Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

The new Coalition Government is steaming ahead with its Structural Reform Plan for Education being published on 13th July. In which their concept of Free Schools is once again expounded:

” … we will also capitalise on the passion of parents, teachers and charities who want to make a difference by making it easier for them to set up and run their own schools. Hundreds of groups who are determined to help the poorest children do better and want more freedom to allow them to do so have already expressed an interest in starting great new schools and we have invited them to put forward their
plans to set up new Schools.

“Just like the successful charter schools in the US, these schools will have the freedom to innovate, respond directly to parents’ needs and create a new generation of great state schools with small class sizes, high quality teaching and strong discipline.”

So I wondered what sort of submission I would make if I was interested in setting up a Free School (not that I am), and whether there were any models for such a school drawn from the countries Michael Gove likes to quote. Sure enough, in New York is the “Quest to Learn” a school for digital kids. They follow the New York State “Regents Curriculum”, but adopt a technology and games-based approach to delivering it. This is also reflected in the design of the physical building.

This slide show gives a quick overview of the school’s key features:

To further quote from their website:

“Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders. Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.”

So if there is there’s anyone out there thinking of writing a submission and you need some help, I’m your man! Whether it’s quite what Mr Gove has in mind, given his expressed views on the curriculum and actions with regard to ICT in schools, you decide!

Image credit: David Gilmour

Two pieces of good news have came out of Becta, if indirectly, in the last few days. Firstly planned revisions to the Self Review Framework will go ahead. (These will be launched on 18th June together with the transition arrangements.) Then Naace confirmed that its contract to administer the ICT Mark would remain in place until March, although “subject to regular reviews”. The Self Review Framework and the ICT Mark has had real impact in helping schools improve across the board, and clearly Becta have prioritised this aspect of their work in the few months they have left before the cash runs out. It is perhaps the best indication yet that Becta will try and ensure it does not die with the agency. However, I can’t imagine that scarce funding will be spent marketing the SRF and the ICT Mark to schools during these months, and should take-up slacken, it will be difficult to justify its continuance even until March. It will be up to schools to prove they want and value the ICT Mark by continuing to use the framework and applying for the Mark.

Schools already committed to trying for Mark will have until 31 October to apply to be assessed under the old framework, after that date they must be assessment on the revised framework. Let’s hope that this does not bring about a hiatus. The last thing schools want or are likely to do is continue working on something that is going to disappear next March. I’m sure Becta realise this and will be working hard to secure the Mark’s future.

There’s been a few international comments made about the closure of Becta and its implications in the wider context of worldwide educational technology, but the most telling so far is the comments Don Knezek, CEO of ISTE made to eSchool News [registration needed to read the whole article]. Don was over last week and met with some of Becta’s senior staff. It’s worth repeating here:

Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education … said the decision to terminate government funding of Becta might cause other governments across Europe and throughout much of the former British Empire to re-examine how they provide leadership and support to schools for transforming education through technology.

He said that as he continues to travel internationally, the closing of Becta is ‘the ‘shot heard round the world in the ed-tech community.’

‘With the current world economy and the U.K.’s traditional influence on education outside the U.K., I believe it is likely to lead to decreased direct government funding for technology use in schools in many nations,’ Knezek said.

He continued, ‘I am concerned for the schools in the U.K. In situations where there is strong and consistent centralized effort to improve learning with innovative and effective use of technology—Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong—we see not only high levels of adoption of technology, but improved performance on international comparisons of educational achievement and effectiveness as well. The U.K. is facing a more complex landscape now to foster and nurture improved leaning across that nation through innovative and effective uses of technology, and one might reasonably expect slower and less universal progress.’

Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, the professional association in the US whose membership consists mostly of the equivalent of LA ICT consultants and advisers, has a different viewpoint:

Krueger said he doesn’t think the move should be interpreted as a sign that the new British government doesn’t value ICT in education.

‘The jury is still out on that question,’ he said. “Closing of BECTA is specifically a budget-cutting strategy, which the Conservative Party ran on a platform to end ‘quango’ government agencies.’

He also said that while schools in the U.K. might suffer, he’s not convinced it will necessarily discourage other countries from investing in education technology.

