§ Mr. Freudasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) what is his policy towards the purchase of non-British products for the schools computer scheme;
(2) if he will list the types of computers purchased by his Department in each of the last three years with brand names and countries of origin;
(3) if he will list the current criteria for becoming an approved supplier of subsidised computers to schools; what proportion of this hardware is United Kingdom manufactured; and if he will make a statement;
(4) what assessment he has made of the makes and models of computer purchased by his Department for school use; and which were found to give the most satisfactory performance.
§ Mr. ButcherCentral Government support for the purchase of computers in schools has been provided by my Department under two schemes, the micros in secondary schools scheme which ran from June 1981 to December 1982 and the micros in primary schools scheme which began in October 1982 and which will finish in December this year.
Under the secondary school scheme schools were provided with 50 per cent. funding towards the cost of one of two computers, the BBC Acorn manufactured by Acorn 40W Computers of Cambridge and the RML 380Z manufactured by Research Machines Limited of Oxford. For the primary school scheme, the options were the BBC Acorn, the RML 480Z and the Spectrum manufactured by Sinclair Research Limited of Cambridge. All these machines are of British manufacture, although some components do need to be imported.
The machines supported were selected on technical, educational and financial grounds. Advice was taken both from the technical experts in my Department and from those responsible for computer policy within education.
Neither my Department nor the Department of Education and Science approves computers or gives advice to schools on this matter. Schools and local education authorities are able if they wish to purchase computers other than those supported under the schemes and other companies from both United Kingdom and overseas have sold computers in the education market. The number of computers selected for official support was limited for administrative and support reasons.
As the subsidy extends to only one computer per school it constitutes only a limited proportion of the total market.
No evaluation has been made of the subsequent performance of the individual computers. Those responsible for educational purchases will make their own judgments based on their own experience.