Chapter 6 General Findings from Primary School Sector
6.1 Access, connectivity and usage
6.1.1 Access to school IT facilities
Chapter 6: General Findings from Primary School Sector
Table 6.1: Quantity of hardware (School IT Survey, Q. 2a)
Item Mean SD
Desktop computers 78.6 43.1
Notebook computers 11.2 10.0
Server machines 4.4 2.5
Application servers 4.7 2.5
Application server that does not run on MS Windows/NT platform 0.5 0.5
Wireless LAN 1.2 3.6
Video Capture Encoding System 1.0 1.6
Video Conferencing System 0.4 2.5
Digital camera 2.1 2.3
Voice input/recognition system 0.3 4.3
Video broadcasting system 0.3 0.5
Digital Camcorder 1.3 1.2
Electronic musical instrument 1.3 4.1
Visualisers 4.0 6.5
Color Laser Printers 1.2 1.4
Bar code scanner 1.2 2.9
CD-RW 6.1 7.8
DVD-writers 0.2 0.8
LCD Monitors 6.7 14.4
Smart card reader 0.3 0.9
Note: N = 616
The average of 89.8 computers per school (78.6 desktop computers and 11.2 notebook computers) far exceeds EMB’s initial target of 40 per school, and is much higher than the average of 64.3 reported in the Preliminary Study for primary schools. Table 6.2 shows the distribution with respect to the total number of computers and it can be seen that it is quite skewed.
Table 6.2: Distribution of schools with respect to total number of computers
Total number of computers in school Number of schools %
≥ 160 44 7.1
120 – <160 98 15.9
80 – <120 168 27.3
40 – <80 257 41.7
< 40 49 8.0
Total 616 100
The highest number of computers in one school is 307. 44 schools (7.1%) reported having 160 or more, 306 (49.7%) have less than 80 and 49 (8%) reported having less than 40. It should be noted that a small number of computers does not necessarily mean limited access, especially if the number of students and classes is small, for example in a village school.
Table 6.3 shows the distribution of student-computer ratios across schools. The average student to computer ratio (excluding computers in the staff rooms or general office) is 10 to 1 (SD=8.4). When taking into account all computers in the school, including those in the staffrooms, offices, etc. the ratio is 7.4 students per computer. This shows a progressive improvement in the ratio from the average of 53 students per computer for Hong Kong reported in the SITES-M1 study and 13.4 reported in the Preliminary Study for primary schools. It can be seen from Table 6.3 that the majority of schools (57%) have student to computer ratios that fall within the range of four to less than twelve students per computer. There are 83 schools (13.5%) with better than four to one ratio and 39 schools (6.3%) with 20 or more students per computer.
Table 6.3: Distribution of schools with respect to student-computer ratios
Student-computer ratio Number of schools %
≥ 20 39 6.3
16 – <20 48 7.8
12 – <16 94 15.3
8 – <12 157 25.5
4 – <8 194 31.5
< 4 83 13.5
Total 615 100
As can be seen from Table 6.4, on average 11.8 computers per primary school were allocated to general classrooms. This is higher than the overall average of 6.3 reported in the Preliminary Study.
Those primary schools that reported having computer rooms, MMLCs or ITLCs indicated an average of approximately 33 each per computer room and MMLC and 36 per ITLC. Schools indicated an average of 7.9 LCD projectors per school located in general classrooms. This figure is much higher than the average of 4.9 video projectors per school reported in the Preliminary Study.
Table 6.4: Locations of computing/network facilities installed (School IT Survey, Q. 2b)
Locations N Computers LCD Projectors Network ports Wireless, hub or switch connection
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
General classrooms 616 11.8 (6.3)
12.0 7.9 9.9 23.4 63.4 0 NA
Computer rooms 595 33.1
(28.3)
13.7 1.1 1.5 34.3 16.7 0.002 0.04
MMLC 131 32.8 13.8 1.1 1.9 33.9 15.6 0 NA
ITLC 131 36.1 11.5 1.2 3.5 35.6 14.6 0 NA
Library 483 5.3
(4.2)
4.3 0.3 0.5 5.9 5.4 0.01 0.2
Special rooms for educational purposes
429 3.8 (1.0)
6.8 1.2 1.3 4.7 7.2 0 NA
Staff rooms 592 6.4
(5.3)
6.5 0.1 0.5 9.1 11.6 0.003 0.08
General office 600 4.5 2.8 0.1 0.7 4.9 7.9 0.002 0.04
Note: The mean in these tables represent the average numbers calculated for the schools that reported to have the facilities housed in the particular location.
Figures in brackets represent Preliminary Study figures.
