Is the experience of the US programme, No Child Left Behind, an indicator of problems facing educational establishments in complying with the 2004 Children Act?
Education, like other professions, is moving rapidly towards evidence-based policy and decision-making at all levels. Under TCA this data will have to link to information on 11m young people that will be held in a series of interlinked databases (up to 150). The aim is to improve the delivery of frontline children’s services by improving the information and links between the educational, health, welfare, criminal justice and social welfare organisations.
Ensuring schools and their data systems are compatible, let alone making the wider £244m system work, has many in and outside government worried. Even BECTA are struggling to make sense of this enormous target with Lord Adonis commissioning them, ‘to work with the DfES and private sector suppliers to take forward these proposals’. To date all schools can get directly from BECTA is a 12-month old report called School Management Systems and Their Value For Money.
Perhaps BECTA and those involved in TCA should look at similar problems that have occurred in the US as states try to comply with President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative. NCLB is primarily about raising educational standards and improving accountability for children’s learning, regardless of their backgrounds. To comply with NCLB (and linked funding) schools and educational authorities have to collect and supply vast amounts of data, just like UK schools will have to do for TCA.
Idaho, a small state, spent US$21m (£11.5m) of philanthropic funding to try and ensure it would be able to comply with the data requirement of NCLB. The philanthropic body pulled out when the state’s cost estimates suddenly spiralled to over US$180m (£98.7m). Similarly, North Carolina spent US$250m (£137m) on a system described as ‘a complete failure’. California, the largest US state, thinks it can build a compatible system for $60m, although given the experience of Idaho and North Carolina, even having Silicon valley at your back door makes this a huge gamble.
One of the few states who claim to have a successful system is Georgia (1.3m students) whose system cost a mere US$14.5m (£7.97m). Unfortunately, when you look more closely, what the local educational authorities running the project are less keen to admit is that they had already spent US$85m (making the total investment US$99m (£54.4m)) on a system that did not work!
Companies like Pearson and Reed Elsevier have educational testing and data collection as a key part of the growth strategy for their international education businesses. As we reported last month, Pearson now own the number one, two and three companies in the US School Information Systems (SIS) market as well as selling their Pearson Phoenix Management Information System (MIS) in the UK market.
What seems likely is that the market for MIS systems, which BECTA estimate to be worth well in excess of £180m p.a., will become even larger and more competitive as companies try to use TCA as a way to build market share for their proprietary systems. In June 2005, BECTA also reported that the dominant player in the MIS market (Capita) also effectively sets the standards thereby potentially reducing both price competition and product interoperability, not just in the MIS market but also for Managed Learning Environments (MLEs) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). These issues may have a serious impact on the government’s targets for personalised learning.
The bottom line is the legal responsibility of school governors to ensure their school complies with TCA. Given their diversity of backgrounds and experience, school governors and other decision makers will probably have to rely on the advice of both BECTA, LEAs and consultants. Unfortunately, the likelihood of the IT aspect of TCA being successfully delivered is possibly less than it is for governors to get the right advice and act upon it. Given the chequered history of government IT projects, TCA is unlikely to be delivered on time, on budget, or more importantly fit for purpose. Rather than enhancing child protection, this huge investment may end up draining the limited financial resources of front line agencies like schools, thereby undermining their capacity to help and support the most vulnerable children.
