The SSTUWA receives reports from members about problems with information and communication technology (ICT) hardware and infrastructure in their schools with unfortunate regularity.
Poor ICT in schools can create more work and stress in an ironic twist to its supposed intention of making life easier for educators and students.
The SSTUWA recently received an example of this from one of its members, which addressed the problem of poor internet access in public schools.
The member, whose anonymity will be preserved, is an ICT teacher who has time allocated to help staff and students with technical problems in a secondary school.
“Many hours, before and after school, are having to be put in by all staff as during instruction times, the internet is just unusable,” the member writes.
“During the recent OLNA (online literacy and numeracy assessment) testing, we had a student break down in tears due to the fact that she could not complete her test (which is a requirement of her graduation) because the internet access kept failing.
“Many staff and students have reverted to using their own personal data plans on mobile devices just to get some connectivity, breaching all school based monitoring and filtering.”
The member writes that other schools have told them of similar issues and there has been no improvement to services for over four years, despite commitments to the contrary.
“Recently, I discovered that some schools received an upgrade to their bandwidth; we were not so lucky,” the SSTUWA member writes.
“Even this upgrade to some schools is still less than what private schools have as a bare minimum for the same size school.”
Do you have issues with ICT at your school? Share your stories with us through the Letters to the Editor section of Western Teacher.
All letters must be emailed to editor@sstuwa.org.au and include the writer’s name, address, contact number and membership number.
Correspondence must be no longer than 300 words and is subject to editing for legal issues, space and clarity.
All letters must comply with the SSTUWA Code of Ethics, which can be found here.
Feedback may not only be published in the Western Teacher but may also be used in future negotiations with the Department of Education.