“For over 15 years, the U.K. has been a leader in investing in ICT in education. Clearly this is a bump in the road for them, but I think we have to see if it really is a retrenchment of strategy or simply a political decision about one specific agency,” he said.

Image credit: Xmac

There’s been two important meetings in the last three days which are beginning to shape the future of educational ICT in the UK. The first was a Naace members’ focus group that happened on 2nd June at the Naace offices in Nottingham. Planned way before the election Naace wanted to get some of its members together to gather their thoughts on how the association should move forward. When organised little did they know of the radical changes that the new Coalition Government would have already brought in with regard to the role of ICT in schools. José post on that meeting, and others comments on it reflect the broader mood. They are worth reading for context.

The second meeting took place yesterday, when Naace in response to the demise of Becta and lack of Government announcements on educational ICT took the lead in getting together some of the  associations and groups with an interest in the future of educational ICT. The aim of the day to explore commonality and begin to discuss the future landscape and how they collectively might react to it. I was asked to facilitate at that meeting, but can’t report on who said what as it was held under the Chatham House Rule. At the same time, there was an informal twitter stream taking place from outside the room that informed participants inside of the views of members and others not attending. Naace will be publishing a common statement as a result shortly and I don’t want to steal their thunder saying more than that. What I do want to do is outline how my thoughts are beginning to crystalise on this topic. In doing so, I want to point out that, although I have been deeply involved with Naace over the last few years being on its Executive Committee and Chair of its Board, I’m no longer a Trustee or part of the decision making of the association. What I am is a committed member who believes the association has an important role to play in the future.

My blog posts are a testament to my personal trauma over the last two weeks. Like many others in UK educational ICT, I’ve reeled at the both the actions and in-action of the new Government trying to fathom out either the complexity or simplicity of any argument. I was patient at first believing there to be a hiatus, then got angry when that became a vacuum. It was only by hearing others views face-to-face that I could start to express my views on the actions that needed to be taken.

The first thing is to remind myself that the time of big government spending is gone on educational ICT or otherwise. This means that very little will survive these cuts, and that Government will not attempt to preserve the examples of good practice, networks or anything else. The treasure trove that Becta has built up, and more significantly its legacy, will firstly be up to the Trustees of the charity that is Becta, and those that might take on some of those assets. The DfE will show no interest in those assets, or I suspect attempt to influence how they might be preserved. They do not own them, and have no responsibility for them, this is solely on the Trustees. Incidently, “all charity trustees have a fundamental duty to protect the assets of their charity and to apply them properly for the objects of the charity”, (Charity Commission) when a charity is wound up or dissolved. So I don’t expect a ’sell off’ of those assets which might be the case if Becta needed to raise capital to meet financial obligations.

The second thing is to accept that it is very likely that the present administration is in for five years, or at least for long enough to see the end of Becta ie. this financial year, and that even in this short timescale the educational landscape will have changed. The Government has prioritised that change because they want to ensure it has a chance of surviving.

Given this situation that leaves the educational ICT community to accept the new orthodoxy and move towards the concept of the Big Society in pragmatic if not necessarily philosophical terms. If we believe that ICT is fundamental to 21st century education we need to get on with it. As Steve Heppell has said, “We are where we are” and we now have a world of “helping people to help each other“, and it is here that I believe Naace has a pivotal role to play as the only association that has broad enough objectives to encompass that vision.

Naace though will need the support and commitment of all its members to achieve this task. Its Board can provide a lead and vision, but all members can and should take an active leadership role in their school and local educational community to ensure its objectives are both understood and promoted. This means recruiting more members, raising finance and volunteering time [Naace login required], effort and resources to the cause.

Image credit: Josie Fraser

Update: Mid-day 8th June, 70 days volunteered by Naace members so far.

Martin Littler in a recent article points out that, “Dead men don’t fall through open windows. Becta did need a kick.” In it he recalls how thirty years ago Becta’s predecessor(s):

” … was responsible for the lively lead which the UK quickly established in all aspects of educational technology. It was tiny then but employed very talented people (as it still does). They took risks and organised national conferences, produced good software and advice and set up small but effective outfits …”

he goes on to say that sadly, “Becta had moved from energetic to sclerotic to necrotic” as they were required to take on more and more, existing “to shield Government from responsibility for decisions”.

