CC Image - Maistora Att-NC-ND
On Monday 24th May, it was announced that BECTA is to close; the main victim of the bonfire of the education quangoes. It has elicited a huge range of responses in the community from the hand-wringing to the vindictive. My interest in it all is that my former colleagues working in CLC’s round the country will be affected as BECTA had provided capital funding for many of them for the last 2 years. What happens now for CLC’s remains to be seen.
There have been many great posts on the closure from some bloggers that I really respect, so I wanted to devote some space in my own blog to collating a few of them. If you think there are others I should include please let me know.
15 Comments until now
Well, having read a range of twitters relating to the forthcoming closure of Becta, I feel that it is perhaps time to put Becta’s demise into a wider historical context
As someone who has worked for every English Programme relating to ICT in Education that the UK government has set up between 1972 and present day, I feel I have perhaps a unique insight into the developing role of such bodies and the constraints they work within.
Dan Roberts hinted that perhaps Becta has had its hands tied, I concur with this. Let us not forget that Becta, as a NDPB, is an arm of government, fully funded by government, there to do its bidding. It is a credit to all the thousands of people over the years who have worked for the NDPB’s/programmes responsible for the development of ICT in Education in England, through all their name changes: CET, NCET, NDPCAL, MEP, MESU, NCET, Becta (yes NCET has been established twice), that their collective efforts have over the years resulted in a continual stream of unbiased impartial advice and information to the communities they served.
All these agencies have had to contend with two masters, the government and the communities that they are trying to serve, no easy task. The wealth of innovative ideas and practices their funding has helped bring to fruition have helped UK schools enormously, and is the envy of the international community – it is unbelievable that a compromise in these straightened financial times could not be found, with the best of Becta’s activities continuing. We really are throwing the bath water out with the baby.
In the early 70′s (NDPCAL) the fundamental role of such agencies was to try things out and see if they worked, experimental, innovative, etc. They were allowed a free hand about which pathways they explored, it didn’t matter if you ended up in a blind alley, something had been learnt about a particular use of ICT (or CAL as it was called in those days), and the outcomes both educational and financial were shared with the wider community.
From the 80′s onwards Becta’s predecessors received ever increasing direction from government as to what areas they were being established to investigate. This was also the period of Government introducing ICT targets for schools (NB not the NDPB’s targets), i.e. computer:pupil ratios, broadband width, etc. with ring fenced funding direct to schools to achieve those targets.
NDPB’s had no other option but to ensure that some of their resources were directed at supporting the communities as they struggled to achieve these targets and at the same time continue to develop their ICT use. They also administered a range of one off initiatives, computers for pupils, etc. with little or no money being allocated for longitudinal studies to ascertain the impact.
The wider community’s must bear some of the responsibility for the developing role of NDPB’s and the direction that ICT in education has taken. We meekly sat on the sidelines, or actually joined in by encouraging successive governments to believe that the development areas and their associated targets contained in the plethora of strategies/white papers/guidance, were beneficial to the development of ICT in Education. Some of them obviously were, but there were some which were truly suspect. The number of such documents and their associated targets rose incrementally as more and more money was allocated to ICT in education. This gave an ever increasing role in supporting those initiatives for the NDPB of the day.
For an insight into some of the many documents the government issued relating to ICT in education during this period see http://www.naec.org.uk/events/timeline
Although now retired for the last 2 years, I am still in touch with ex-colleagues, and I know that for many Becta is the starting point when trying to get up to speed on a particular technology, obtaining examples of best practice, seeking evidence of what works and perhaps more importantly why – Becta will be sorely missed and leave a huge gap that can only be provided by a national impartial body. If past history is anything to go by, this government, or the next, will re-establish a new national body in due time. In the meantime my personal thanks go to colleagues at Becta for their past contribution to ICT in Education and best wishes for their individual futures.
Sandra Crapper
Thanks for your thoughts, Sandra.
It will be interesting to see whether something like BECTA does re-emerge in a few years’ time. There was talk a while ago that BECTA might be privatised or told to take charitable status. I don’t know enough about the market to know whether that would have been a viable option but it might have solved (to some extent) the servant-of-two-masters issue you mentioned.
Going by the current government’s deathly silence about ICT in education and it’s fondness for a “push” based curriculum that favours core knowledge rather than knowledge skills and information literacy I think we’re unlikely to see changes any time soon.
Chris
Hi Sandra,
great comment, adds the depth of your experience to my blog overview of Becta 2000/08. I enjoyed working with you on TaLENT in Lewisham in the last Millenium! Everyone I know has commented on how much they benefitted from your wealth of experience.
The baby they are throwing out with the bathwater here is the wealth of experience that came from working in an NDPB serving several masters and still delivering technology solutions, and advice, that enhanced learning.
As ever in the blogosphere there is always someone out there who will write what you think needs saying, and make a far better job of it than you would:
a. This is a brilliant collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking entries, capped off by these comments from the incomparable Sandra Crapper.
b. Having had the privilege of working with Sandra at ILECC between MEP and the End of ILEA I know there is no-one better placed to give this perspective – and the post proves it! One of the giants on whose shoulders I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to stand.
c. The uncomfortable shifting position for Becta of being expected to face two directions at once… but with imposed changes in policy that were not understood in the schools meant that they were always between a rock and a hard place. It is frankly a testament to them and a mark of success that they have had so much support from schools and other colleagues.
d. We should all remember that despite all the criticism the Guardian’s recent poll showed almost 50% identifying them as the most useful education quango!
e. I would echo “Becta will be sorely missed and leave a huge gap that can only be provided by a national impartial body” and “my personal thanks go to colleagues at Becta for their past contribution to ICT in Education and best wishes for their individual futures”
… and thanks to the others listed above for saying so clearly what many of us feel….
