Learning the lessons

Education, education, education doesn't have quite the ring it used to have. Particularly as it turned out that New Labour's true love was health. But Tony Blair's 1997 election mantra was meant to mark the end of chalk dust and elbow patches and usher in a new era of lifelong learning, with IT as its DNA. Progress has been made.

Schools

Education Secretary Estelle Morris reaffirmed her commitment to technology-centred learning in January. She promised a thorough transformation of school teaching, with office-style classrooms, swipe-cards and broadband access to materials becoming the norm over the next few years.

There was even some money: £100m to provide laptops to 100,000 teachers. About £1bn a year was spent on schools' IT over the last year with 97 per cent hooked up to the internet.

The government's encouragement of private sector involvement is bringing in new revenue. Once, only struggling local authorities desperate for cash sought backing from business. This year, even the successful Surrey County Council has worked with commercial partners.

The government introduced a scheme last year in which schools able to raise £50,000 in sponsorship could get extra money for technology projects.

Most teachers have applauded the government's reforms but there are worries about the future.

The biggest concern for schools is that the money will run out, leaving them with IT that ages rapidly.

Arguments are already beginning to surface about whether the government should really have taken its big spending gamble on education, rather than health.

Adult education

The government has encouraged the creation of a better connected, innovative higher education sector with a much sharper business focus. Links with overseas universities and leading vendors may be controversial but they are undoubtedly making an impact.

The UK's new National Science Centre at the University of Edinburgh, the development of grid computing and the emergence of a powerful Silicon Fen around Cambridge are just a few examples of world-class innovation.

Yet the nation still has a serious skills shortage. It means that at best we have to buy in overseas expertise, and at worst are losing contracts to foreign competitors.

So the government's commendable, and often unsung, championing of lifelong learning has a big role to play. Systems that connect schools, libraries and museums, such as the 'People's Network' in Richmond, have the potential to lead real social change.

A learning culture will be vital to our future economy and the encouragement of home learning is a first step towards remote working, which may one day be the foundation of our society.

It also promises to help tackle one of the biggest problems that IT faces. Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt summed it up in a recent speech: 'How can we tackle a skill shortage if we use only half of the potential workforce?'

The missing half is, of course, women and older workers. Fewer than a quarter of computing graduates are female and research suggests that many IT managers believe 35 to be over the hill when it comes to learning fresh skills.

Training

The fiasco of the government's Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) scheme overshadowed every fine initiative introduced over the last year.

ILAs were the flagship UK skills project and the scheme was touted as a huge success. It was oversubscribed more than twice over, with 2.5 million adults signing up for courses, the majority of them IT-related. This was the scheme that promised to create employable knowledge workers, regardless of age or gender.

But the whole edifice came crashing down last November. Supporters tried to cling to the notion that it had been too successful for its own good, and too big for its management structure. Actually, it was a model of ineptitude and naivety that started with the signing of a contract that didn't tie down the basic security issue.

A 'disaster waiting to happen' was how MPs described the scheme, which ended up being £66.9m overspent. It was absurdly easy for fraudsters to screw the system, particularly as about 60 per cent of the money available for ILAs was unused.

By the time it was closed, the programme had received almost 6,000 complaints alleging that accounts had been emptied. A report from the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee found 'serious failings by the Department for Education and Skills in the preparation and running of the ILA scheme'.

Now the government needs to pick up the pieces and start again. No doubt valuable lessons will have been learned, but the credibility of any similar scheme has been severely damaged.