From my point of view, it seems particularly sad. In 1997, the argument for ICT in teaching and learning had been given a real chance with the incoming Government. All that was needed was evidence that ICT produced a better education system and for ‘us’ to transform teaching and learning as a result. This was the role of Becta in 1998. Despite Martin’s enthusiasm for those early years, they were still tough; as many of us will remember. There was no wholesale commitment to ensuring children’s entitlement to ICT and access to computer technology. We were still evangelists, rather than priests. Critics of ICT in education would say the research evidence for impact that Becta collected did not prove the case, and that all the money spent on ICT, and in particular hardware, has been a waste of money, but those of us who have been supporting schools and teachers know that putting hardware in place was the easy part. Changing and transforming the culture of schools and teachers was the much bigger mountain to climb. What inhibited change in the 1980s and 1990s was the lack of physical resource, and putting that right needed to happen before wholesale transformation could take place. As a result, the attitude towards, and acceptance of, ICT for teaching and learning by teachers is so much more advanced in 2010 that it was in 1997, and only now could a serious attempt be made at changing the educational landscape forever. At the same time, the educational ICT community, including Becta, allowed itself to be lulled into what is proving to be a false sense of security. Being in the ascendancy meant that the arguments for ICT need not be made so forcibly in some quarters. I felt this most acutely when Chair on Naace, as many LA consultants became confused as to why the association was of benefit to them. They argued that there was no need to lobby for ICT, and Becta in particular gave them all the professional development they needed to do their job. (How short-sighted this might prove to be.)

Rather than dead men being kicked out of windows, it seems like a defenestration of educational ICT is taking place in which the option of reform (and consequences) has not been considered or the motives for doing so explained. One hopes the landing is not fatal or ignominious.

Image: Matthäus Merian’s woodcut of the Defenestration of Prague 1618
Note: The Defenestration of Prague was a major cause of the Thirty Years’ War. At Prague Castle, two of the Emperors’ Regents were thrown out the third floor window along with the Regents’ secretary, Philip Fabricius. They fell 30 metres and landed on a large pile of manure in a dry moat and survived. Philip Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title von Hohenfall (lit. meaning “of Highfall”).

In all the furore over the closure of Becta, there has been little said that it is not the Government that can close this non-departmental public body. Like so many of our educational institutions, Becta is in fact a company limited by guarantee with charitable status. This charity like all others, it governed by Charity Commission rules and the Goverment cannot close it, all they can do is withdraw funds. All the money people have been talking about has been provided by Governments since 1987 (Becta’s charity name was previously Microelectronics Education Support Unit and National Council For Educational Technology) to fulfil its charitable objectives which are:

To advance the education and training of the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by:

1. supporting encouraging promoting evaluating developing applying and maintaining the use of systems techniques aids discoveries and inventions conducive to the advancement of education and training including but without limitation microelectronic systems microcomputers and electronic equipment and other aspects of information technology in all spheres relevant to the needs of education and training of all kinds; and
2. supporting encouraging and promoting research and innovation and good practice in educational technology. The useful results of such research shall be disseminated.

It does this by:

• Making grants to organisations
• Providing advocacy / advice / information
• Sponsoring or undertaking research

Losing its major source of funding, the trustees of the charity need to determine whether it remains financially viable or not. Their first responsibility is therefore to examine whether they can continue their charitable work given their loss of revenue, and crucially perhaps whether finance can be sought from elsewhere to do so. This is how Becta could survive, if the trustees believe and demonstrate to the Charity Commission that they can get the finance to continue to meet their objectives. The first decision of the Becta Board will be this one, and if they deem they can, then will need to draw up a recovery plan, re-visiting the core objectives of the charity and revising how they could meet those objectives and then considering a financial plan as to how and where they might get the finance in place to achieve those objectives.

It’s my view that survival should be a serious option for the Board of Becta. They have some “crown jewels” and it would be quite possible to raise finance in a variety of ways to maintain these within their charitable status. The ICT Mark, the Excellence Awards and their sponsorship and dissemination of research are among those jewels. Some already attract levels of sponsorship in some ways. For example, how much sponsorship money would need to be raised to run the Excellence Awards, and which commercial sponsors might be queuing up to sponsor them? I’m sure they’d be able to come up with a list. Commercial sponsorship is not the only business model of course, subscriptions might be a way forward. Becta’s research activity is a highly prized export commodity which other nations have drawn on in the past.

