Every one of the 10 million UK school children and their teachers will have an email address by the end of the year, as part of the UK Government’s National Grid for Learning. Towards the end of last year, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair set a goal to get all UK schools online by 2002 (CI No 3,262). Now a new initiative called UK NetYear has been established to achieve these aims, and at its launch this week it was announced that UK search and navigation service Excite is to provide 10 million email addresses to school children and their teachers this year, for free. UK NetYear was founded by Cisco Systems Inc, ICL Plc, Sun Microsystems Inc and the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, and the intention behind the scheme is to speed the Government’s vision for a National Grid for Learning. Today, only 6,000 schools out of 32,000 have internet access, which usually comes in the form of just one connected machine. It has also been calculated that 60% of all the computers in UK schools are out of date and 80% of the UK’s 450,000 teachers need to be trained in the use of information and communications technology. The Government has realized that we are living – to coin a phrase – in the information age and it is essential that the gap between education and work is bridged. Agreements are currently being negotiated with over 50 organizations to provide the financial support and resources required to keep the program in business. BBC Education will be working with UK NetYear to design, develop and deliver training for teachers and Fujitsu Plc and UUNet Technologies Inc have pledged their services as partners.
