ICT in institutional links with home and community
Linking homes and schools with ICT
Primary schools
There is a surprisingly high level of access to ICT outside school, given the socio-economic profiles of the cluster localities. In the 2005 student survey, 89% of Key Stage 2 children said they had home access to ICT, and at least 61% said they had home access to the internet. All but one or two of the children in a sample interviewed had their own computers at home. These had generally not been supplied by the school but had been bought by the children's parents. In one cluster there was still some enthusiasm for taking home laptops from school, even though they were internet-disabled because teachers were anxious both about the importing of viruses and the dangers of pupils getting onto undesirable websites while at home. Generally, pupils are not expected to complete homework by computer and most homework is still handwritten.
Maturity modelling in the summer of 2005 showed that most primary schools are working towards having a website that can at the very least be used to advertise its activities. The emphasis, therefore, is on one-way transfer of information from school to home rather than on interactive communications between students and teacher.
Home internet use was reported by Key Stage 2 children to be lower than at school, possibly influenced by issues of access and parents' concerns over internet safety. Interestingly, home use of all ICT applications was far less than school use for the special school Key Stage 2 pupils, as in the findings from 2004. There remained in 2005 a significant positive correlation between levels of home and school use for some applications in both the special and mainstream Key Stage 2 responses.
Many of the Key Stage 2 children interviewed said that their parents were computer literate -one described his father as a 'computer expert', another that his mum was a 'computer whiz' - and so it was evident that many of them were well supported at home. This was confirmed by the 2005 student survey in which 87% of Key Stage 2 children said that expert help was available at home. This is an increase from 74% in 2004 and 54% in 2003. For some children this help was readily available on a needs basis (61% compared to 53% last year), but for others the expert was usually too busy to help (26% compared to 21% last year). Only six per cent said that there was no one at home who could help (7% in 2004) and a further eight per cent (unchanged from 2004) said that there was no computer at home.
Some pupils did have frustrations in sharing access with other members of the family: one pupil complained in interview that he was unable to get on his home computer because his older brother constantly uses it for IT: "He's got a strong B and he's trying to get an A, so he's always on it, so I don't get to go on it now."
Most of the pupils interviewed used their computers at home regularly and were able to try out other aspects of ICT.
"I've got a computer in my bedroom and I get to use it all the time and I like the CDs Microsoft Media."
"I go on the internet and then I go on games."
"I think the best thing on a computer is MSN."
"I write stories on mine, it isn't connected to the internet."
The 2005 survey of students showed that help at school was unsurprisingly more readily available to Key Stage 2 special school pupils than to the main sample, while help at home was more readily available to the main sample. This reflected the marginally higher home ICT use by mainstream pupils compared to special needs pupils. Generally, Key Stage 2 students' perceptions of the help available to them at school and at home were more positive than in 2004.
In one cluster the children were enthusiastic about home computers supplied by ICT Test Bed but there was evidence of some disappointment with regard to connectivity and hence available resources: "The school gave us like a computer, and then two years later they gave us the internet." One child said:"I always go on because we got a free CD with it, it's called Switch On, it's got all these games with it, I always go on that." Another added that "some parts of that CD don't work" while other children said that they "write stories or make pictures and bring them into school and show the teacher". At the time of the research, connectivity (described by one child as "free for a year") had been or was planned to be made available to families of this age group (Year 5). In practice, there was disparity in that some already had home access to the internet and others still could not get online.
There was awareness by the pupils of security and safety issues. The children spoke about the need for logging on with passwords and being protected from inappropriate messages.
Some primary teachers have given children technologies such as talking books and digital cameras to take home to collect images and make tape recordings, and report that this has a very beneficial impact on increased parental participation in their children's learning. In the same cluster, the college has developed access courses for parents of nursery and primary children and this has acted as a stepping stone for drawing them back into formal education, with the likelihood of benefits for their children.
Parents' perceptions
The return rate for the survey of parents in 2005 was disappointing but around 540 completed questionnaires were received from parents of children attending primary schools (75%). The responses were drawn from parents across each of the primary year groups.
Parents appear to be very satisfied with the computing facilities available at school; 80% of respondents said they had visited the school and seen what is available.
The percentage of ICT Test Bed parents indicating that they have a computer at home has increased steadily over the three years from 79% in 2003, to 85% in 2004 and 92% in 2005. A large number (90%) of parents said they possessed either a desktop or laptop computer and a printer, and at least half of the homes also had internet access. Around half also had a games console. Technologies such as webcams were found less frequently. The location of the facilities in the home was split between public spaces (living room) and more private spaces (a bedroom). Interestingly, there was a definite trend for parents to make more use of computers in the living room, and for children to use computers in bedrooms. While this trend was apparent in 2003, it had become more apparent in 2004 due to the general increase in levels of computer use, and has remained so in 2005.
Parents reported a degree of monitoring of their child's use of the computer at home, with very few parents stating that they did no monitoring. There is an inverse relationship between monitoring and concern over home computer use. Those parents who have chosen to monitor, or be involved in their child's computer use, express few concerns over that computer use. It is the parents who do not monitor, possibly because they lack technical skills, who express concerns about possible negative impacts of technology on their children. There is clearly a need for support of these parents to allay their fears. For those parents that did express some degree of concern, their major worry was over the websites that children were browsing, followed by the amount of time that the children spent using a computer.
Parental knowledge of ICT was reported as mixed, although competency levels have increased this year. Self-reports showed competence varied from very ICT competent parents to those parents who had not used a computer before. Most of the latter said they felt it was important for them to learn. It is interesting to note that qualitative data from teacher interviews suggested that giving primary pupils laptops to take home has led to increased interest by parents in developing their ICT skills.
The most frequent parental uses of computers either at home or in the workplace were reported to be word processing, surfing the internet and emailing. Cost and time were both cited as barriers to internet use. Many parents confirmed that they help their children with ICT; of these, a third said they supported their child in using a range of programs, but - with an interestingly different approach - a third said they encouraged their child to work independently. Making internet access cheaper or free would encourage more parents to use the internet more often, but time is also a major factor.
Parents reported that schools mainly communicated with them by sending letters home with pupils, and that the alternative to this was normally telephoning. Emailing and providing access to progress reports on the web were the least used options, though both of these showed some increase from levels recorded in 2004. However, parents overall seemed satisfied by the schools' efforts to keep them informed.