The review of the literature started by reading the National Curriculum and two academics who had been suggested to me as good sources. From these and key word searches, I identified other useful documents. It was from these documents that the principal focus questions were identified.

To investigate these questions this investigation has included structured interviews with three ICT heads of departments at different East Midlands' schools. Advice on methodology was taken from Hammersley et al (1998:60) who advises that interviewers should show understanding and empathy with their interviewees. Other skills include

As Hammersley et al (1998) points out people are of infinite depth and the interview can turn into a voyage of discovery. In these interviews, I used a timed schedule to establish a drumbeat to limit the time available for "rambling" and unfocussed communication and to ensure that every supplemental question was addressed.

Sampling of the three subjects was done by opportunity sampling only. Triangulation is recommended by Hammersley to check, during two separate interviews, if a message is being consistently understood. This will be possible by considering the information flow as coming from the centre (i.e. DfEE, QCA & Ofsted) to the Education Community (represented by the respondents). If the information flow is perfect then they should all have an equal understanding of the message from the "centre".

My background is within industry involved with the application of ICT to a high technology engineering firm. I have previously published papers including one on database design (Bamkin and McRae, 1992) and another on the application of artificial intelligence to creating a virtual assistant (Bamkin and Piearcey (1990). The latter subject is of interest here as work has been conducted into automating the curriculum, which would have a number of advantages to unlocking the advantage of ICT to education. My paper on database design is also of interest as this is also included in the National Curriculum as an advanced skill for students. Although there is evidence that this poorly understood. One textbook on the subject (Hardy, 2000: 77) even advises that Microsoft Word once networked can be used as something "close to" a relational database. This illustrates very poor understanding of the theoretical basis for relational databases, which are based on set theory and the tests for whether a programme is a relational database are not in any way arbitrary. When C.J.Date (1990) devised relational programming at IBM he was very concerned that rigorous tests were laid down to establish when a program managed a relational database and when it failed. This textbook is encouraging misunderstanding amongst teachers which undermines their ability to be able to ensure that students understand that the products of Information Technology are not arbitrary. In fact they always fundamentally have a rigorous mathematical basis.

Papert's book, Mindgames (1980), was published a year before IBM's launch of what they reinvented and defined as the personal computer (PC). Unlike many families, we already had a computer for home use, so my now adult children were amongst the first in the UK to be brought up in a home that always had a computer. It was over ten years later that they had even comparable facilities in their school.

During the research for this paper I have discovered the history of education (e.g. Curtis and Boultwood, 1966) and I have begun to understand the differing expectations that people have of ICT particularly as a catalyst to introducing change into education (e.g. Buckingham et al, 2001:24).

These together with my increased understanding of the National Curriculum should serve as an excellent basis for my planned entry into secondary teaching in 2004.

The literature found came from a number of sources

1. Internet searches using combinations of the terms "information technology", "national curriculum", "Perceptions", Opinions, Attitudes, Sanger, Papert
2. Personal book collection including Open University set courses for an M.Ed and for a Software Engineering MSc
3. Searches of www.athens.ac.uk
4. Searches of the Derby University Library and its on-line equivalent.
5. Correspondence (Crawford, 2003)
6. Advise from my tutors.

The National Curriculum has gradually included ICT to an increasing degree. In comparison with other subjects its development has been rapid, but the integration of computers has been more obvious in manufacturing industry.

When the National Curriculum was first published ICT was included as part of the subject of Design and Technology (Ofsted,1998). It was not established as a subject in its own right until 199? and eventually became a core subject in 1999?.

In 1995, ICT was required to be included across the curriculum. Within a short period, ICT had moved from being a new facet to an established subject to become essential to compliance with the core education defined by the National Curriculum.

Even before 1990, the UK Government had recommended technology before in its adoption of the 1966 Newsom Report which had recommended televisions as "necessary equipment of education "(quoted in Curtis and Boultwood:1966) and with the establishment of the UK's first distance learning University in 1964. The role of television, radio and video mirrors the later adoption of ICT into education. This illustrates the time delay from availability of the technology to acceptance and finally to recommendation and requirement. Current Open University students will be aware that although the "University of the Air" was launched with television as the identified enabling technology, but it is no longer included in many courses. This illustrates how, like a chemical catalyst, new technology can be essential as a vehicle for launching new ways of working without being an ingredient of the final product. The idea of ICT as a catalyst for change is returned to in the next section.

The National Curriculum was designed to change how education was delivered and to create a unified approach that could be measured throughout the UK. One of the questions that is looked at in this study is how valuable the National Curriculum is now seen by ICT teachers in transforming education fourteen years after its introduction. ICT was always included in the National Curriculum, but the change management required by the introduction of the National Curriculum does not appear to have realised the potential of ICT as a catalyst to this change.

