced with giant touchscreens. Same cost, but no separate wiring (no power + VGA/HMDI into the ceiling, no speaker cabling at all, etc.).

      Laptops to the kids is still not common, but I work in a school with 1:1 iPads (i.e. an iPad or Chromebook each) - it is however a private boarding school, but it's not unusual for a state secondary (or Academy) to have such too.

      I'd estimate in a school with 1000 kids you'd likely have AT LEAST 50k-100k of IT investment a year. Not including staffing/outsourcing. In-house servers, maybe, hundreds of PCs, dozens of whiteboard/touchscreens, all kinds of nice back-end storage, switching, routing, leased-lines, the works. Just for your average secondary.

      Such costs are lost in the noise of any building work. Literally, error-margin afterthoughts - even with cabling costs. The IT department (as in actual techies) may well be funded to the same tune as, say, a maths department, or ICT (i.e. teaching computing) department.

      Portacabins are used for a reason - planning permission is hard to come by and expensive. Temporary portacabins are cheap and don't require planning. You often can't expand school sites as you can't justify buying land or building on "school playing fields" (which have special rules in land use). That portacabin is a trick to put more pupils into a school and save you lots of money as a taxpayer. One portacabin likely costs enough to fund an IT department, by the way.

      A school building project for, say, 5 permanent classrooms, might cost you upwards of a million pounds to implement. There are strict rules on making profit (even as a private school!), how much you must set aside for emergencies, what financial agreements you can get yourself into. Hence 5 classrooms - so 150 extra kids in a state school, less than 10% growth on your average state - will cost you orders of magnitude more than anything the IT costs for the whole site. It would take you 5-10 years to get the planning permission. In that time, your intake may well have increased by way more than 10%, especially if near a city. The staffing going up 10% will swamp the building costs, which would swamp the IT costs, which are likely cheaper than the "temporary" portacabin solution on its own.

      And any decent school IT Manager manages their budget, tests, trials and prototypes like any IT department of a large corporation with 100+ staff would (current staffing ratios in some schools can approach 1 staff :4 pupils if you include all the estates, maintenance, IT, HR, admin, social care, etc. staff).

      P.S. The tech is HEAVY. Name another IT place where you would expect every user to log off every hour, move to the other side of the school, log on there and get teaching in less than a couple of minutes? For 1000+ users? With mobile devices, site-wide wifi, etc. Registration is electronic, medical records, assessment (including national exams), the kids and staff have VLE access (basically work-from-home remote-desktops), VPN, almost all marking, commenting, evidence, target tracking, etc. is done on school IT systems, everything from a text home because Johnny was five minutes late and is he playing truant, to site-wide CCTV, access control, remote servers and remote secondary data locations, IP telephony, etc.

      The schools of old aren't comparable. The tech is necessary and integrated to everything you do. Even receiving new pupils into your database is an electronic transfer from the local authorities. And yet all the IT costs less than that portacabin, which is really a cheap-out trick because of planning laws.

      And, state or private, primary or secondary, the situation is pretty much the same, only the scale of pupil numbers differs, not the ratio of tech.

      My pupils and staff created 1 million Google Docs documents in the last 2 years. It cost us £0 to do that (Google Apps is free for schools). Now imagine the supporting systems to facilitate that. Microsoft licensing is my biggest single item expense, and that's charged per Full Time Teaching Employee Equivalent (i.e. if I have only 40 FTE staff, I pay for only 40 copies of Office, Windows, RDP licences, etc.).

      Don't blindly knock IT in schools, because it's probably the best value IT you'll ever see and heavily used and integrated into the business. Question what use is being made of it in lessons, sure, but the IT in lessons is almost irrelevant to the overall cost of even a couple of teachers.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "The cost isn't huge. About £5000 per classroom, at best? A whole school upgrade would generally be done every 4 years, on average (or 25% a year, etc.)"

        As a comparison what would a biology lab get to spend on microscopes and how often would they be upgraded?

