Computers 'can raise attainment' - results published from Becta's ICT TestBed research

Source: ICT TestBed Final Report. URL below

According to this 24/6/2007 BBC report, issued before Becta has published the results, the final phase of Becta's 4 year £37m ICT Test Bed project (in which 23 primary schools, five secondaries, and three further education colleges have had substantial extra investment in ICT) shows that learning using ICT (in the ways provided by the schools and colleges) produces improvements in learner attainment. I'll reserve judgement on the report, which appeared today [790 kB PDF] on the TestBed project web site, and from which the chart above is taken, until I've read it. But my initial reactions were:

1. you'd expect improvement given the amount of additional funds the test-bed schools and colleges received - the key question is could the same amount, spent differently, have had a similar or greater effect?
2. how, in such a study, do you avoid a Hawthorne effect, in which the "shaping" of behaviour by the investigation process is partly responsible for at least some of the changes observed?

Becta press release.

Updated 8 July 2007 by the addition of a link to Becta press release, and the two concluding questions.

Comments

[Tom Franklin]

It seems to me, at least from the information in this posting, that the result might simply stem from the injection of substantial extra investment. It would be interesting to be able to compare results for similar additional funding used in other ways, rather than simply to those that had no additional funds.