The National Curriculum is written in a clear and authoritative style on all secondary academic subjects including ICT. Nevertheless, the problem of defining the term "ICT" is a possible illustration of how central government has progressed more rapidly in understanding the importance of incorporating ICT in the National Curriculum. It appears to have seen the importance of ICT as a secondary objective. This problem of defining ICT is addressed in the following section. It is useful, however, to note here, that the rapid growth of the information age was addressed belatedly by central government at the same time as they introduced a requirement for the curriculum to be defined nationally. It will be interesting to look later at any problems this may have introduced.

Measuring educational improvement remains a strong theme of UK education and this is one of the benefits of the National Curriculum and its associated educational framework which includes significant student assessment. Measuring students' educational attainment is an effective means of measuring the effect of educational changes, but it doesn't come without cost. One point of investigation will be to ask practitioners what benefits they could see in not having a national curriculum.

With varying levels of success, researchers (Papert, 1975) have noted the ability of ICT tools to allow students to investigate high level skills whilst ignoring lower level skills. "The computer allows children and teachers to enter successfully areas of activities in which they had previously felt unsure....the poor writer may produce good text and the non-musician can produce identifiable music"(Underwood,1990:192).

ICT is a subject in its own right within the National Curriculum and it is recommended as an enabling technology for education across the curriculum. In the same way there would be a recursive beauty if ICT technology could be used to automate curricula. As ICT is a powerful tool then it is interesting to look at the attempts to automate curricula. Greer and Mandinach (1990) break down curriculum into two distinct levels a generic curriculum and an individualised curriculum. Where the National Curriculum would be an example of the generalised, whereas each student requires an individualised curriculum. They comment on those trying to automate this process. "Actually constructing a comprehensive curriculum planner is extremely difficult and many compromises are made. The apparent naivety of many of the early systems attests to the subtlety and difficulty of the planning task". Within the same book, one author, (Shuell,1990) belatedly finishes a paper with the questions "How can we tell if students are learning anything..." and "What is the role of instructional computing with regard to other forms of instruction, including a live teacher"?

These are key questions that are even more surprising at the end of a paper than at the start. The first question relates to the use of ICT within education and has been a theme of Papert's critics. The examples of automating curricula described appear to be based on the idea that the solution is artificial intelligence and its application in such fields as expert systems. My own experience is that expert systems failed to deliver on the substantial investment made by industry fifteen years ago and that solutions to automating curricula should be aimed at the problems that teachers have of their time being consumed by activities other than teaching. When looking for an analogy of how to approach a problem in the virtual world it is always useful to look for a similar problem that is well understood outside new technologies.

The National Curriculum makes no mention of the need to teach English across the curriculum... Is this because it is not a requirement? This requirement to use English is implicit. The requirement to teach across ICT across the curriculum is mentioned because there is a requirement on the teaching staff who currently do not have the literacy required. This may have what Papert (1993) describes as letteracy without literacy. In fact Ofsted note that staff involved with teaching ICT have a lack of " appropriate qualifications or teaching experience" and "few had convincing strategies for raising standards in ICT or using it to increase achievement across the curriculum" (Ofsted, 2003).

The first principal focus question is suggested here. Do ICT teachers see ICT as unique its cross curricula role or do they also see parallels with other core subjects?

Interestingly, there are moves to reduce the effect of the National Curriculum within secondary schools. The Telegraph (Cole, 2003) recently reported that the requirements of the National Curriculum are to be relaxed, is it possible to find out what advantages ICT teachers foresee as the advantages if this change is allowed? This will be the second principal focus question.

The National Curriculum (DfEE, 1999) notes that "work and other activities are increasingly transformed by access to varied and developing technology". This should be just as true in Education as it is in the work place. The "varied, developing technology" is now available in secondary schools, but it remains to be seen if these have been an agent for change. Within this literature review we will look at ICT as an agent for change, but first we look at what ICT is ... or might be?

As Easingwood and Gamble (2000) note there is a "schizophrenic nature" in IT. ICT is seen as an umbrella term in the same way "as map reading, surveying, statistics and geology might come under the collective title of geography." But where is this classification with ICT? ICT is intended to be used "across the curriculum" (DfEE,1999). However with such a loose definition then using projectors and interactive whiteboards can be seen as "ICT"(Glover and Miller, 2001). This isn't teaching ICT, it is using ICT based tools. Under this definition then most modern freezers and dishwashers would qualify their owners for a computing qualification.

The diagram below can be used to illustrate this ambiguity. Some Ofsted inspectors (Crawford, 2003) agree that the ICT National Curriculum for ICT is, not surprisingly, poorly understood.