Unfortunately though there are other charities in all these spaces, and Becta’s ex-government body status would mean it would be really difficult to carve out an ‘independent’ niché for itself. None of us will be privy to these discussions, but neither should it be assumed that Becta is dead and buried.

Image credit: Claire Heavenly

At the general election, the Labour MP who has represented Waveney since 1997 lost his seat by less than 600 votes. Bob Blizzard had done a great deal for the town of Lowestoft in those thirteen years. I admit I’m biased, having taught with Bob in a local school I knew him well and know he believed in the capacity of local people to get things done in any circumstances. He certainly worked hard for the area during his tenure. Then on Monday, the educational ICT world was hit with the announcement of the closure of Becta, the agency responsible for guidance and strategic direction for ICT in schools and colleges. What struck me, was not that Becta was being closed to be honest, after all, we’ve seen this sort of thing before; but that there was no plan to move some of their remit to other bodies. In a puff of smoke the political consensus that has existed since Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” speech in 1963 has disappeared. In 1964, in his first term as Prime Minister he created the Ministry of Technology to support the moderisation of industry, but it was not until 1981 and the appointment of Kenneth Baker as Minister for Information Technology, under the Conservative administration, did the importance of pushing computers into schools as part of this consensus arise. We should not forget that it was Kenneth Baker, that introduced the first scheme to put micros into schools long before he became Secretary of State for Education and Science, and it was TVEI, funded by the Department of Trade and Industry that put the first significant number of computers in secondary schools from 1982. At almost the same time (1980), the Conservatives took up an idea original conceived by the Labour government of the Microelectronics Education Programme adminstered by the Council for Educational Technology, the forerunner of Becta, and Governments have  endeavoured ever since to support and maintain a strategic direction for ICT in schools with the increasing belief that it was the ‘third literacy’ necessary for a competing in the globalised, digital economy. It was perhaps significant that little has been said about this in the past few years by the opposition and in the run-up to the election. Indeed their actions speak louder that silence, as the relegate technology and possibly our children’s futures.

I might of course be totally wrong, it’s just that they have not got around to telling us the big plan for the future? With this in mind, I thought I’d write to my MP, perhaps not with the history lesson, but to ask some key questions that don’t seem to have been answered yet, unless I’ve missed them:

26th May 2010

Peter Aldous MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Peter,

May I first offer my best wishes on your election to Parliament for Waveney, I am sure that you are proud to represent the constituency. As an educational professional of some thirty years, I am writing in the hope that you can secure some clarification from the present administration with regard to its plans to support the role of Information and Communication Technology in our schools and colleges. I should therefore like you to ask the following questions on my behalf:

1. On Monday last, the Government announced the closure of Becta, the non-departmental public body responsible for providing the strategic direction of ICT in schools and further education without announcing how this strategic direction might be given in the future. Since microcomputers became available around 1980, successive governments have seen the development of first information technology and then information and communications technology as key to the growth of the UK economy in an increasingly digital world. Through successive bodies they have sought to provide a strategic direction to school s and colleges so that our young people can compete effectively with other countries as jobs have been created globally by the new technology. As such the UK has led the world in providing a 21st century vision by integrating ICT into education. How does the present Government intend to provide schools and colleges with a strategic lead to ensure that our young people continue to gain the necessary ICT skills as well as literacy and numeracy?
2. Recent evidence suggests that students with access to a computer at home can raise their GCSE grade from a D to a B. Many children in our constituency benefited early from Suffolk being in the Home Access pilot programme run by Becta. How will the present Government provide support to children in low income families who are becoming increasing disadvantaged by the digital divide?
3. The ICT Mark provides schools with a clear framework and incentive to improve standards in learning and teaching through a process of self-review. Does the present Government intend to maintain the ICT Mark and if so how will it do so?

