Or should the information communication technology that a student can access at school depend upon the entrepreneurial ability of the principal?
When we work across schools in New Zealand we see an enormous variation in the quantity and quality of ICTs that New Zealand students regularly access. It is an inequity that compromises opportunity for e learning. And this variation in quantity and quality of ICTs does not appear to depend upon the decile ranking of the school community.
A school's Decile indicates the extent to which it draws its students from low socio-economic communities. Decile 1 schools are the 10% of schools with the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities. Decile 10 schools are the 10% of schools with the lowest proportion of these students.Decile Information
This disparity between what is available to students in classrooms in schools only a few blocks away from each other is hard to explain ... and puzzling over it means I have been carefully tracking the conversations around me as New Zealand principals talk .... I am interested in their conversation about the costs of resourcing ICTs in their schools and in the many ways in which they raise the funds to pay for them.
To find out the total ICT spend ... the “how much” New Zealand schools spend on ICTs each year is not an easy task –
For example, The New Zealand Herald had to use the power of the Official Information Act to obtain a Ministry report on the costs of running computer networks in school –
And this previously confidential report is three years old ... using financial data on ICTs from 2005 to try and understand what might be happening in schools today is not unlike looking at the price of Ikg of cheese in the supermarket in 2005 and using this data to think about how households are managing their bills in 2008.
The previously confidential MoE report estimated ICT spending in schools in 2005 at 245 million dollars - with schools picking up 61% of this (150 million) Computers eating into school funds The New Zealand Herald Thursday May 29 2008
WHO PAYS
Of schools' estimated ICT (information communication technology) spending in 2005:
* 25%: was from Government "central" spending
* 14%: was the value of teacher time
* 61%: was school spending, including money raised from the community and Government operations grant
SOURCE: Ministry of Education
Given the changing expectations about how best to use ICTs in education over the past three years I can only predict that these figures would be a lot bigger if a similar report was prepared to track school spending on ICTs in 2008.
Perhaps a more intriguing question is how the percentage contributions might have changed in the past three years.
However, the fact that schools are charged with meeting 61% of the costs of ICT resourcing catches my interest tonight.
Sixty one percent is a significant funding responsibility.
It makes me want to ask:
Are there other areas in schools with similar resourcing costs and percentage contributions – or is this unique to ICTs?
What do schools choose to do without (in terms of their Government operations grant spending) to enable them to resource ICTs?
Does a 61% school spend make schools vulnerable to the approaches of people with product to sell and market share to grab?
And all of these questions make me think again about the factors controlling the access students have to ICTs in New Zealand classrooms.
The Ministry’s report figures make it seem that the access to ICTs in New Zealand classrooms relies heavily upon having school leaders drizzled with entrepreneurial charisma ...which if it is true seems kind of unfair for those schools with some of the other kinds of educational leaders ... you know the ones who have expertise in building learning communities.
It also seems out of whack with the MoE’s overall mission of reducing disparity ....
The Ministry of Education’s overall mission is to raise educational achievement and reduce disparity. Our overarching outcome is to build a world-leading education system that equips all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens in the 21st century. Ministry of Education Statement of Intent 2007-2012 p13
Reading press releases related to educational outcomes has taught me that it is smart to translate those absolute numbers (those X.Y millions of dollars) into percentage increase in the school’s operation grant before reacting.... before predicting the impact of the extra funding announced upon student learning outcomes.
For example the much trumpeted $171.6 million dollars for schools turned out to be a mere 5 percent increase in the school’s operations grant ... a figure that will not even cover the increased cleaning charges at Gulf Harbour School, or as was suggested the other day insufficient to cover the cost of providing cheese and crackers for all those home school partnership functions.
Education minister Chris Carter yesterday announced an extra $171.6 million over the next four years, which represents a 5 per cent increase in schools' operations grants. It includes $65.3 million for information and communication technology, or ICT.
But John Petrie, principal of Gulf Harbour School in Whangaparaoa, said the increase would amount to only an extra $25,000 in total for his decile 10 school over the four years.
"It won't even cover the increase in our cleaning costs," Mr Petrie said. $171m cash injection 'slap in face for schools' Thursday May 22, 2008
If as the Minister suggests the problem lies with school’s choosing to buy extras beyond the basics ...
But Education Minister Chris Carter said while all schools were resourced for ICT, some chose to buy extras beyond the basics.
Then (if we are really interested in reducing disparity) it might be helpful for schools if the MoE identified the “basics” and funded them.
"Does a 61% school spend make schools vulnerable to the approaches of people with product to sell and market share to grab?"
There are a lot of poor spending decisions. Word processor and spreadsheet software when Open Office is free. Programming software when Python etc is free. Art software when Blender and Gimp are free.
