Government Home Access programme – postscript

Following on from the launch of the Government’s Home Access Programme, there’s some interesting coverage in The Times. It focuses on the negative by speculating that parents might “exchange the free computers for cash on the black market”. Well, it’s an angle that makes for a good story, but our experience allows us to take a more positive view.

One project we’re involved in, which provides several thousand laptops for pupils to take between school and home, has seen little in the way of problems.

Of course, you have to structure things properly: in this case by building in dependency on the schools network (the laptops have to connect regularly to keep them working); and through a home-school contract (the laptops don’t just go home and stay there). But, with some thought and close partnership with the local authority and schools, you can make it work. 

We have seen some losses in the project, but they’re mainly through school burglaries – and that’s not a Home Access problem. 

What to take from this? Two things:

• Most pupils and parents care and want to do the right thing.
• You need a supplier that can think through the problems in advance and work out ways around them. A scheme that simply drops laptops with no thought or support won’t work for anyone apart from the supplier that sells them and moves on.