National Council for Educational Technology

The National Council for Educational Technology provided advice and support for schools and colleges in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland on educational technology, in particular the use of computers for teaching and learning.

National Council for Educational Technology
AbbreviationNCET
Formation1988
Extinctionrenamed and restructured as Becta 1998 (1998)
Merger ofMESU and CET
PurposePromotion and integration of ICT in education
Location
Region served
England, Wales, Northern Ireland
Chief Executives
Noel Thompson, Graham Walters (acting), Margaret Bell, Mike Littlewood(acting), Owen Lynch

The Department for Education and Science merged the Council for Educational Technology and the MESU in 1989. The civil servant Noel Thompson, who promoted this change, became its first Chief Executive. It carried out evaluations of new technologies such as CD-ROMs, laptop computers and researched the effectiveness of different methods and techniques. It promoted the use of educational technology through publications, events, TV programmes.

Structure and Governance

NCET was a charitable trust funded by government and formally a Non-Departmental Public Body. It had a Council (acting as the organisation's Board of Directors), whose Chairman and Chief Executive were responsible to the Secretaries of State of the Education Departments in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Its work was outlined in an annual priorities letter from the Department and a senior civil servant and HMI sat on its Board.

People

Chief Executives

The Chief Executive was employed by the NCET Council to run the organisation and deliver its programme of work.

  • Noel Thompson 1989-91
  • Graham Walters (acting) 1991
  • Margaret Bell 1992-1997
  • Mike Littlewood (acting) 1997
  • Owen Lynch 1997

Chairmen

The Chairmen were unpaid, except for their expenses, they chaired the Council and met with Ministers to agree the work of the organisation.

  • Don Gratton 1989-90 - was a BBC Executive
  • Margaret Parkes 1990-92 - Lady Parkes chaired the original Technology National Curriculum Working Party
  • John Richards 1992-95
  • Heather Du Quesnay 1995-97 was Director of Education for Lambeth [1]

Evaluations

With the increased resource being provided to schools for educational technology the NCET took on a role of piloting and evaluating new technologies. NCET's role was to provide appropriate evaluative evidence to them to ensure that this money was well spent. It also looked to help grow viable and appropriate commercial markets for IT products and through a number of NCET managed pilots and procurements it stimulated specific areas, for example, the introduction of CD-ROMs into schools. Similar initiatives of varying scales and technologies including portable computers for teachers, communications technologies, multimedia desktop computers, satellite technologies and integrated learning systems all contributed to keeping UK schools up to date with the changing pace of the technology during the 1990s.

Research

As well as providing equipment and materials it was also part of NCET's brief to collate and disseminate research and case study evidence on the impact of IT on learning and educational institutions and to produce support materials for them. This included support for the Education Department's Superhighways Initiative from 1995-7 which ran 22 projects-supported by £12 million from commercial sponsors-that focus on the application of electronic communications in schools and colleges.

Publications

Managing IT Inspecting IT

NCET-TV

NCET-TV was a series of educational TV programmes aimed at helping the UK's teachers gain relevant IT skills. As part of BBC 2's The Learning Zone, the programmes will be transmitted on the first Wednesday of each month at 4.00am.

Renaming to form Becta

Dennis Stevenson was asked by Tony Blair in 1996 to look at the use of computers in schools. He set up an independent enquiry, a panel of experts who took evidence from a wide range of bodies and individuals and published his report[2] in March 1997, just in time for the forthcoming election. Following the election Dennis Stevenson advised the UK Government that NCET could be a useful organisation, but it needed to be more closely aligned to government and should be restructured. The organisation was renamed the British Educational Communications Technology Agency (Becta), restructured and given the task of developing "The National Grid for Learning" (NGfL).

gollark: Exactly.
gollark: And you DO NOT WANT your AI to be working out the most convenient loopholey way to satisfy the letter (well, the code) of "do not harm humans".
gollark: * osmarks.net
gollark: Well, evolved systems generally.
gollark: Also, if you've ever seen genetic algorithms, you'll know that they will ruthlessly exploit any quirk of the fitness functions.

References
  1. http://www.edtechhistory.org.uk/organisations/ncet.html
  2. Stevenson D. (1997) 'Information and Communications Technology in UK Schools, An Independent Enquiry' March 1997
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