Will the loss of Becta give schools a fresh chance to make technology click?

Guardian, 17th August 2010

Her views are by no means unique. Children are often taught "computer skills" that are really "Microsoft Windows skills" – how to use Microsoft's operating system and its Office suite (its two monopolies) – rather than the possibilities of making computers do what you want. As such, children are being equipped to be uncreative office workers, just as those at the end of the 19th century were equipped for the routine of adding up huge lists of numbers in the accounts departments of big companies.

At long last, a mainstream newspaper has finally announced what I have been saying for nearly 10 years. I few years ago I concluded that the ICT GCSE is more of a modern day equivalent of the typing and office skills course that schools used to offer back in the 1960s and 70s rather than a course about the workings of computers.