An analogy which I use again here is the subject of English. The diagram above could be presented as referring to English or languages in general. It could be used to illustrate some applications of English but to present it as referring to English would be as mistaken as referring to it as describing ICT. Many subjects including the humanities are using English as their lingua franca and where necessary they are correcting spelling and grammar. However they are not teaching English, that is being addressed as a separate subject. The English teacher is not called on to advise humanity teachers on English issues, the humanity teachers are expected to have a degree of literacy that enables them to reinforce the messages of spelling and grammar, but it lies outside their curriculum. English is

1. used as the medium of communication
2. is corrected in other subjects
3. is taught as a separate subject

Hawkey's diagram illustrates in my opinion a populist approach that implies that "ICT" is everywhere in the same way as others may inanely say "Maths is everywhere" or "Everything is Education". What has made ICT relevant in the last fifty years and important in the last twenty is the ability to send and process machine-readable information. The pictures on a cathode ray tube from digital TV or from Excel or Word are not machine readable. In my opinion ICT can only be defined by appreciating the levels of abstraction that deliver this functionality. There was a view that only certain people would ever be able to really exploit computers (Buxton, 1990), but then it was once thought that only some people would ever be able to read. Papert believed that children would enjoy thinking ar a deeper level (1996b), but the work had to be hard (1998).

Fluency with ICT is referred to as the "New Literacies" or, more precisely, as "digital literacy" (Sanger, 2001), and this term highlights the challenge that still remains. Currently all students are expected to be literate as most secondary subjects expect their students to study, learn and be assessed through reading and writing English. It seems obvious that at some time in the future many students will sit exams at a keyboard. If this is the case then we need not to identify the change required and ICT in secondary education should be the heir apparent. Sadly, the definition of the term, ICT, has become ambiguous.

Confusing definitions are available in documents from central government

The first sentence of this quote establishes that the "importance of ICT prepares pupils...". Its not clear yet what ICT is, but mere importance of it is sufficient to "prepare pupils to participate in a rapidly changing world...". Later we find that pupils will "use ICT tools", "employ ICT" and "use ICT" but this does not assist with deciding if their is intended to be any difference in meaning between "ICT" and "ICT tools." This definition of ICT below does not help:

This defines ICT as a "range of tools", which raises the question of what the phrase "ICT tools" from the first quotation is intended to mean. The definition from the QCA below adds an additional interpretation. According to the QCA, "ICT are (sic) a range of facilities used in education" which implies rather than defines that ICT is again about tools. However the QCA go on to equate ICT with what could be called "computer literacy".

The third principal focus question will be to discover if ICT teachers have a common working definition of ICT or are they too confused by the ambiguous and contradictory definitions available?

Easingwood and Gamble (2000) had suggested this might be a problem after giving questionnaires to ICT students at the University of East Anglia. In their study only final year students had identified the "correct" answer as communication. This is useful but imprecise and reflects a general theme of the literature. Communication includes talking, body language and smoke signals. Of these only smoke signals come close to the communication required by computers. Communication by computer involves no loss of information and it is machine-readable. Repeatable machine-readable messages are required. The image you see on a digital television is not machine readable, you need to look at the level of the binary signal to see the type of communication that has created a world where ICT is a relevant subject. It is not obvious whether those writing about ICT in education are not aware of what makes modern communication important or whether they believe that the difference is too difficult to discuss. Even this year a DFES(2003) working group planned "Progress to at least Level 2 in mathematical skills, communication and ICT". If ICT means communication then what is meant by communication and ICT?

(Loveless, 2001), comment that, " In the UK there is much discussion about whether ICT is a subject in its own right". They then argue that "the use of ICT by teachers and learners provide a catalyst for stimulating an evaluation of what is required of 'networked' teachers..." These quotes illustrate how ICT as a subject is used interchangeably with ICT as a synonym for modern computer based technology.

The requirement for computer literacy (Beavis, 1998: 244) must be delivered and our schools are the heir apparent, currently ICT "continues to lag behind others"(Ofsted 2003). Although as Sanger (2001) points out there are alternatives to delivery through the existing educational establishment. He investigates four alternative scenarios for the future of education, firstly as proposed by the University of Michigan and then four of his own devising. He sees only two scenarios that will deliver high digital literacy - neither of which he recommends.

As in many other areas, ICT was heralded as an agent of change "there is a widely held view that microcomputers are providing us with the means for an educational revolution" (Underwood,1990). Many people in industry rightly regard IT equipment as an expense. As Pressman (2000) notes "it makes a lot of jobs easier to do, but many don't need doing". Papert and others heralded computers as an agent of change (1996a) in education, but what appears to have been lacking was a consensus about what this change was intended to be.

Significant changes have taken place in the UK education system over the last twenty years, but little effort seems to have been made to use computers and ICT as the catalyst for radical educational change as it was acknowledged to be (Scrimshaw, 1997).

It is useful to remind ourselves that a catalyst is a substance that we use to encourage a desired chemical reaction between chemical compounds. A catalyst is no use whatsoever unless we know which reaction we desire and we have ensured that the necessary chemicals are available to benefit from this change. Computers and ICT are only a catalyst and if we do not arrange for the correct ingredients to be present then the presence of this catalyst is ironically academic.

