ICT in schools being outsourced to private firms?
September 15, 2008 by niallsmyth
Information and Communications Technology, a key area integrated across many of the primary curriculum subjects, is being outsourced to a private commercial company “Futurekids” at significant cost to parents in some schools around Ireland.
It has come to the attention of the Campaign for Commercial Free Education that children are being charged in the region of €50 per term in some schools to avail of the computers and technology programmes offered by Futurekids.
The chronic underinvestment in ICT in schools is well documented and shows no sign of changing. In this context one mayI consider Futurekids to be shrewd commercial exploitation of the lack in-service, dedicated software and modern computing infrastructure provided by a government supposedly committed to developing a “knowledge economy”. Parents and teachers appreciate the importance of ICT and so are prepared to pay extra to allow a private company to use school space and time funded by taxpayers to garner profits. The problems with this range from the high cost to parents, to the quality of unqualified “teachers” working with children, to the growing digital divide between schools who employ these “industry experts” and those who limp along with clapped out PC’s and little knowledge of how to use them.
Whatever the quality of the service offer by “Futurekids”, the provision of ‘free primary education’ by the state is clearly undermined by key instructional areas being ‘farmed’ out at a cost to parents who already fund their chidlren’s primary education through taxation.
