Home Access programme goes national

Families will get grants to buy specially configured laptops to help with home learning

This week, the government launched its £300m Home Access programme, which will give free computers to 270,000 low-income households across England over the next two years.

The move is a response to a growing body of research showing that home internet access can significantly improve learning, with evidence suggesting that it does so by an average of two grades at GCSE.

The scheme was first announced by Gordon Brown in 2008, and is part of the government’s efforts to bridge the digital divide, a move it believes will improve IT skills and the economy in the long term.

“The government will enable one million more households to get online, meaning parents can connect with their children’s teachers. It will also help young people with their homework and coursework,” Brown told Labour Party delegates at the time.

Two pilot projects that ended last month in Oldham and Sussex were widely seen as successes.

Over 12,000 grants were issued, more than the 7,500 expected, as take-up rates rocketed to 90 per cent.

Key to the pilots’ success was the way in which they were marketed, according to Nick Shacklock, director of the Home Access scheme.

“We gave grants to allow people to buy selected products for themselves in the normal commercial market – the computer is then considered their own property. Where people are issued products they tend to use them less,” he said.

The scheme was targeted at low-income families, largely those whose children have free school meals, by distributing leaflets at the school gates as well as via teachers and the local media.

The pilots saw families given grants of £600, though this is likely to drop to £528 in the national rollout.

Feedback from teachers and parents was positive, with evidence suggesting that children were spending an extra hour a week learning because of the computers.

The scheme aims to further involve parents in their children’s education, and provides them with attendance records and feedback online. One parent in the pilot got a job as a result of putting his CV online, while another completed a training course online.

The national rollout will differ from the pilots in some respects, largely because of scale, but also because lessons have been learned.

Applications for, and administration of, the scheme will be handled centrally by private-sector supplier Capita, rather than by the local authority call centres used in the pilots.

The grants, which are issued in the form of Barclaycards sent to applicants, will be redeemable only on specific products in specific shops, with all purchases being tracked to ensure the grants are spent in the right way.

After the PCs are issued, the way they are used will be up to individual schools initially. The desktops will provide links to BBC and Channel 4 resources as standard, and at the very least teachers are expected to set homework and make reading lists available online, but Shacklock admits that further use depends on the school.

“It is likely that 20 per cent will do it really well, but some schools are still in denial [over the benefits],” he said.

The next stage is to ensure schools use the resources properly, according to Neil Selwyn, senior lecturer in IT at the Institute of Education.

“You can’t leave them to their own devices completely, or the same old divides appear,” he said.

“In the future, the key will be to get clusters of schools working together in an open source, bottom-up way. Continuing professional development is also important to keep teachers up to date with the technology.”

How schools are gearing up for 21st century learning
Most schools will engage with pupils at home using their learning platforms. Almost all schools now have networked, broadband access that enables pupils and teachers to access information and resources at school. Schools must now extend these networks to home computers to offer access to learning resources, online storage and tools for communication and management, both between school and pupil and between pupil and pupil.

The government’s strategy stipulates that every pupil should have access to a personalised online learning space, and by the end of 2010 every school should have integrated learning and management systems. This includes the ability for staff to create content easily, map lessons and curriculums online, as well as provide parents with access to information such as attendance, timetabling, weather alerts and communication tools such as email, messaging, discussion forums and blogs.