Fourthly, develop the culture of lifelong learning to establish a Knowledge Society. Lifelong learning is both an ideal and a future necessity as everyone’s skills will need updating on an ongoing basis.
In the old economy, natural resources and physical infrastructure determined a nation’s competitiveness. In the new global economy, knowledge is the key resource and the quality of a nation’s workforce is critical to ensuring competitiveness.
It is most shocking that in the first major educational reform in the national education system in 35 years culminating in the new Education Act 1996, the role of technology in education was completely omitted.
It is critical that today’s children graduate from school with the skills needed for the 21st century, fully IT-literate, if we are to give them the keys to the new millennium.
For this purpose, the Government must be prepared for an ambitious IT plan for the 8,500 schools and 250,000 teachers, connecting all schools to the Internet by 2,000 and aim to achieve the following targets for all schools by 2,005: