Thetford Academy has had a bumper year of IT funding, writes Principal Michael Fordham.
I am sure that over the Christmas holiday, quite a few new snazzy pieces of technology appeared in homes across Thetford. The same has been true at the secondary school, where we have invested fairly heavily this year in upgrading some of our technical equipment.
The way this works is that we get a grant from the government each year to invest in technology. For a school of our size (nearly 1,400 students) the costs of kitting out computer rooms or putting new technology in classrooms can be eye-watering, and so we have to play a long game, deciding where we need to invest and where we can stretch out the life of our machines for as long as possible.
This was a bumper year. We have made three major upgrades in the school. Two of our Computer Science labs received new sets of desktop machines. These need to be our most powerful computers as we teach subjects like A Level Computer Science in these rooms, and students need the best computers we can afford to ensure they have the power they need for advanced programming and the like.
On top of this, we upgraded all the interactive whiteboards in our maths classrooms, and we are in the middle of installing a new media room with Apple computers for subjects like Music Technology and Media Studies.
I want to make sure that our students have the best equipment we can provide them, and these new installations will certainly be a big help to them. I started teaching in the 2000s when schools were investing vast sums of money in computer rooms, interactive white boards and projectors, and I am not convinced that money was always well spent.
Ultimately, technology is a tool, and a tool is only as good as the person using it: there is no replacement for a great teacher, and I would always rather invest there than in having the latest devices available.
– Michael Fordham, Principal
