§ Mr. Robert Atkinsasked the Secretary of State for Industry if he will make a statement on what his Department is doing to help secondary schools acquire microcomputers.
§ Sir Keith JosephThe Department of Industry, under the terms of the microprocessor applications project and after appropriate discussion with the Department of Education and Science, is sponsoring an essay competition for secondary schools with 100 British microcomputers as the prizes. Associated with this competition, I will be inviting leading industrialists and financial institutions to consider ways in which they can help spread microcomputing into schools as rapidly as possible either by building on the existing links between industry and education at the local level, or by contributing towards the expansion of the prize pool.
By providing hardware this initiative will complement the programme recently announced by the Department of Education and Science which aims at promoting curriculum development, teacher training, and arrangement for production and exchange of software.