Teachers await computer evaluation

Press, 9 July 1983, Page 9

Teachers await computer evaluation

PA Auckland Teachers are using the Official Information Act to try to get information from the Education Department. The Post-Primary Teachers’ Association has

sent a letter to the department requesting the evaluation the department made last year of computers for schools. The association’s president, Mr Des Hinch, said

that schools had been waiting for a lead from the department since 1981. After a drawn-out investigation of computers for the school market the department had sent schools an alphabetical list of five computers earlier this year, instead of making one recommendation as had been expected. The list had been accompanied only by the specifications used by the department in the evaluation, and the comment that none of the named computers met all the desired specifications.

Mr Hinch said the P.P.T.A. had asked for the full report of the evaluation in February, but had been told it would not be released.

The whole exercise had been a "bitter disappointment to schools,” he said. The assistant secretary of schools and development with the Education Department in Wellington, Mr Peter Brice, said last evening that the evaluation was not released because computer firms had been asked to tender according to the specifications. “Under those circumstances it is not normal to release the evaluation,” he said. “In this case no one microcomputer met all the specifications, so the best five'J?ere named.”