    2. Primus Secundus Tertius

      @AC

      The Daily Telegraph reported on 7th August 2018 that Damian Hinds, Education Secretary, declared that replacing blackboards with interactive whiteboards had made no practical difference to education results and had been a waste of money.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/08/07/replacing-blackboards-interactive-whiteboards-waste-money-education/

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The Daily Telegraph reported on 7th August 2018 that Damian Hinds, ....

        Another PPE shithead. Would you really trust any words that fell out of his mouth?

  17. Insane Reindeer
    Coat

    It really doesn't need the Tech Industry to help with this

    The following steps are simplified but the nuts and bolts of this plan are not rocket science and there are plenty of other countries who can offer all the advice that is needed.

    1) Scrap all league tables. For every type of school at every age group.

    2) Scrap all centralised exams except for the GCSE and A-Levels.

    3) Give all teachers a pay rise immediately at five times the current rate of inflation.

    4) Let teachers teach. They decide how they are going to teach a certain topic, what skills they will assess during the teaching of that topic and they decide how and what the assessment should be upon the completion of that topic.

    5) Scrap infants school. Mandatory schooling should only start in the August of the year the child turns seven.

    6) Scrap the stupid "school year" for deciding what children are in what class. All the children who turn seven at any point in 2018 should be starting school next week. In the first year of school.

    7) Allow an entirely optional, completely free, one year of "pre school" starting in the August of the year that the child turns 6. This should focus on introducing children to the environment of school and peer awareness rather than getting a jump start on subject material.

    8) An example of a school year: August 13th 2018 to October 12th 2018. October 22nd 2018 to December 21st 2018. January 7th 2019 to March 8th 2019. March 18th 2018 to May 31st 2019. Good Friday is a day off and the only time off for Easter. One "national holiday" day to also be taken off. Yes that means the summer holidays run from June 1st 2019 to August 12th 2019 next year!

    9) School day starts at 08:50 and ends, at the latest, at 15:00.

    On a purely personal level I would also scrap school uniforms but I don't think the UK is quite ready for that yet.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: It really doesn't need the Tech Industry to help with this

      Never got the justification for not having schools being 9-5, Mon-Fri, same number of weeks as the average working Joe.

      Sure, make the last couple of hours nothing more than "supervised play" for the younger kids but give the kids a work ethic, gives teachers predictable hours, everyone work year-round, kids can take holidays whenever and have plenty of extra time to catch back up, most parents don't have to have special arrangements to look after their kids.

      The rest of your stuff has problems with it. But I never got the school year thing at all.

      Probably the best thing - class your pupils by ability, not age. If you fail to progress, you used to go back and resit a year. There's no reason you can't put that in - many countries have that operating still.

      P.S. if you don't assess teachers somehow, you will just generate a culture of whackball "fun" teachers who are incredibly popular but teach absolute nonsense. I know. I could name you some now, I'm related to at least one of them.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It really doesn't need the Tech Industry to help with this

      The trouble is that when teachers were completely in charge of teaching they were considered to have massively stuffed up.

      Unless you can change the perception in government and amongst the public in general that the teaching profession can't be trusted to get on with the job without indulging in educational theorising at the expense of the pupils then all the reports, monitoring and testing is inevitable.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Got your fix, but not sure I can make it a tech start up.

    1 - Employ more teachers

    2 - Lower class sizes

    3 - Increase paternal leave or encourage home working so people can take care of kids

    4 - ????

    5 -Profit [what improve societal happiness? It'll never work -Ed.]

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is impossible to sack bad teachers, so all this paperwork exists for all teachers to limit the damage the bad ones can do. The last Labour government had a fix for this, teaching licenses that would have to be regularly renewed in order to work. Sadly voted out before they could make it happen. Generally any policy teachers oppose will be good for pupils, parents, taxpayers, everyone.

    1. PhillW

      It is impossible to sack bad teachers.....

      Oh dear, has the newsagent not delivered your Daily Heil yet and you have nothing to froth at this morning?

      "It is impossible to sack bad teachers"

      That is just a downright lie, there are proper procedures in place to sack teachers and plenty are.

      "Generally any policy teachers oppose will be good for pupils, parents, taxpayers, everyone."

