More bad news for public sector elearning: ministers are to abandon plans to make e-assessments compulsory.

The online tests were developed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, with the aim of extending the service to more than half-a-million year nine students – aged 13 and 14 – annually by 2008. But following months of development, ministers have decided that a statutory test in IT would not be helpful.

That e-assessments are not being statutorily rolled out after a lot of time, effort and money is depressing enough. But what is perhaps even more discouraging is the failure of the government and its elearning advisers to learn from problems experienced on earlier projects:

In August 2004, the health service’s corporate university NHSU cancelled a major elearning procurement project designed to support online training for many of the NHS’s 1.2 million employees.

Later in the year, Computing revealed that the government’s flagship elearning provider the University for Industry had spent almost £1bn of public money – it is to seek greater investment from the private sector to increase commercial income to £44m a year by 2011.

Online university UKeU’s first courses were delayed until September 2003, and the project attracted just 900 students – falling well short of the 5,600 target.

Finally, an Education and Skills Committee inquiry into the ill-fated £50m UKeU project suggested it did not want to discourage the government from taking risks – particularly with regard to online learning.

When Computing visited Surbiton High School to see the online assessment in action in August 2005, staff and pupils raised a number of concerns, particularly lead-in times before test introduction and student feedback.

But despite the concerns, Surbiton High’s James Garnett said e-assessments provided a unique method for helping pupils to use the right application for a specific task.

Sue Walton, project director for the National Assessment Agency, told Computing that plans are being formulated to make use of the e-assessment technology. Rather than a statutory test in IT skills, teachers will now have the choice to use the e-assessments tools as and when required.

But in the context of the committee report, it seems a shame that a unique opportunity for statutory IT skills testing has been lost. Nothing changes, it would seem – IT remains a second-tier skill. And implementing elearning is an intractable challenge.