C.1.2

Although many EU countries have made considerable investment in ICT to enhance learning for students in the age range 14-21 at school and college, there is general agreement that although learning gains have been made, the gains do not seem proportionate. The reason often given is that there has been insufficient investment - in terms of project length, project scale, staff development, etc - thus we shall look at those projects where there has been much larger investment in one or more of these factors to determine whether results are better.

There is also a less formed debate that the range of institutional models looked for ICT to "bite on" are insufficiently varied - often formulated as heated arguments on "public versus private" provision and an interest in systems like Charter Schools (US) and Kunskapsskolan (Sweden) - but really just facets of a much wider debate on purpose, funding and governance

A few projects (e.g. the UK's Notschool.net and the Re.ViCa project for the Lifelong Learning Programme) and recent studies (e.g. "Learning from Extremes", for Cisco) do suggest that a wider range of models should be looked at, from a wider range of "institutions" (including various types of so-called private provider and social entrepreneurs) - but also selected from a far wider set of countries than the EU or OECD members typically studied.

Sero (the Coordinator) believes that this is confirmed by a study just completed for Becta by Sero and a UK university. The study looked briefly at developments across the world (taken from 17 countries) classified by 10 "Claims" - themes such as m-learning, home-school links via ICT, learning space redesign and 21st century skills. In the view of the Sero team, confirmed by international contacts they made at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London in January 2010 - now partners in this bid - this study demonstrated the value of a much more systematic thorough study which would be truly world-wide - VISCED.

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