The most crucial factor for ensuring success is good management and leadership, says the report. Those charged with that responsibility in schools are ready, willing and able to take up the challenge. How headteachers and senior management teams manage the introduction of ICT into schools and implement its use across the curriculum was examined by the report. It looked also at how the growing provision of computing facilities in schools can benefit the wider community, in line with the Government s National Grid for Learning. It is not enough simply to provide schools with computers and communications links.
New technology makes new demands of teachers.
They have to be equipped to make effective use of that technology in the classroom and to learn how to harness its potential so that they can open minds and shrink the world. Pat McCarthy, who undertook the research while on a year s secondment to BT through its community partnership programme, was assisted by Ralph Barlow, who teaches mathematics in Bristol, John Hunt, a newly retired headteacher from Nottingham, Neil McDonald, an assistant secondary headteacher in Glasgow and Christopher Sutcliffe, a Cumbrian primary school teacher. The teachers, selected for their experience and expertise in the field of ICT in education, were seconded to BT for a term to carry out research with more than 250 schools throughout England, Scotland and Wales. It is an invaluable checklist against which all national and local initiatives should be measured. The Teacher Training Agency plans to use the findings in its national training programmes for new and serving headteachers.