Are we using ICT as a catalyst? Loveless (2001) notes that "The mere presence of technology will not be a catalyst for radical change in our education system. It is more likely that it will be used in unexpected ways over a period of trying to make it fit into the old system". If we fail to use technology as a catalyst, and some (Buckingham, 2001:21) would already argue that we have failed, then we can only hope that the "use in unexpected ways" may deliver some benefit. Buckingham puts down the failure to technological emphasis, failure to train teachers, teachers insisting on own professionalism and the accompanying reluctance to allow the curriculum to be dictated from outside..". On the latter point he feels that this dictation came from the commercial interests of television and the publishers of new educational media. This final point is unconvincing and outside the scope of this paper.

"The interactive and visual nature of computers offer the potential for motivating students in new ways, but steps must be taken to capitalise upon that potential: it does not occur automatically" (Shuell, 1990). "The computers could be a catalyst for turning our communities into "learning communities." (Papert, 2001). The Trojan Horse was a catalyst, but as Papert is quoted "I think the technology serves as a Trojan horse all right, but in the real story of the Trojan horse, it wasn't the horse that was effective, it was the soldiers inside the horse. And the technology is only gong to be effective in changing education if you put an army inside it which is determined to make that change once it gets through the barrier." (Schultz, 1999). "Indeed the role I give to the computer is that of a carrier of cultural germs or seeds [ or memes (Dawkins,1989: 192)] whose intellectual products will not need technological support once they take root in an actively growing mind" (Papert,1980).

Heppell (2000) reported on Japan's equivalent group to the UK's Confederation of British Industry called Keiza Dovuka which had looked at the Japanese education industry and its under performing economy..."The post war education system in Japan sought to eliminate deviations in students and deliver an equal, uniform education throughout the land....now however the need is for highly creative and independent individuals. Fostering individuals with these characteristics will require education reform starting from the elementary level and taking at least 10-20 years to be effective".

Heppell also notes than "Japan, being Japan, a start was made right there and then, embracing ICT to help develop, but not provide that creativity". He advises that "if we are to move forward, we need to accept that standards do not require standardisation and inspection teams need to be helped to value creativity above conformity and content. "

We have seen from various sources above that ICT has been heralded as a catalyst for change albeit that ICT was more urgently a requirement to change. Given these views it is useful to look at the advice to ICT heads on how they should manage ICT and the opportunity to change.

Freedman (1999), who is an LEA IT policy advisor, has written a book "Managing ICT" which should be a good source for how such change can be managed in the UK. However, his section on ICT strategy (1999:27) merely records that the strategy should "give the reader a good idea of what you will be spending and doing in the coming period ... and how the spending will enable the aims of the curriculum to be realised". To be fair, Kerry (1999:v) introducing this book outlines the significant changes that "are likely to occur in the early years of the twenty-first century", but the management structure and vision for ensuring that this reengineering (Kerry, 1999: ix) could happen is not apparent. Industrial IT functions would describe this as "travelling hopefully". The third principal focus question for the interviews is "What are the barriers to further improvement in the education of ICT".

The issues relating to ICT are not new and it interesting to look at the expectations that were expected from the subject that is now ambiguously called ICT.

Seymour Papert is widely acknowledged as a visionary of the educational uses of computers, building on his own experiences of working with world class ideologists like Piaget (Papert, 1999a) in Switzerland and his collaboration with Marvin Minsky in California (Papert, 1980). Throughout his career he had tenaciously held to his ideas and his books are still frequently cited. Earlier (1975), he was investigating the effect of modern technology on education and suggested four expectations

These expectations were moved forward in Papert's widely cited book, Mindgames (1980). His approach is this book is to suggest that these advantages are so convincing that the USA should consider buying a computer for every pupil. He predicted that computers would be a catalyst to the education of children. It would allow them to not only think, but also think about thinking. Over 12 years later, Papert (1993) was still noting that education had not changed, at least compared with other professions that century. He argued that nineteenth century time travellers would find different worlds on their arrival in 1993. A surgeon would not recognise his new working environment, however a teacher would be able to start work immediately.

Eventually Papert's ideas concerning investing in hardware were adopted (in part) by politicians in Virginia (Papert and Caperton, 1999) and Maine (King, 2000) (Williams, 2000) under the guidance of it's progenitor.

Even if it were possible to conduct tests that demonstrate incontrovertibly that the pencil is not of benefit to education then only Canute's advisors would consider this worthy of study. I argue here that computers could be a catalyst to change, but more urgently they indicated a requirement to change. Inevitably computers have been introduced into education, after all the only controllable variables were the speed of introduction and the advantages that was planned to exploit from their inclusion in schools. Papert was working in an environment (MIT) where the computer had already arrived. In Mindgames (1980), Papert had already anticipated that cheaper and more powerful machines would replace the personal computers of his day.

Papert made a case for investing further in education by purchasing the recently available personal computers and increasing the quality of education through personalised learning. Although he gives a number of examples in Mindgames he did not make it clear how these expectations could be measured. He did however have a business case for the additional investment, which he argued, could be based on saving the cost of teaching staff.

