We strongly believe that the effective management of knowledge, information and resources has the potential to empower teachers and learners. Information and Communications Technology offers exciting opportunities to enrich and redefine teaching and learning. We warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to supporting and encouraging development.

It is important to define the role of the government and other agencies in taking on this role. We would like to see an independent monitoring agency established to monitor the technical, academic and ethical quality of the development of Curriculum Online. An ethical commitment should reflect a commitment to equality of access, political equity and freedom of information and should provide a framework for defining the activity of both government and private partners in content creation and information management.  

We welcome the Government’s commitment to provide effective distribution mechanisms. Clearly an effective portal for learning content is currently much needed. However the issue is more complex than simply directing the right teacher to the right content. We believe that consideration of distribution raises other issues - significantly around the integration of digital with traditional teaching and learning and the need for both teacher and student to have high quality information skills to enable them to benefit from the exciting new potential of ICT.

We are concerned that addressing distribution will not necessarily result in integration. One of the document’s main premises is that digital learning and teaching resources need to be integrated with traditional learning and teaching resources (1.1). A learning resource manager is necessary within the school to enable this to happen. As the school’s information professional - with an overview of the curriculum and of the variety of learning resources - the school librarian is the key person in making sure that this happens. Each school needs these skills if digital material is to be integrated into wider patterns of resource based learning and teaching.

Integration also requires a renewal of teaching skills, so that teachers can maximise the potential of new pedagogies developed as a result of ICT. For this reason we think it unwise to separate the technical plans for the development of Curriculum Online from the professional development required for both teachers and librarians to take forward its benefits.

Information literacy is a key set of skills for every student and teacher. A portal with access to quality and pertinent content does not replace these skills. There is a strong need to be teaching both teachers and students these skills. A creditable distribution mechanism through a portal, which acts as a quality guarantee, must not be a dodge to avoid addressing the creation of an information skills base within every school. The commitment to the creation of this skill base should be central to the Curriculum Online proposals. It is a worrying omission.

We are concerned that the government’s role as an honest broker, as a “neutral guardian of standards”(5.10), needs to be closely defined and monitored. Government endorsement has not always been synonymous with impartiality and the highest of standards. This concern is given an extra dimension by the option discussed in 5.14 - to seek partners to take the proposals for distribution forward. It is vital that the effectiveness and authority of this portal, made potentially extremely powerful by the electronic learning credits, is not compromised by partners’ interests. This heightens the importance of the creation of a monitoring agency.

We strongly agree with concerns expressed (5.24 – 5.25) over the Rothschild proposals for stimulating the market through ELCs which could only be redeemed through content commissioned through the accredited portal.

Content creation solely stimulated by procurement would be reactive and would not be able to anticipate new demands. It would also have a constricting influence on the content market. With the greater variety of secondary schools envisaged, open and varied content creation programmes would seem vital, and this constriction could be damaging. A specialist school will need to commission specialist content, which may not be currently needed by any other school. Vocational courses at KS4 may require content from local business who otherwise would not be interested in more general content provision for the NGfL. Any ELC model must therefore allow commissioning to by undertaken directly by the school without the mediation of the portal – even if material is subsequently incorporated into the portal.

We are also concerned that the Rothschild distribution - procurement model would inevitably cause content creators to address the most popular areas. If the vision for Curriculum Online empowering more individualised learning paths is to succeed these areas will need to be supplemented with minority study areas. These will probably need to be addressed at a level lower than national government.

We agree that the proposed model would helpfully supplement the Rothschild proposals. However we believe that further models are needed in addition to the one suggested to support the diversification of secondary education which the Government is envisaging. Content will need to be procured on a regional, local and even school level.

We believe that Schools Library Services could have a unique role to play at in content procurement at local and regional level. These central learning resource collections have an overview of the leraning resources across communities of schools and are natural information brokers for the schools which they serve. Many are taking a lead role in the creation of local grids for learning.

An independent commissioner to take forward some vital areas of content creation would seem to be a necessary step. It would be reasonable if the commissioner were to be precluded from tendering  for content creation. A lead provider may emerge as a result of market pressures, however it would seem unwise to appoint one. Certainly, if the BBC were to be appointed lead content provider, then a publically subsidised information monopoly could present a threat to the emergence of a varied and rich information opportunities for the learner and teacher. It would doubtlessly have a damaging impact on the emerging market.

The Library Association believes that it is the duty of the Government to support the access of learners, teachers and the whole of society to high quality information without partiality. A separation of content creation for digital curriculum delivery from procurement, would seem to offer the safest way of addressing this goal.

Whilst linking distribution, procurement and content creation would stimulate content, this would limit the development of content to the most popular mainstream subject areas. It would fly in the face of the Government’s commitment to the diversification of secondary education. It is essential that learning resources are enriched to support the development of a school’s ethos.

Delivery of an integrated service to the user should not depend on the same agency creating the content and acting as a distributor. Effective information management would ensure that the user’s needs are met, this should be achieved both by the distributor and the content creator through sensitivity to the user’s needs and can be achieved by independent agents.

An effective portal would need to allow access to a wide range of information from a range of perspectives. It envisages a variety no one agency could ever create. Separation of distribution from content creation and freedoms to ensure that a wide variety of content creators are engaged would help ensure that material is stimulating, innovative and varied.

In conclusion we would like to sketch an overview of our preferred scenario:

Schools would be empowered with ELCs to commission and purchase content to support learning which would also be available to students for out of school study. Commissioning and selection of content could take place within or outside the portal. The portal - established by PPP - would provide an efficient and effective access point for teachers and learners to access high quality material.  The Government’s commissioning agent would be commissioning content to supplement that stimulated and commissioned by Schools’ use of ELCs. An independent monitoring agency would inspect the quality of Government commissioned material and would regulate the activities of the portal manager as well as providing technical and ethical standards. Alongside the creation of curriculum online an in-school programme of staff development for teachers and librarians would aim to maximise the potentials of online provision integrated with traditional approach to resource based teaching and learning.