School ICT and communities crossing the divide

PIN is scaling up an innovative and far-reaching initiative designed to support growing numbers of teachers wishing to address rapidly rising inequalities between ICT 'haves' and 'have nots' by extending access to school technology resources to parents, families and the wider community.
Schools now make up 25% of all contacts to PIN. In response to this, from October 1999, PIN will be trialling 'hands on' ICT parent and family workshop materials for use by schools. The initial focus will be the Internet, with other strands to follow, eg. ICT supporting literacy, numeracy and homework. The materials are being flexibly designed to be used and adapted by schools wishing to extend and equalise computer access within their local communities.
PIN is also commencing a nationally co-ordinated outreach and monitoring programme designed to identify and evaluate current school-based family and community ICT initiatives. The objectives are:

(a) to form an accurate national picture of current good practice,
(b) to publish a varied and extensive set of case studies; and
(c) to produce a broad range of high quality and helpful Guidance for schools.

All this will be linked to a major dissemination strategy which includes the Internet.
PIN's Director, Jacquie Disney says:

Increased Government investment in school technology and training means there is an opportunity for schools to redress the balance by extending support to children and parents without a computer at home. We must neither underestimate the support schools themselves will need in making the transition to community access providers, nor should we think that schools alone are the whole solution. But schools have a key role to play in ensuring that low-income families are not excluded from the fundamental 'life chances' increasingly determined by access to new technologies.

PIN-supported research in July 1999 bears out previous findings that access to home IT is forging a growing divide between middle class and low income households:

• 66% of parents identified education as the main benefit of the Internet, with 64% saying they would like to spend more time using it with their children; however, social and economic factors disadvantage and exclude many families from participating in these opportunities.
• The research identified school as the most likely place children will have access to the Internet. DfEE statistics in August 1999 show a dramatic increase in schools now connected to the Internet: 62% of primary schools and 93% of secondary schools.

PIN will be launching the first phase of this project in January 2000, at the BETT exhibition, 12-15 January at London Olympia.