N = Number of schools reporting to have computing/network facilities installed in that location
The data collected from the School Tours can give further information about the locations of computers in the sub-sample of schools visited. Many schools that were visited have at least some classrooms without permanent computers. Consequently many teachers wanting to use IT in their teaching have to take the students to the computer rooms for the lesson. Alternatively, some teachers used notebook computers and in other cases the equipment was wheeled from room to room on a trolley. Furthermore, it was observed that some schools had only 20 computers in a computer room and none in classrooms. In the teacher focus group interviews the teachers were quite divided with respect to their satisfaction with resources. While some were happy with the resources available to them, others complained that there were insufficient resources. One reason for complaint was that in the computer rooms there were often twenty computers to serve a class of forty students, thus meaning that there were not sufficient computers for each child to have individual use of one. Their complaints might also be connected to the low average number of computers available in staff rooms, which could mean that teachers do not have adequate access to computers for their own use when they need it. The School Tours and focus group interviews with teachers indicated quite a wide variation in the provision of computers for teachers’ exclusive use in school. In some primary schools there are only three or four computers, located in a small room, for the whole staff to share, whereas in others there is easy access. In a small number of the schools observed, teachers are able to borrow laptops to take home.
Chapter 6: General Findings from Primary School Sector
In the School Visits it was found that 18 out of the 20 schools visited have some provision in place for students to access computers in the computer room, library and/or covered playground out of school hours, mostly at recess time and before or after school. Thirteen of the schools have arrangements for students to stay after school to access IT facilities. Schools have different arrangements, the most common of which is to require students to seek prior permission from their parents before they are allowed to do so. Some schools let their students stay after school to use computers freely but require them to sign in before they enter the computer room. While some schools do not place any restrictions on when students can access computers out of school hours, some others set a timetable for different class groups.
Table 6.5 shows the percentages of schools with school websites and email accounts for teachers, students and parents, as reported in the School IT Survey item 4a. Clearly, nearly all of the primary schools (97.2%) in the sample have a school website. It can be seen that only 41.1% of the surveyed primary schools provide email accounts for their staff and 24.8% provide email accounts for their students, although 84.3% make use of free email accounts provided by other services for their staff and 44.2% make use of these for their students. Very little provision of email accounts is made for parents.
69.6% of schools have an intranet for staff but only about half have subject or teaching websites or intranet for students. Only 40.6% have teachers’ homepages, and students’ homepages are even less common (25%). Presumably the setting up of the staff Intranet was seen as a first step, to enable communication within the school, before the setting up of other websites or homepages.
Table 6.5: Percentage of schools with school website and email accounts for teachers, students and parents (School IT Survey, Q. 4a)
Services Number of schools
with the services
%
School website 599 97.2
Subject/teaching websites or homepages 321 52.1
Intranet for staff 429 69.6
Teachers’ homepages (one or more) 250 40.6
Intranet for students 320 51.9
Students’ homepages (one or more) 154 25.0
Email accounts on school email server dedicated to:
Teaching staff 253 41.1
Students 153 24.8
Parents 26 4.2
Free email accounts from other sources allocated by school to:
Teaching staff 519 84.3
Students 272 44.2
Parents 71 11.5
N = 616
Connectivity
All primary schools surveyed reported having connection to the Internet. Of these, 95.8% reported that they have broadband Internet connection, and 47% have a connection speed at 10 Mbps or above (School IT Survey item 2c). Some students reported in the student interviews that the Internet access is still slow. From School IT Survey item 2b(i) it can be seen that while most of the schools have network ports in general classrooms and 57% of the respondents to this item have them in 19 or more rooms, 8.9% indicated that they do not have them in any general classrooms.
As mentioned above, the School IT Survey data show that 97.2% of the primary schools surveyed have a school website and 95% of the P6 students from those schools with websites said they knew about this (Students’ Questionnaire item 14a), suggesting that there is a high level of awareness among the senior primary students about this kind of facility. P3 students, on the other hand, showed that they are less aware, with only 76.5% saying yes and 18.5% being unsure.
Budgeted Expenditure
As can be seen from Table 6.6 (School Heads’ Questionnaire item 13), the total budgeted expenditure on IT reported by the responding primary schools for the academic year 2003/04 was approximately HK$94 million and the highest proportion of expenditure was on hardware, consumables and technical support. Professional development and training for primary school staff has generally received a very small sum from the school budget in comparison to the amount spent on hardware. Nevertheless, the low proportion of budgets allocated to professional development/training for staff should not be misconstrued to suggest that this has not been given attention. In fact, there are two explanations for this. The first is that a separate non-recurrent ‘IT Training Grant’ was provided by EMB for staff training from 1998/99 to 2002/03. The second is that EMB provided teachers’ refresher courses, sharing sessions and seminars and in addition to this staff development often took the form of internal sharing sessions within schools, hence the cost was low. However, it may give rise to concern in the long term, when schools are given more autonomy in allocating their budgets. While the school heads’
interviews revealed that they normally follow the earmarked purposes for budget allocation, most of them suggested that they regard the hardware to be the most important aspect of the ITEd initiatives and put more emphasis on this than on other areas.
Table 6.6: Budgeted expenditure on IT in Education in school for academic year 03/04 (School Heads’
Questionnaire, Q. 13)
Items Total reported
amount (HK $)
% of total expenditure by
school on IT
Number of schools reporting non-zero
expenses
Hardware 43 447 506 46.2 510
Consumable items and other general expenses 21 381 389 22.7 541
Technical support services (excluding resources/
grants/allowances provided by government)
10 865 777 11.6 405
Software 8 855 182 9.4 527
Professional training/development for staff 2 580 442 2.7 439
Others 6 884 377 7.3 151
Total 94 014 673 100 -