Q&A: Becta's Niel McLean defends free PCs for kids

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The educational technology sector is worth hundreds of millions to the UK - and it's had a recent boost by the start up of a new programme that will see computers and broadband given to students of low-income families.

We spoke with Niel McLean, an executive director at government education body Becta, on the sidelines of tech show BETT this week for his thoughts on the Home Access Programme, gadgets for kids, and open source in schools.

The big news this week is the Home Access Programme, which will see the Government fund free computers and laptops for students from low-income families. While it’s being talked about a lot this week, it was announced years ago and was trialled this year so it feels like it’s been going on a long time.

You’re absolutely right, it’s had a history. It’s actually good, because often when government does things it doesn’t have the time to trial pilot and all those sorts of things, so it’s incredibly reassuring that we did spend the time piloting in Suffolk and Oldham and things like that before going national. We’ve gone national now and we’ve sent out about 20,000 applications in two days. So it’s really started.

For us it’s part of a bigger picture. Basically, one side there’s schools, on the other there’s children and families. And there’s things that connect them. And what we’re trying to do is say if we’ve got technology in the home, and we’ve got the right technology – the learning platform – in the schools. [This] means that this school can extend it’s offer beyond the school day, and you get the right connection between them, because the learning platform allows communication, you get exciting things happening in schools.

It’s part of a big push about how schools use the technology to engage parents, particularly in their kid’s learning [and] how they extend the offer beyond the school day. We’ve seen a bit of that [during] the [recent] snow, where schools have been able to carry on operating even when they’re closed, because they’ve got a learning platform, their learning resources are on there and parents can log in and kids can log in.

It’s part of a bigger picture. It isn’t just putting computers into homes. So when you say the “next step,” for us very much the next stage is making sure we get the maximum benefit out of what’s actually quite a big investment.

It’s about supporting a family to learn with us.

What about training for parents? It’s one thing to get computers into homes, but if the reason parents haven’t bought computers is because they’re scared or intimidated by them, what support will there be for them?

You’re absolutely right. It’s not just financial barriers that prevent people from getting on with technology.

On the "techie-techie" side, that’s a supplier responsibility. That’s part of the deal when you purchase this from the approved suppliers, the suppliers pick up all the “techie-techie” bit.

We’re partnering with people like the UK Online Centres, My Guide, Online Basics, which is a new online course to support basic ICT skills. We've agreed with the suppliers that [on] all the machines that people buy with their grant card, the first thing you hit [on the internet] is a home page, which directs you straight away to these areas of support.

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