Interactive whiteboards which entrench talk and chalk teaching.
OLPC laptops or EEEpc's are cheap. Old PC's will do quite well, new high end software is fun but much of the older software is just as good for deep thinking and creating and will run on older pc's.
Posted by: Tony Forster | June 14, 2008 at 12:55 AM
Thanks for identifying this Tony ....
The “spending decisions” made and the ability of schools to “inform” these decisions is worthy of another post ...
When you listen to; the ICT "expert" teachers working with non expert ICT teachers in schools, the independently employed “experts” and the commercially aligned expert representatives employed by schools to run their networks, their SMS and their LMS, ... when you consult the “consultants” within the MoE who advise schools to lease and refer a lot to Equicorp Finance who have the LEADSPACE - Laptops for Principals and STELA & TELA - Laptops for Teachers thing sewn up , when you track the nzcomped list serv conversations or phone the MoE help line .. there are as many different opinions about how to spend the dosh as there are Web2.0 entrepreneurs waiting to be bought out by Google.
Making an informed decision on this 61 percent spend is tough.
Posted by: Artichoke | June 14, 2008 at 06:15 PM
I am watching the debate in the media with great interest. As a haevy user of ICTs in the classroom I can say that you cannot use most technology that seems to be 'cutting edge' with an old computer - the greatest need is a fast internet connection and a computer capable of working fast on the internet. Almost everything else is then free if you use Web 2.0 tools. The slower the computer/connection, the most learning time lost as the children wait to log in/move pages etc.
Posted by: Marnie Thomas | June 15, 2008 at 01:38 PM
I am also enjoying the education talk in the Herald Marnie .... I loved this "Red Tape Smothers Teaching" contribution in yesterday’s Herald
It captures the independent observer’s thoughts about the funding issues in school .... and especially the observations about the negative effects of the increasing amounts of time required to “to do” all the milestone reporting ...
Retired Wellington accountant Bruce Campbell spent six months last year writing an analysis of the funding of Wellington East Girls' College.
Campbell has sat for 18 years on the board of trustees of the school, which, he says, was one of six secondary schools used by the Ministry of Education when calculating initial operating funding model for all secondary schools in 1990.
While he believes devolving decision-making to schools is a success, he says it is undermined by funding that has now reached "alarming proportions".
"Parent funding was minimal in 1989," writes Campbell. "It has only become necessary due to continual and increasing underfunding by governments over the last 18 years."
Hodge claims the paperwork attached to contestable funding for special projects is so arduous it puts him off applying.
"If you then win them, you have to do milestone - or as someone called them millstone - report after milestone report," he says. "To be quite honest, we've given up on it because the cost of being in many of those projects actually outweighs the actual benefit of it. It's frightening."
Posted by: Artichoke | June 15, 2008 at 02:51 PM
Schools having to pick up 61% of the funding burden does not seem sustainable to me. As you have said, the government says it it providing the 'basics' but there are many schools that don't even have a network or a reliable connection to the internet. By adding more funding to operation grants, will this end up being used to ensure equatable access to ICT? I don't think it will necessarily as all schools prioritise differently. It is so true that not all principals are entrepreneurial and they already have so much to do in this age of 'Tomorrow's Schools' that it is surprising that anyone rises to the challenge of finding extra funding at all. The government is abdicating its own responsibilities to schools. If this doesn't change then eventually New Zealand is going to lose its footing on the global stage.
Posted by: Suzie Vesper | July 04, 2008 at 04:46 PM
ha .... 13 months ago and what has changed? Not much really.
We still battle, scrimp and scrape for what we often view as necessities for our learning programmes in schools. There are black holes you have blogged about Artie like "Special Needs", "extra programmes" that will never have enough funding to keep everyone happy.
Increasingly the Trusts etc that we used to apply to also have less and less money to allocate.
A financial crap-detector turned up high is an important part of the job of principalship now. Schools are getting more and more pressures from the edu-snake oil salesmen touting their latest wares. Doing your homework is very important!
Interesting times :-)
Greg
Posted by: Greg Carroll | August 04, 2009 at 07:53 PM
David Slack has an interesting take on this one Greg - I much enjoyed There is no alternative
One by one they appear: the halt, the sick, the lame, and all with the same sad tale: "the Government has cut off our money."
You need money for therapists to treat your special needs children? Sorry we're all out of it.
You need help to get a qualification and move off the benefit? Sorry: we're strapped.
You need to read the rest of the post ...
Would have enjoyed buiding it into http://artichoke.typepad.com/artichoke/2009/08/acting-like-a-kite-witnessing-the-future-and-marshalling-resources.html
Posted by: Artichoke | August 04, 2009 at 08:17 PM