With exception of Papert most other sources were notable for the absence of any consideration of opportunity cost. Financial estimates that were made were based on simple approaches that assumed that teachers, buildings and training were free and that the budget could be infinitely expanded by promising better quality education. Papert was quite clear that he believed that fewer teachers would be required. Changes in educational approach were suggested without consideration of the cost to benefit ratio of the educational service supplied. Snyder (2001: xxiii) mentioned it only as a consideration whilst Sangar (2001) looked at the larger picture of education within a macro economic model. But his discussion was based on the damage that these forces may inflict on the educational system, rather than how these forces could be manipulated for the general benefit. Sangar seemed more concerned with the future of the educational establishment then explicitly by the future of education.

Papert (1980, 1999b, 2001) recommended that computers should be given to every student. If this was the sole measure of computers being used as a catalyst then the UK should show good evidence of this effect. In the UK, we had a higher ratio of computers per school child than almost any other country; including the US in 1997 (Lovegrove and Wilshire, 1997). Consideration of the effect of further improvement in student to computer ratios was the last principal focus question, which was incorporated into the interviews with ICT heads.

The study is limited to the education of ICT in secondary schools in England covering Key Stages Three, Four and Five of the National Curriculum.

The aims are to investigate:

• current views of the National Curriculum's prescriptive approach. Is there an alternative?
• what ICT teacher's understand by the term "Information and Communications Technology" and compare this with these with definitions made by central government.
• the barriers to, and opportunities for, more substantial progress in ICT education
• whether Papert's proposal of a laptop for every student is recognised by ICT education heads of department as the solution to improving ICT education.

The next set of questions was designed to investigate how these ICT heads saw the benefits of the National Curriculum to ICT and how it was taught across the curriculum. There was substantial agreement concerning the perceived benefits of teaching ICT. In addition, two of the heads referred to ICT as a "core skill" that was required by society. Each was able to easily supply data for the graph below and examples were described concerning the use of ICT across the curriculum. An interesting example was given of using Excel charts to allow Geography students to graph a set of height co-ordinates, which they had extracted from an Ordnance survey map. This allowed the students to easily appreciate how three-dimensional data was included in the map.

What is meant by ICT?

The set of questions designed to investigate the benefits of teaching ICT anticipated the second principal focus question, which asked the heads to define the term "Information and Communication Technology". This was suggested by Easingwood and Gamble's (2001) study at the University of East Anglia and with communication with an Ofsted inspector (Crawford, 2003). Even before two of the heads of ICT were asked about this definition they were volunteering the need to define this term in order that they could address earlier questions. The third head included in her answer "we are trying to define it".

In preparation for later questions on targeting resources the interviewees were asked about what their school could do to improve their education of ICT without additional resources. The answers were in agreement on the need for trained staff. One referred to the value of the "energy and enthusiasm" of teachers and another to the need to employ "young staff". This was a surprising quote given the general emphasis within schools on anti-discriminatory approaches, but obviously anti-ageism had not yet permeated this particular school.

The next question addressed the effect that the National Curriculum was having on the approach they were taking. One school commented that "schools [need] to concentrate more on developing schools as learners rather than the development of their understanding of particular bodies of knowledge", but other heads argued that they did not believe the National Curriculum to be that prescriptive. One answered in a less than confident way that they did not believe the National Curriculum to be prescriptive whilst the other believed that their teaching should be compared with the National Curriculum after it was decided what was best to teach. This person also noted the new National Strategy (DFES, 2002a/b) was now considered to be more important, although the other interviewees failed to mention it.

The next subordinate question then investigated the National Curriculum requirement to teach ICT across the curriculum. "D" noted that teaching of other subjects was assisted by ICT and not vice versa and this agrees in general with Papert's expectations (1975).

The graph above illustrates each interviewee's estimate of how much time a pupil may be aware of "ICT being used across the curriculum". In line with the interviews it can be seen that there is some agreement between the use of ICT and a particular set of subjects. It seems likely that each individual department is using ICT to the level that it is easy rather than to the degree it could be used.

An obvious problem here was the interviewees asked for clarification of the question. In order to do this it was explained that this was use of ICT as seen by the students and not in its use in preparing lessons. It was not addressed here, but the use of ICT in preparation is important point. If ICT is to be used successfully as part of a virtual learning environment (education material on web sites) then it is important that all teaching staff see this as the delivery medium. It is interesting to compare these results with those reported by Beavis (1998:235) in her paper on computer games, culture and the curriculum. She refers to an uncited study that reported that "adolescents were engaged with media for 110 per cent of their day" (More than one media can be used at the same time).

The barriers to improving education were seen as staff training and this was a general point that all? The interviewees referred to within the interviews. The rate of improvement of the students is seen as almost directly related to the rate of improvement of the staff.