      You mean like academisation and free schools?

      "Converting schools into academies has cost the government £745 million since 2010-11. £81 million was spent on conversion in 2016-17 alone."

      "According to the National Audit Office, the Government’s free school programme has run up a bill of billions of pounds due to staggering procurement and construction costs.

      Originally allocated £450m in 2011 by the then Education Secretary Michael Gove, the spending watchdog warns that the programme will now cost £9.7bn by 2021 - with the Government facing a bill of £2.5bn just to purchase the land needed to build them.

      Published today, the NAO’s school spending report revealed that £850m has already been spent on land acquisitions for free schools over the last five years, with officials paying “premium” prices in many cases due to a shortage of alternative sites.

      On average, the Government had paid 19 percent more than official land valuations for new sites, with the four most expensive developments costing £120m to secure."

      Back to reading Trump tweets with you........... SAD!!!

  20. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Tech is not the problem

    Politicians are,

    Management are,

    Teachers are,

    Parents are,

    Society is,

    The kids? They just the confused recipients of all the crap. Sadly, I don't foresee any of that improving in my lifetime.

  21. david willis

    look at the job

    stop looking at tech to fix all the problems. look at the jobs that have to be done, the validly of the jobs, how they link into other jobs. Get rid of the stupid jobs and look at ways to change processes to improve workflow, then look at tech that can support this workflow. SSADM.. bit of an old method I know.. but maybe teachers can make it work?

  22. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Its a bit rich

    complaining about teacher's admin loads when its the fucking politicians who demand that admin load in the first place

    Anyway.. makes no difference.

    The contract will goto crapita, an MP will get a directorship, the product will be late and at 3 times the bid price and still wont work adding more shite to the teacher's workload to cope with

    In fact if we follow the projected graph of adminwork vs teaching for teachers , in about 15 years time , teacher will only be filling out forms and doing admin work

    While min wage classroom assistants try to entertain 40 bored 10 yr olds......

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Its a bit rich

      >In fact if we follow the projected graph of adminwork vs teaching for teachers , in about 15 years time , teacher will only be filling out forms and doing admin work

      A bit like the police then...

  23. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    The reasons for this are varied...

    Most IT people have penises, and in our society anybody with a penis who wants to work around children is a kiddie fiddler?

  24. PhillW

    Underfunding is the biggest problem schools face

    It is and the Govt response is to "ask the tech industry to help", as has been said earlier what that will mean is that the usual suspects will hoover up the cash....... c(r)apita.

    That money will come from the DFE central budget, which will mean less dosh per pupil filtered down to schools.

    I see the problem as:

    Govt say "Raise standards" and instruct ofsted to kick the backside of any school that does not do it.

    Senior leaders in schools brick it and pay consultants to tell them how to ensure ofsted will leave happy.

    Consultants (it may even be singular, as all SLT I have had contact with seem to have all seen the same powerpoint) put in place a whole swathe of 'systems and procedures' that the SLT have no idea how to implement properly, but the just chuck time (and therefore money) at it anyway.

    Teachers run around like blue arsed flies filling in forms, gathering data, testing and re-testing to show that the poor kids make progress every second of every day, with the threat of diciplinary action if they do not.

    The kids are under pressure constantly, from primary school up, this results in more mental health problems.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/14/mental-health-referrals-in-english-schools-rise-sharply-nspcc

    And then on to Uni....

    "The number of students dropping out with mental health problems has more than trebled in recent years, while the number of suicides among full-time students in England and Wales has jumped from 75 in 2007 to 134 in 2015."

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-universities-mental-health-services-student-suicides-nhs-a8348201.html

    Education is and should always be about more that raw exam figures, sadly, that is the sole driver these days.

  25. Yorkshirefoxy

    In the filing cabinet

    When I worked for a charity it was all about outcomes and proving everything. We used to hand our documents in to our managers and we never heard anything back about them. They’re probably in a filing cabinet gathering dust. All this information they gather in education will have the same outcome. It’s just keeping managers and civil servants in a job.

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