Technology is central to most people’s work and lives and, for schools, it’s no different. Despite this, the Department of Education failed to provide a regular stream of funding for almost two decades after the launch of IT2000 in 1997. Former principal and early pioneer of educational technology, Robbie O’Leary, famously said that technology in primary schools has been funded almost completely by cake sales and Tesco tokens. This school year, everyone expected their grant to arrive in April and when it didn’t come, people simply believed, like many things, it was delayed and would be paid, “in due course”, as the DoE like to say. However, at the end of May, a principal spotted that the grant had simply disappeared from the schedule of payments. In this episode, I take a look at what the DoE expect schools to do when it comes to technology and why it’s doomed to failure if they aren’t going to fund it.
