Promethean published their 5th Annual Report “The State of Technology in Education 2020/21 (UK&I EDITION) early last month. The opinions of over 2,000 Principals, Senior Management Teams, School IT Staff and Teachers were gathered last spring during the School Covid 19 closures while teachers and students were engaged in working remotely from home relying on technology for teaching, communicating and engaging with their pupils. Respondents to this year’s report were based in schools at all levels in various locations across the UK and Ireland. However, they were predominately based in England, with 3.7% based in Scotland and 2.7% in Wales. Only 1.5% of those who took part in this survey were from Ireland (0.7% Republic and 0.8% Northern Ireland).
Some of the key findings include
- Using technology for engaging pupils is a priority for almost 40% of respondents in schools
- Almost 80% were in agreement that technology assists them in doing a better job
- Over 80% say that using technology is a core part of learning. However almost a third find that old and unreliable school hardware is a barrier for them
- Using technology assists with boosting learning outcomes, 84% believed it can improve pupil/student engagement and a third felt it can improve behaviour
- Training appears to be an issue though, while over 60% of Senior Management Teams considered training adequate only 19% of teachers were in agreement
- When it comes to budget and investment over 80% find funding is inadequate
- Online safety was a priority for almost 50% of respondents, not a surprise here though considering pupils and teachers were working remotely when this research was being conducted
- Teachers don’t feel that they have an input into their school’ strategy with almost 60% reporting they have no input
It is not surprising that at the time that teachers were responding to the survey one of the questions asked was “What tech serves you best working from home?” It is no surprise that Remote Teaching Tools and Video Conferencing Software featured so highly with the emphasis on schools and teachers using tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Hangout etc. to stay in contact with their pupils. The number responding to content submission tools, I find somewhat surprising with the emphasis here at the time on schools adopting various learning and communicating platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Moodle, SeeSaw, Class Dojo, Google Classroom.