Leaked reports of the long-awaited overhaul of the primary school curriculum set alarm bells ringing ­ – history and geography lessons were to be scrubbed from timetables and replaced with IT lessons, it was said.

But the details of the recent Rose Review of primary school education show that this is not the case. Although IT is to take a new role at the heart of the curriculum alongside literacy and numeracy, it will be used as a tool in a number of difference subjects just as the other two more traditional core skills are.

This is partly a response to strong evidence from studies of school results showing that the use of IT in maths and English lessons at Key Stage 2 level improved learning rates significantly.

“The approach will promote the learning of literacy, numeracy and IT throughout the curriculum and ensure they are used and applied in dedicated lessons and in context across children’s wider learning,” says the report.

So, for example, children will use word-processing packages in English lessons, build databases of information in science lessons and use design software in art lessons. And in fieldwork, online weather and mapping information will be used in conjunction with locally gathered data to enable children to produce a study that has context.

Using the internet and teaching children to make value judgments on the information they find there will also be a key skill, according to Tony Richardson of Becta, the body that advises the government on technology use in education and contributed heavily to the report.

“They need to learn to discover who has written a web site and discriminate between the reliability of online sources,” he said. “They should also learn about some data protection issues.”

For many schools, particularly the more traditional, the changes will mean a radical overhaul of teaching skills and methods.

“A lot of this goes on already in the top quarter to a third of schools,” said Richardson. “Others are using technology, but in a much more limited way.”

Many schools do not yet have the requisite hardware or teaching in place, and one of the chief recommendations of the review is to improve this situation.

But the report avoids mandating hardware or software to be used for fear of imposing undue constraints on teachers and inhibiting the natural flexibility technology provides. “The issue of which specific technologies to use is an irrelevance,” said Richardson. “The key is teaching people about the relative values of different technology tools and helping them decide which is the best to use in any situation.”

Those schools that do not currently have the necessary hardware are likely to receive it over the next 10 years as part of a £7bn government improvement plan for primary schools launched in 2006 –­ though critics say this is not soon enough as the new curriculum will be put into action by September 2011.

And training teachers to use technology, especially the older generation, is a key issue that needs to be addressed, according to Paul Springford, an officer with Naace, the professional association for those involved in IT education.

“Training for teachers is going to be a huge challenge,” he said. “National teaching agencies are going to have to work closely with the Department for Children, Schools and Families to ensure the right skills are being developed.”