§ Mr. DrewTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) what help is available from his Department for those schools which wish to create their own website;[140300]
(2) how many (a) primary and (b) secondary schools have a website. [140295]
§ Mr. Wills[holding answer 27 November 2000]: We are supporting £657 million of expenditure on ICT by schools between 1998 and 2002, with a further £710 million to follow between 2002 and 2004. This funding is intended to help schools to achieve the objectives agreed with their local education authority and set out in their ICT development plan. We would expect these plans to address measures for using ICT to improve home-school links, including the development of school websites. The Department recently revised and reissued the Superhighway Safety Guide which has a section entitled, "Setting up your own website" which not only deals with practical internet safety measures, but advises on other issues such as choosing domain names, obtaining web space and what a school may wish to include. This information is available on-line and in printed form. Illustrations of good practice are also available on the BECTa website.
The percentage of schools with websites was published in the Statistics of Education—Survey of Information and Communications Technology in Schools 2000, the figures are: 34 per cent. of primary, 62 per cent. of secondary and 31 per cent. of special schools.