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The latest news and views from the world of ICT and edtech

North East schools urged to act before closure of £150m tech funding programme

Schools across the North East are being urged to finalise approved projects under government tech funding before the current scheme closes, Bdaily News has reported. A total of £150m is available through the Department for Education’s Connect the Classroom scheme. This funding aims to help schools pay for upgrading old networks and investing in new superfast Wi-Fi 6 environments. The move seeks to boost access to improved eLearning and digital resources for thousands of students and teachers. However, the current round of approved projects under wave three will see their funding packages close at the end of February. As a result, dozens of schools could potentially risk being unable to pay suppliers for any work completed after this date even if the work has been previously agreed, warns Gateshead technology specialist Advantex. The Connect the Classroom programme covers 55 Education Investment Areas across the country - regional ‘cold spots’ identified by the government as part of their levelling-up agenda.

Schools hit by cyber-attack and documents leaked

Highly confidential documents from 14 schools have been leaked online by hackers, the BBC has reported. One of these was Pates Grammar School in Gloucestershire, targeted by a hacking group called Vice Society. The documents, seen by the BBC, include children’s SEN information, child passport scans, staff pay scales and contract details, taken in 2021 and 2022. A spokesperson for Pates Grammar School said it took the security of its systems and data extremely seriously. The Vice Society has been behind a string of high-profile attacks on schools across the UK and the USA in recent months. It allegedly stole 500 gigabytes of data from the entire Los Angeles Unified School District, according to technology website Wired; the FBI in America has already released an alert on the group’s activities. When data is stolen, Vice Society makes demands for money before leaking the documents if payment is not made.

How teachers are facing up to ChatGPT

As featured by Sky News, ChatGPT, the online chatbot which can generate realistic responses on a whim, has taken the world by storm with its ability to do everything from solving computer bugs to helping write a Sky News article about itself.

Recently, concerned about cheating students, America’s largest education department banned it. New York City’s teaching authority said that while it could offer ‘quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success.’

Of course, that’s not going to stop pupils using it at home - but could they really use it as a homework shortcut? Sky News asked a secondary school science teacher from Essex, who was not familiar with the bot, to feed ChatGPT a homework question.

Galaxies contain billions of stars. Compare the formation and life cycles of stars with a similar mass to the Sun to stars with a much greater mass than the Sun.

It’s fair to say that ChatGPT let the mask slip almost immediately. Asking ChatGPT to answer the same question ‘to secondary school standard’ prompted another detailed response.

THE TEACHER’S ASSESSMENT?

“Well, this is definitely more detailed than any of my students. It does go beyond what you’d expect for GCSE, so I would be very suspicious if someone submitted it. I would assume that they’d copied and pasted from somewhere.”

So just as copying straight from a more familiar website is going to set alarm bells ringing for teachers, so too would lifting verbatim from ChatGPT. However, pupils are among the most internet-savvy people around, and ChatGPT’s ability to instantly churn out seemingly textbook-level responses will still need to be monitored, teachers say.

Jane Basnett, director of digital learning at Downe House School in Berkshire, told Sky News the chatbot presented schools with some “key decisions” to make. “As with all technology, schools have to teach students how to use it properly,” she said. “So, with ChatGPT, students need to have the knowledge to know whether the work produced is any good, which is why we need to teach students to be discerning.”

Given its rapid emergence, Jane is already exploring how her school’s anti-plagiarism systems will cope with auto-generated essays.

The DfE has now released two sets of digital and technology standards for schools and colleges, with more in the pipeline. I believe these standards are sorely needed and can be used in your organisation to elevate the discussion around technology.

Historically, the education sector has suffered from a few conceptual misunderstandings when thinking about IT and how it supports learning:

1 Schools have underestimated the value technology brings to the business and operations side of an organisation, and how that then empowers teaching and learning.

2 Schools have invested in exciting new technologies without the proper planning, infrastructure and security to enable them to work correctly and safely.

These are multi-variant problems, but it is possible to identify a common theme; too often, IT is not taken seriously by an organisation, and most organisations don’t really know what ‘good’ looks like.

The fact that many schools lack an appreciation of how dramatically technology could assist them is not surprising; budgets are always challenging, time is precious, and the other pressures upon schools are significant. This is also compounded by the fact that the education sector finds it difficult to recruit and retain technical staff with the relevant expertise, as well as the natural doubts that arise when engaging third party suppliers for strategic advice. Are their goals sufficiently aligned with your own?

The DfE’s digital and technology standards go a long way towards addressing these problems. Firstly, they start in the correct place - connectivity, infrastructure and security form the bedrock of any provision of technology in education. It is not advisable to invest significant money into some of the more exciting tech before you’ve got these fundamentals right. To use an analogy from the road network, no matter how fast the race car is, all vehicles travel at the same speed through the traffic jam at rush hour.

The standards are impartial and were developed in consultation with IT professionals from around the education sector, including some ANME members. Each of the standards clearly indicates when you should be meeting them, allowing you to rate your school (or schools if you’re a trust or service provider) to see how you’re doing.

Senior Leadership Impact

These standards are likely to have the most significant impact at senior leadership, executive leadership, and board levels because they allow you to quickly simplify some of the conversations around infrastructure and cyber-security. Certain questions can focus conversations on these critical areas and help to highlight the importance of investing capacity and money in them. Some examples are: can focus conversations on these critical areas and help to highlight the importance of investing capacity and money in them.

● Are we meeting all the standards?

● Which gaps are most concerning to us?

● How will we target investment over the coming years to bridge these gaps?

At the Birmingham Diocesan Multi-Academy Trust we have developed a self-assessment tool that allows us to show our current position against the standards and record progress over time as any resulting actions are completed. This now forms part of our reporting to our board, and supports us in demonstrating the reasoning behind our decisions on cybersecurity, connectivity and infrastructure.

Getting Started

So, what can you do if you’ve not properly looked at the standards yet, or you’re struggling to get the traction that you need in your school?

1 Start with the Cyber-Security Standards. In my opinion, these are the most important as they indicate how well-prepared you are to deal with a cyber-attack and how well-protected you are against some of the current threats. Identify which actions are critical, and resolve those immediately. Look at the RPA cyberprotection requirements and include these in your efforts if you have that cover.

2 Once you’ve done this, start working your way through the other standards, identifying which gaps need addressing in the short term, and making notes on the technical specifications that any new projects should meet.

3 Finally, return to the remaining actions required to meet the Cyber-Security Standards and work your way through these, adapting your plans to pair up with any connectivity and infrastructure projects you identified in step two.

For those schools and trusts that already have existing tools and standards, the DfE standards provide valid confirmation and reinforcement of your actions. For those just starting to think about technology, they give you a way to catch-up much more quickly and with less effort. Enhancing this understanding and knowledge will be a considerable undertaking, but at least the DfE standards give a decent idea of what the underlying infrastructure should look like.