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Gareth Davies

It’s difficult to quantify the last thirteen years of educational ICT policy. Children born in 1997, and now in Year 9, will certainly not recognise a landscape in which one computer in the library, with dial-up access to the internet, was cutting edge, or computer rooms with RISC PCs, a 10Mb network and maybe a CD ROM server in the cupboard. It’s doubtful too whether many teachers will remember a time when mobile phones did not need to be banned because children did not have them, when ICT was called IT, and nobody knew whether it benefited learning because little evidence had been collected on its impact. Some teachers in our schools will remember how it started though, with the infamous NOF training scheme, in which they felt threatened and deskilled because positive and supportive messages were simplified: non-compulsory became compulsory, and no-one understood the concept of self-review. Despite great resistance by some, NOF recognised that use of ICT was part of what was expected of a teacher, a fact that few would openly dispute today. NOF was also highly experimental as far as policy was concerned, for example, using lottery money to fund the training of a public sector workforce, or involving the private sector so intimately with the teachers. In the end, the Government preferred to fall back on traditional funding methods and bolster and support Local Authority services which they felt they had more control over.

Then there was the British educational software industry back in 1997. Having gone through almost two decades of growth fuelled by government initiative after initiative. Recognised as innovative, it struggled to win the argument for unique tools that supported learning and teaching, and lost it with a move towards the easier production of content based on a narrow UK-centric curriculum that had little relevance to the global market that the internet was creating. Unfortunately, Curriculum Online was not build around the opportunity this presented, but was a legal reaction to the BBC trying to carve its own global niche in the online world. Everyone lost, and as a result, we see no educational player in the web 2.0 world emanating from the UK. Although some have great products, it can be argued that we are no longer leading in the commercial or open source educational world. Perhaps this was inevitable looking back.

Most of that first decade was dominated by initiative after initiative, a strategy that was very familiar under the eighteen years of Conservative administration it followed. From Computers for Teachers, through Charles Clarke’s interactive whiteboard scheme to Home Access, these initiatives were effectively all hardware driven. There were moments when we surfaced for air with the SLICT (Strategic Leadership of ICT) and towards the end the focus was beginning to change under the Next Generation Learning banner. But in our heart of hearts, we knew it would take a long to change the culture of education to embrace and embed a 21st century philosophy of learning. I remember listening to Andrew Adonis almost exactly three years ago at an education conference relating the story of development of the Labour Party’s pre-1997 education strategy. A twenty year project to change a moribund and stagnant system that was letting down our country’s young people. At that same conference last week, I heard the “Head of Digital Strategy” at a major public school in this country, tell the audience that, whereby they needed to embrace new technologies, beyond that there was little need to consider ICT’s role apart from providing access to content. The students could do the rest. Let’s hope that attitudes towards learning and teaching in the new administration remain wider than this, but I fear they might not be.

So the last thirteen years have taken us a long way, but another seven might have been needed to complete the job. The greatest regret might be, that despite all that money, and more importantly effort, there is still a nagging doubt about the place and impact of ICT. For the first time since computers have arrived in schools, we may actually see a lack of political consensus on ICT’s importance. The marked silence on ICT in education from the Conservative Party in the last few years does not bode well. Unfortunately, I fear the argument has not been won.

Image credit: Kathy Cassidy

This weekend I heard Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University for the first time. Professor Mitra had what he modestly called, “his 15 minutes of fame” last year when Vikas Swarup, author of the novel on which the award-winning ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ film is based, cited Prof. Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” research as one of the inspirations for his book. In 1999 Prof. Mitara wondered what would happen if children in the slums of Delhi had informal access to a computer and the internet. He provided a  ‘hole in the wall’ three feet up from the ground with a computer screen and trackpad that could be used by children and filmed what happened. Within eight hours children were teaching each other how to navigate the web. He soon discovered that one boy asking a passer by, who happened to be an office worker, how the machine worked had initiated the learning. For this reason his next experiment was in a rural village where he could be sure that no such intervention was possible. His research showed that children could not only teach themselves to use a computer and become ‘computer literate’ within a short time and without any sort of adult intervention, but they would also teach themselves English in order to access the information the web contained. Repeating this experiment over and over again he discovered that children created self-organising systems invariably structured by the girls in the community, in which they enabled shared access to the resource. He calls these SOLES (Self Organized Learning Environments).

