ICT and attainment at primary level

During the last six months the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTa) has published two reports (downloadable from http://www.becta.org.uk/) on the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and attainment levels of primary school children in national tests. Together, they constitute a significant contribution to the debate over the place of ICT in our primary schools but they also raise a number of issues regarding the assumptions upon which they are based and the role of teaching staff in the successful exploitation of ICT in the classroom. This article provides a critical analysis of both reports and proposes ways in which the issues raised can be taken forward. Background BECTa’s first study, “Preliminary report for the DfEE on the relationship between ICT and primary school standards”, prompted many questions but offered few insights. Whilst it revealed a statistical correlation between ICT resources and levels of attainment at Key Stage 2, it did not attempt to identify any of the factors which might plausibly account for it. The second study builds on the findings of the first but attempts to make good this explanatory deficiency by looking for what it describes as the causal mechanisms linking the two phenomena. We need therefore to begin with a review of the first study which was based on two data sets drawn from Ofsted inspections carried out during the 1998–99 school year: one centred on inspectors’ assessments of the adequacy of ICT provision and the other centred on Ofsted’s ranking of schools on the basis of their pupils’ scores in national tests at Key Stages 1 and 2. Both sets of data were compiled by Ofsted’s Research, Analysis and International Division and the sample as a whole consisted of the 2500 or so schools that were inspected in that year. In terms of attainment, the tests used at Key Stage 1 were reading, writing and maths and, at Key Stage 2, English, maths and science. Ofsted compared the test scores in 06_Goodison(1) 14/03/2002 1:07 pm Page 201