"This year's annual report again presents an encouraging report card, highlighting many strong features of both childcare and education," said Mr Bell speaking to the BBC. Concerning ICT, the report stresses the progress achieved in primary and secondary education.

Initial findings for secondary education stress that there have been strong improvements in ICT since 1998. “On many measures, ICT is by far the most improved subject, although it was easily the weakest in 1998. This is in large part due to much greater access to ICT for pupils and staff”, said the report.

The main secondary education findings are that pupils' achievement is good in over half of schools; it is unsatisfactory in one school in seven. Also the report mentions that the gap between schools as regards to the effectiveness of ICT use is widening.

A solution would be to ensure that school leaders take a stand and manage ICT resources more effectively “to develop pupils' ICT capability and to support work across other subjects”.

In terms of infrastructure there have been significant improvements, particularly as regards to the pupil/computer ratio. On average there were 4.9 pupils per computer, compared with 8.7 in 1998. Broadband in school is also taking off with broadband connections having risen from 68 per cent in 2002 to 90 per cent in 2004.

More: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/annualreport0405/4.2.8.html

In the primary education the report mentions that “the picture in primary ICT has improved considerably since 1998. At that time, pupils' achievement was good in only one school in five; this has now risen to just over half of schools.”

The report also indicates that this was also marked by an improvement of the quality of teaching. The proportion of schools where teaching was unsatisfactory fell from one in five in 1998 to less than one in twenty in 2005.

The Ofsted document mentions that in the 1998-2005 period, the advent of new interactive tools such as interactive whiteboards and digital projectors has also been a significant feature.

The report also acknowledges the importance of widening the use of ICT across subjects: “Many schools are not yet able to identify sufficient suitable contexts in other subjects where pupils' ICT capability can be applied, consolidated or extended, or where the use of ICT simply enhances the teaching and learning”, the report stressed.

More: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/annualreport0405/4.1.6.html

Links:
UK DfES: http://www.dfes.gov.uk
Ofsted: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk
Schools White paper: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/highlights/article06.shtml