Government education measures "still too predicated on volunteerism" says SET's Bob Harrison

CAS, Master Teachers and Barefoot Computing Initiative would benefit from greater spend, says Harrison

Government-funded ICT teaching recruitment schemes are still "predicated on volunteerism" and could do with a larger cash injection, founder of primary and secondary education consultancy SET Bob Harrison has told Computing.

Speaking to Computing at London's BETT 2014 ICT education conference, Harrison said he believed that schemes such as the British Computer Society's Computing at School, Master Teachers and Barefoot Computing Initiative could benefit from more hands-on government support, and extra funding.

"Why is it that the maths national curriculum reform people have been given £12m, and ICT hasn't?" asked Bob, referring to the £25,000 'golden handshake' now being offered to ICT graduates who wish to convert into teaching.

If you have 50 bursaries at £25K, and they're only recruiting them now... that's not going to hit the classrooms till 2015. "Nevertheless," said Harrison, "another £1m for the Barefoot Computing initiative is positive enough, although my anxiety is that it's predicated on volunteerism, and that goes for the whole thing."

Launched in December 2013 by the BCS, Barefoot Computing focuses on equipping primary school teachers with "the basic knowledge and confidence needed to begin the journey towards becoming an excellent computing teacher".

It relies on volunteers - dubbed "Barefoot Geeks" - to run one-day workshops in primary schools, in a national run that will last 15 months.

While Harrison - who is a leading light in Toshiba's technology education arm and has also been involved with consultation on the new ICT curriculum - is positive about the BCS' efforts with the funding they have, he is less sure about the government's commitment to the policies organisations like the BCS are to carry out, suggesting the government may "give all the responsibility to the BCS and everyone else, and if it all works well, they'll say their plan worked brilliantly."

"But if it all messes up, it'll be the BCS's fault," he told Computing.

Harrison was also critical of progress in the BCS' Master Teachers scheme which, despite being namechecked by education minister Michael Gove in his Wednesday BETT keynote for the planned provision of 400 primary and secondary teachers trained to deliver training to other educators, still numbers, at time of writing, under 120.

Nevertheless, Harrison said his general assessment of the situation, and how government funding is connecting with government policy is "much better than last time [I talked to Computing]."

In early 2013, at last year's BETT conference, Harrison explained how he believed much reform advice was being drawn from self-interested private sector stakeholders such as Google and Microsoft, who wanted to alter the system to sell more hardware and software to educators.

"I still think I was right, even though I got some stick about it," said Harrison.

Government education measures "still too predicated on volunteerism" says SET's Bob Harrison

CAS, Master Teachers and Barefoot Computing Initiative would benefit from greater spend, says Harrison

But something Harrison is still wary of is Michael Gove's rhetoric:

"He started doing it again yesterday - started slagging off [the previous] ICT [curriculum], but then who's going go be implementing the new curriculum? ICT teachers. So if there's one thing I've learned about leadership in 40 years of education, it's not a good idea, if you want people to implement the change, to rubbish what they've been doing in the past."

Harrison described how, from his VIP seat in Gove's cadre of international educational dignatries and party supporters, he could see "teachers walking out" of the keynote.

"I think one of the things he needs to learn is when he's speaking, he's speaking to two audiences - he's speaking to the audience he has in front of him, which is learning technologists or educationalists, but he's also speaking to the editor of the Daily Mail, because he's thinking; 'How will this appeal to the Conservative core voter'?

"He got the words in the right order but I'm not convinced by the meaning behind them," said Harrison.

Like ex-NAACE chair Miles Berry, who Computing spoke to on Wednesday, Harrison believes the Computing degree should live up to its name, and educators should remember to look beyond coding and into the insertion of IT into other areas of school study.

"At the moment, the blinkers are on, and everyone is thinking about computer science. But at our peril we ignore the other elements of IT and digital literacy, because not every kid is going to turn into Alan Turing, are they? And we don't want that. We need a range of skills across industries," said Harrison.

According to Harrison, the low-priced Raspberry Pi device, which sold its two millionth unit in November 2013 and was designed for the education market, was mostly bought by middle aged men, and is emblematic of a coding fixation as the teaching industry gears up to September 2014's new curriculum rollout.

ICT education is no longer just "a place for the geeks", he concluded.