When asked about Papert's suggestion (1975) that ICT assists in high learning skills and to be able to think in new ways two of the heads agreed referring to the ability to think in non-linear ways and the ability to independently learn. The third ("D") noted that he believed this to be not true as managers in industry merely have better information that they process in similar ways. My own experience in using ICT in industry led me to different conclusions. If I could use ICT at its best then I could get the machine to make the decision and this would allow me better time to decide when this decision should be made (i.e. higher learning skills).

Based on Papert's proposals a hypothetical scenario was described to the interviewees where a local philanthropist had decided to give every person involved with education locally a personal laptop. The ICT heads gave markedly different reactions. As they answered the subordinate questions it became apparent that the question of additional resource was agreed as beneficial, but there was much disagreement over the level of investment and where it should be applied.

The school that "L" worked in had relatively poor resources and students who came from less expensive homes (Land Registry, 2004). When it was suggested that every child between zero and eighteen years old and every adult in education should be given a laptop then she referred believed that her own current resourcing was adequate. This contradicted her earlier acknowledgement of the need for further resource, but was in total agreement with her later judgement that a modest contribution of thirty thousand pounds by the school was unaffordable. Given that she was hypothetically being offered approximately a million pounds worth of equipment then this illustrated some economic confusion.

"P"s school had a wealthier (Land Registry, 2004) student catchment area and equipment that many schools would envy. "P" was very enthusiastic about the idea of a laptop for everybody and felt that this would at last allow every student to make an intelligent discrimination about when and when not to use a computer.

"D"'s school is probably one of the best resourced ICT schools in the country with a whole school emphasis on ICT from the head down, although their student base is not well advantaged.

"D" has considered whether to give laptops to children and has decided that the security risk of children travelling with expensive equipment would be unacceptable. This may be due to the inner city environment of the school but it also suggests that this school has put some thought into the implications of Papert's proposal (1980). "D" suggests that children do not need a laptop, they just need access to the growth of a school's virtual learning environment on a virtual private network. This does mean that the school needs to ensure that every teacher prepares their material on-line. This would mean that only students who did not have access to the Internet would need additional equipment at home and this did not need to be mobile.

There did seem to be some appreciation that this gift would involve additional costs on the school, but there was no appreciation that this may require a complete rethink of their approach to ICT and only one referred to the additional support costs. Two of the respondents initially suggested that the laptops should be networked. The head of ICT in the best-equipped school had considered this in some depth as their funding situation made this a realistic possibility. Conversely the least well-equipped school's head of ICT had the greatest difficulty in appreciating the potential advantages. This approach was also reflected in their replies to the school making financial contributions towards the cost of this "gift". The better-equipped school could see that the saving would come from staff costs whilst the less equipped school could not envisage how modest savings (30,000 pounds) could be found. The head of ICT in the best-equipped school ("P") suggested that substantial savings, and benefits, could be made by only supplying access to the internet as this would give parents, students and teachers access to the virtual learning environment. This would also avoid children being mugged for their laptop. She suggested that the equipment should be aimed at year six children, as this would reduce the variation in skills in their current secondary intake.

The interviews with ICT heads revealed the approach of the National Curriculum is not being seen as prescriptive. All the ICT heads were involved with making the use of ICT equipment available across the curriculum but as "D" noted "we decide what we need to do and then see how it fits into the National Curriculum". There was evidence that the heads were making "informed judgements about when and where to use ICT" as advised by the DfEE(1999) and about making "preparation for the world". As the National Curriculum defines, they emphasised the idea that students should be able to discern when to use ICT tools. However if we look again at the analogy of English then no similar skills of discernment are expected of students to work out where writing could be viewed as inappropriate. In my opinion, this idea of discernment is a requirement caused by lack of equipment. ICT (and writing) is not always the most efficient method. After all, when the exam is conducted at a keyboard then student who is discerning in their use of ICT will have to discern if the use if the keyboard is appropriate. One of the benefits of ICT is the ability to sent information without loss from one person to the next. One "discerning" person in the chain can remove much of this benefit.

Easingwood and Gamble (2000) had suggested this might be a problem after giving questionnaires to ICT students at the University of East Anglia. They had identified "communication" in their final year as the key point in their definition of ICT. "P" was certain that ICT should be about converting data into information, which could be interpreted as included in the same liberal definition of communication. However this definition of "communication" is not seen as central to other definitions which would in my mind rightly exclude non-machine readable (e.g. talking) and analogue communication (non digital radio).

Generally our three secondary ICT heads of department agree with the view of Ofsted that teacher training is the key, but not as implied by "suitably qualified". The problem of introducing ICT across the curriculum is governed by the training of all teachers; not just those involved with ICT. Another reason given for lack of improvement and as predicted by Papert is the lack of equipment.

I found no evidence that educational planners had been told that there was a vision and strategy for change using ICT as a catalyst. If we ask ICT heads about the effect of introducing a large number of computers then what would be their reaction?