Thanks Sandra for a very perceptive insight into the Becta announcement.
He who pays the piper calls the tune and now the piper does not even recognise the instrument or the music!
Nevertheless there are some functions,assets and intellectual property which has to be preserved surely?
The real irony here is that we now have a Department for Education which is bereft of expertise in this area and is deluded in thinking that “schools know best”.
If ever there was a time in the history of Becta(and it’s predecessor organisations) when it is needed by Government it is now!
Thanks for your blog post and your comment, Fred.
Chris
If the range of opinion on Becta’s end goes from glad to sad – I’m definitely at the sad end.
What will happen to all the extraordinarily insightful stuff Becta produced; SRF, ICT Mark, procurement guidance and frameworks, Capita taming, future gazing, maturity models aplenty? This represents a low point in the development of educational technology in the UK.
I should have also added that a lot of Becta’s £65m budget just flowed through the organisation to a large number of others involved in ICT in education including Futurelab,SSAT,several university research depts, community learning centres,LSIS, and alsoa large number of co-funded intitiatives and projects. The ripples will be felt much wider in the ICT community.
Thanks, Bob, Tony and Alex . It’s really frustrating when points like you’ve made here and were expressed in the blog posts get left out of the political discussion. It makes the outcome all the more galling.
I appreciate you leaving your thoughts here.
Chris
Alex, I particularly like your idea of “Capita-taming”. It made me laugh. I wonder what life will be like for the big centralised providers like Capita, Viglen, MS etc now BECTA won’t be around? Will it be a field day for them or will, as some are arguing, allow access to the market for smaller organisations?
I guess the main point is more about what position schools are going to be in.
The issues which confront us in British Education will make the loss of Becta soon seem like a gnat bite. Despite the surprising suddenness, the sadly terminated careers of colleagues and the abrupt time scale the end of Becta was on the cards from the moment the cuts agenda began to emerge two years ago. It was an easy sum, almost immediate revenue savings and no immediate short term impact on schools. The headline schools revenue budget can even be protected. Politically it was a no-brainer.
As Gove proposes to make another 10% of schools independent of local authority control almost immediately we have to envisage a situation in which more and more schools are run by private companies, with the more successful generating a growing proportion of their income from commercial sales and parental subscriptions. The prestigious state schools already do that and have been doing so to the tune of many thousands of pounds for decades.
We already have Harrods and Harvey Nicks education for the rich. I foresee John Lewis and Waitrose and education for the better off; Tescos, Sainsburys and Morrisons education for the middling classes with Asda and LiDL left to provide low cost education for the great unwashed in the urban areas. State funding will reduce until it provides only for those without incomes or with recognised special needs.
To a government faced massive debt and high taxation a shift in this direction makes perfect sense. BSF has shown us the way, because once we begin to move down this road the new debts can be transferred to the private sector companies which own the schools. Financially, this does not eliminate the old debt on the old schools, but it significantly reduces the need for new borrowing which makes the public sector debt manageable. We will lose public sector education like our ancestors lost the common land
Most of the principles for public sector education as we know it were set out in the nineteenth century with a bit of a rationalisation after the 2nd world war. Rather than speculate about how to re-build Becta or rescue local education authorities, we should be turning our thoughts to the forms of education and learning which are going to appear. How are we going to ensure that an enlightened vision for education is preserved when Tesco markets its services as Tesco alumni earn 10 % more than anyone else and education discounts are distributed with Nectar cards
I understand that the Government has inherited a huge budget deficit and that savings have to be made but I really feel that the unfair elimination of BECTA will have a huge impact upon the life chances of our children and their ability to support and develop the economy of this country in what will be a very competitive and technology dependent future.
At a time when schools were beginning to question the Victorian premis on which they were originally built, ie get as many children in one room being quiet and facing the front whilst the all powerful teacher delivers their pearls of wisdom; it seems the political tide is again turning and asking educators to switch their thinking again.
Schools that questioned their Victorian legacy were looking at a variety of structures and strategies to move towards more personalised learning and technology has been a major mover in this shift.
The mobile learning agenda, learning platforms, and other innovative uses of technology promoted by BECTA have supported the move towards a personalised curriculum aided by the parental engagement work BECTA have initiated.
Given that only 30% of schools are currently using technology effectively, that understanding of the available technology will be a critical in its use and creative development in the future, that the engagement of pupils and parents will be affected, resulting in poorer engagement with learning, I believe that we stand to lose more than what is unfortunately termed “a dispensable quango.”
Unfortunately the impact of losing BECTA on all of the above will only be felt when it is too late.
I honestly don’t believe we can afford to lose the expertise of this important teaching and learning body, least of all when we try to recover from a worldwide recession.
[...] of its money, or some of its services not being used by all schools. A good collation of responses here, courtesy of OLDaily. (The British Journal of Education Technology is owned by Becta currently [...]
Thanks for your comment Andrew. Sorry I took so long to approve it – it ended up in my spam queue for some reason.
Chris
Thanks everyone for the insightful comments above and Sandra for the overview.
Perhaps we should use our energies looking at what the next version of BECTA should look like?
I am going to be Dean of Education, Sport and Tourism at the University of Bedfordshire from 1 September and am happy to host a group wanting to brainstorm this. Contact my PA Sarah Blomfield at sarah.blomfield@beds.ac.uk if you are interested. We started of TeacherNet at Bedfordshire in 1975 in the same way as some will remember.
Add your Comment!