The masses of government grants throughout the nineties and noughties have enabled each and every primary school across the UK to purchase ICT equipment they would never before have been able, with most primary schools having computer labs, and interactive whiteboards in each classroom. Guidelines on how to spend this money were/are provided by Becta, who offer support on how ICT should be integrated into their school, giving their company recommendations and service opinions. Although positive, these grants are/were short term and have arguable inflated the ICT marketplace unsustainably, and also influenced schools to purchase masses of ICT equipment, that may or may not be worthwhile or suit future curriculum, with grant and funding deadline it could be argued that schools are forced into rapid purchasing.
The educational technology market stands on a knife edge as the new policies and cuts are introduced by the new coalition government. The market has been riding a wave which New Labours increased educational funding schemes and technology grants created, and its only a matter of time until it crashes on the shore of reality.
Due the uncertain economic direction of the UK, there is no guarantee that the same levels on funding will be available in the future, infact its almost certain that its not. The generally feeling is that the potential lack of ICT funding is obviously going to have a negative impact on children learning, this in fact may not be true. It is widely considered that the pedagogy for teaching/learning with the current ICT set-up has limited development, and that pedagogical methodology stemming from teaching with TV/video, and activities in books is currently applied. Perhaps a time of pedagogical development on the current hardware platform is ahead, which will potentially have greater benefit of educating children than higher and higher technology.
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