Finally a number of subordinate questions were put to the heads of ICT concerning an analogy based on Papert's proposals to give every person involved in education a networked laptop. Like Sangar (2001) there was not much evidence offered of their appreciation of the additional cost that this equipment would require. Moreover the lack of economic knowledge was illustrated by one head who noted that her school could not find thirty thousand pounds to contribute towards a six figure gift to the school.

The reaction to the Papert's proposal of personal computers was mixed. One head felt this was exactly what was required, another that their was no advantage over their current (meagre?) supply of laptops whilst the third who was initially enthusiastic noted that the main problem would be security. After further thought, two had mentioned there virtual learning environment as the best way of allowing students to access information.

In my opinion, "D"'s school was using the National Curriculum, the National Strategy and the availability of ICT equipment as a catalyst to change. They had decided to become a school that was dedicated to using ICT within education and their value-added results were showing ample evidence that this improvement was taking place across all subjects, but particularly ICT.

The introduction of the National Curriculum has not used computers as a catalyst for change. The introduction acknowledged that within education, ICT was a vehicle for the realisation of a requirement for change. None of the Heads of ICT interviewed felt that the National Curriculum was invaluable and many felt that they could see benefits within their own school if the requirement was removed. Although it was seen as required for other less prepared schools.

It has created confusion by not separating the use of ICT from the education of ICT.

The current lack of definition of ICT is creating confusion and misunderstanding. We can fail to "understand that words, like money, are subject to a fluctuating rate of exchange". ICT has "long since become [an] overvalued currenc[y]." (Adair, 2004:13)

Creativity and adaptability is the requirement Papert proposes. The real barrier is that creativity cannot be measured easily; only conformance to standards by teachers and attainment targets by students. There is evidence that teaching ICT outside of the National Curriculum could lead to improvements. However, the removal of the National Curriculum without further staff development is seen as a mistake for some schools.

If there ever was an advantage to supplying a laptop to every child in education then this opportunity has probably passed. Children need access to each schools virtual learning environment to assist with student's homework and communication with their guardians. As in industry, the main barriers are improving the computer literacy of the workforce (the teachers) so that they illustrate the improvement that ICT can make to productivity by their example. Ofsted is aware of this problem, but initiatives offered so far do not appear to have supplied a nation wide solution. One school proposed that it intended to employ "young staff". Is this the only realistic solution to this problem? Even if "young staff" are employed this will be a poor solution as computing power increases exponentially, whilst the average age of teaching staff can only be exponentially reduced..

In my opinion teachers will use and study ICT only when they realise the advantages. Further work is recommended to see how the introduction of computers can be used to reduce workload on teachers. For example, teachers and students' time is taken up with assessment of educational progress. Using ICT tools to allow assessments to be sent direct from the exam room to an examiner could do some of this. If this allowed teachers more time for preparation then they would be more receptive. It has to be noted that research in this area (Shuell, 1990) does not appear to be directed to this outcome.

One of the important aspects of ICT as defined by central government is the discerning use of computers. This may be counter-productive as most people who do not want to use computers within education may well claim their behaviour as "discerning". One of the real benefits to education can only be achieved once all staff are co-operating with maintaining a virtual learning environment. Beavis (1998: 244) is correct is noting that "what it is to be 'literate' is becoming increasingly complex and elusive".

ICT as a term should be abandoned and replaced with more precise terms. We need to separate out four possible meanings of "ICT"

• the use of ICT as medium for communication
• ICT equipment being used because it is the way we work now
• ICT literacy meaning digital literacy as discussed by Sanger (2001)
• the study of the science of ICT (Computer Science or I.T.).

Definitions of these meanings of ICT can not be done by looking at applications of the technology. As we have noted "Communication" itself is a poor term, even though academics such as Easingwood and Gamble (2000:103) have seen this as the important point. A definition of terms must include such concepts as digital, machine readable and repeatable. It is important that all those involved also understand abstraction so that they can understand what is digital about digital television. For instance a digital TV picture on a cathode ray tube television is not digital.

ICT equipment remains as a potential catalyst for change, the ingredients are still available. Do we know how we want to change education or will we continue to blown by the wind as this new technology becomes even more affordable? The message of ICT has been sent into the teaching community and I suspect it has been over simplified to improve its acceptability and comprehension. The requirements for education to change, may have necessitated this, but there is now an opportunity to incorporate in a redefinition of ICT and the National Curriculum aspects that will make it a catalyst for, and not the substance of, change.

This independent study was conducted for two reasons. The first reason was to gain credit towards a degree, but the secondary reason was to take this opportunity to study the teaching of Information and Communication Technology. As I have recorded, I have had access at home and at my work to the tools of information technology and these enabled me to make a move within my career from Mechanical Engineering to I.T. My own understanding of the subject has grown in line with the development of small microcomputers that could run a simple program in machine code up to systems that were networked internationally and required several layers of abstraction, multiple computers and a large number of complementary programs to operate.