His later research looked at what further advances could be made with some mediated intervention, not be ‘expert teachers’ but by adults asking questions and encouraging children to find out more (rather like a grandmother might do). This research suggested that children could teach themselves the most complex of subjects, and could even match test scores of children taught in the traditional way in a school environment. He called these SOMES (Self Organized Mediated Environments) and used his 15 minutes to fame to recruit mostly retired adults in the UK to give one hour a week to act as ‘grandmothers’ to children in rural areas of India, Africa and Cambodia. This ‘field force’ interact with children through fifteen SOLES using Skype and a webcam. Their job is to ask questions, read stories in English and encourage the children. The latest version of the experiment involves using a data projector to place an image of the adult ‘life size’ into the village.

Sugata explained that there are 1 billion children without access to a good teacher, and that $30 spent over three years on a child’s education in these situations enabled irreversible changes in their life chances. A SOME station cost 3 cents per child per day to install and maintain and that 400 million might be needed, together with 40 million adults mediating for one hour a week. He believed this was entirely affordable and possible given the commitment and goodwill of those that wish to achieve it. He certainly convinced me!

Professor Mitar’s wiki on the projects can be found here http://solesandsomes.wikispaces.com/ and below is an interesting first session with Skype using Jolly Phonics with children in a school in Hyderabad in Southern India

First Skype Interaction - 5 August 2008

Vital, the ICT CPD service launched at BETT 2010, began its first set of online moderated courses this week. Take-up however has apparently been disappointing. It’s early days, of course, and I believe that the service is a significant step in ICT CPD provision and needs time to become known and develop its clientele. It’s worth reflecting on the issues such as service faces.

1) The value message and the budget holder

One can immediately make a comparison with Naace’s ICTCPD4Free site, also launched at BETT, which has had over 1000 sign-ups. This does not necessarily mean true engagement with the courses and such a statistic should be tempered with the fact that to look at most courses you have to enrol. To simply look at the content of the VITAL courses you also have to enrol, but going further and signing-up to a moderated course requires both a cost and clear time commitment from the teacher. This is about getting the ‘value for money’ message across to InSET budget holders in schools. A strategy that targets not only teachers who want or need to do a course, but also helps them get the commitment from the InSET budget holder is crucial. Cost is not the barrier to overcome, getting the value message across is.

2) What’s in it for me

Sorting out the accreditation is another key value proposition. Value for the teacher, as they will spend their own money on professional development, and, after all £50 is a concert, football match or theatre seat these days, can only be overcome if it’s clear what the benefits to the individual are. Many teachers are motivated by accreditation, status or whatever, and will not only pay, but also work hard to achieve those things if the incentive is great enough.

3) Marketing to schools and teachers does not bring instant success

Education is notoriously difficult to market to, and the choice is often to either spend a lot of money, or settle for incremental steps. There is a huge amount of ‘noise’ in the education market place, and to get noticed you have to accept it’s going to take a long time.

4) Influencing the key influencers

VITAL has a paradox, which I clearly saw in Vital’s Director Peter Twining’s session at the Naace Conference this week. LA consultants and advisers are key influencers that need to be on board, yet this is the very time their jobs are under threat. Many have been told that to survive they have to bring in revenue, this makes them very wary, if not hostile, to what they see as potential competition. Peter did a brilliant job at explaining the different and inclusive models of participation to allay the competition fear and explain the opportunities available. At the same time, to take up these opportunities is not a risk-free option, and many have not started to think what those risks might be. The interesting thing is, that until a market of CPD options using the VITAL materials is available, VITAL courses may continue to be perceived as more of a threat than an opportunity. A “Catch 22″ situation. It might be that VITAL needs to ‘create’ this market, rather than simply present it as an opportunity by ‘investing’ in a partner that provide a model that others can follow.

5) Hiatus and inertia in a time of political change:

Let’s face it, launching anything when times are uncertain is extremely difficult. Schools and teachers don’t know what the next few years might be like, that leads to playing save and a ‘wait and see’ attitude. This shows itself in financial spending, but more critically in their wish to invest in change. All CPD (that has value) is about investing in personal change. This in itself is difficult enough, and of even higher risk when the future direction of education is uncertain.

Image credit: James Carter