Story: MPs: Open source faces exclusion in schools

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Training or Education?

From my experience, and that of my friends with teenage children I would confirm that we seem to be providing IT training rather than IT Education. Which means we are training our children to use what is being currently being used by business and in the home rather than educating them in IT (the picture ZDnet have put up to accompany this article would never be seen in most schools as most do not teach programming) . See the excellent article in Decembers PC Pro on the state of IT education which confirmed all my prejudices on the state of IT in schools.

I think you are correct, that the state of IT education in UK plc is worrying, with all the focus being on quantity rather than quality, I think any discussion over Open-Source vs. Microsoft is actually focusing on the wrong problem. We first need to look at the syllabuses before we try and second guess why it is that schools purchase what they do via Becta or any other route.

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