Conducting this study for two reasons has I believe led to some compromise. The evaluation of an independent study centres on how well the study was conducted which must favour a sharply focussed investigation. This has not always agreed with my other ambition for this investigation, which was to understand the education of ICT in general. Hopefully this study has not been too adversely affected by my general curiosity with the subject area.

My primary interest lay in transferring my enthusiasm and understanding of information (and communications) technology and working with children (Doolee, 2002) to teaching teenage students. I knew from my work as a school governor that schools were not well resourced compared to industry. Industry has had to deal with converting its workforce. Surely schools would have minds that are prepared to change? As I have conducted this study it has become apparent that schools have made no more, and probably less, progress in educating their "workforce" concerning information technology. ICT has become a core subject which means that schools are now overwhelmed with teaching ICT literacy across all abilities and interests. As I noted above, education has not used ICT tools as a catalyst for change. The evidence suggests that the educational establishment is still trying to catch up with the requirement to change. Moreover there is evidence of over simplifying the message which may have resulted in some of the ambiguity.

My analogy of comparing ICT to English is interesting here. Basic literacy in English is expected by at least the age of eleven, which is when computer literacy begins to be seriously addressed. In time we are going to have to address digital literacy with the same enthusiasm as our schools currently give to basic numeracy and literacy.

The benefit of Papert's proposal to give every child access to a computer has now passed, but to give every child access to a virtual learning environment via the internet should be a national objective. The business case for this investment could include such worthy ambitions as the UK having a world class workforce, but more measurable benefit could also be achieved by ensuring that all educational material is machine readable. For instance, many science and maths exams could be marked automatically. Students could spend a considerable number of weeks being educated more before they took their final exams. Theoretically science students could have their university place confirmed as they left the exam room.

I have learnt a considerable amount about education and the different approach that is taken to my previous largely scientific and commercial background. The change in education over the last twenty years has been difficult for the teaching profession, even if we leave aside the requirements of the "information age". In retrospect, computers could have been used more as the catalyst for change and less as the requirement to change.

Questions - Note: It was pointed out that the answers to these questions would be published. With the interviewees permission the interviews were taped, but a large note pad was used to check that the interviewee was aware of the structure of their answers. Where possible, answer sheets were used to structure the answers. All of these questions were used, and few prompts were required. All reasonable grounds have been taken to prevent the answers being attributable (Faullkner (1991). I made a general statement about the focus of the research and then share the findings afterwards. This is additionally important, as with a small number of participants where their role and approximate location has to be included then the anonymity is difficult to guarantee. What can and has been done is to withhold their names and refer to all of them when required as "she".

Some measures have been taken in the wording of the questions to allow the teachers to be more open. For instance I ask for examples from a "similar school" rather than their school. From the answers that were supplied it was apparent that many of them realised that "a similar school" included their own school but this did introduce some deniability into any anecdotes that they felt could be identified by third parties.

• This will not take more than one hour
• As the questions are asked I intend to note these on a whiteboard or similar apparatus where we can both see the notes being taken.
• All the answers will not be attributed to you or this school. Although you and your school will be acknowledged subject to your permission.
• You will see a copy of the report before it is published and your comments will be considered and answered.
• The purpose of this research is to understand how ICT is being taught in England, the report is not intended to highlight specific, schools, pupils or staff as poor or brilliant examples.
• There is one question that you may care to have consider before we meet. - Are there examples or anecdotes you can think of that illustrate particularly valuable or pointless ICT education (at any unspecified school).

Could I arrange a follow up interview or a phone call should I need additional explanation of your answers when I come to analyse them? I do not intend to use this, but it may be useful to check where an answer turns out to be significantly ambiguous in relation to preliminary or primary analysis, category and concept foundation or the potential generation of theory (Hammersley 94).

That is the end of the interview. Can I thank you for your co-operation and time. You will remember that you will be sent a copy of my draft report prior to publication. In addition I will email to you a copy of my notes of this meeting and I would obviously appreciate any comments you would like to add. Are there any questions you would like to ask me now or additional points you would like to volunteer or clarify?

As we have discussed, the method of educational cost estimating within the literature is either non-existent or naive within the literature. As we have no plans to arrange lessons in economics then we need to check the assumptions made by the respondents. My working assumptions are presented below.

1000 pupils require 1000 computers at 1000 pounds each - Initial Cost = £1m

Every two years they are replaced at a cost of £1m.

Basic cost is £500K per annum. This is a very simple calculation that ignores training, buildings, maintenance but is in line with the perceived level of economic appreciation.

The savings are also likely to be based on the educational model of assuming that labour costs equal basic salaries and that classrooms are bought outright. This assumption needs to be checked in the interviews.

Interview. Early February with "P" who is the Head of ICT at a large secondary school in a city in the East Midlands.

Time 2 - 3 p.m.

Deleted from here onwards.