Too few micros in schools, too few trained teachers, and too little supplementary material - but the authorities are getting to grips with the problems of computer education.

These were the lessons teachers heard at a Microcomputer Users in Secondary Education summer school held at Nottingham recently.

Anita Straker, director of the Microelectronics Education Programme (MEP), said that three out of every four teachers were not adequately trained to use micros in classrooms. Besides this, she added, there were insufficient supplies of back-up material.

There are now 22,250 primary schools with computers, but it is finally being realsied that the handy political slogan - "A micro in every school" - doesn't stand close examination if it means one BBC between 600 pupils. MEP is also now publishing tutorial packs for teachers and trainers to cover mathematics, language development and primary science.

Also on the plus side, MEP is taking some notable initiatives to extend the scope of schools' micros. Mike Bostock, technology manager, demonstrated a touch-screen attachment that could soon give a BBC Micro some capabilities of the Hewlett-Packard 150. The BBC Buggy, in another sponsored development project, was given rudimentary vision and a robot grab.

The upshot of the conference was that teachers will have to take more of the initiative, particularly where conversion is concerned. Max Bramer of the Open University pointed out that in the not too distant future the BBC, 480Zs and Spectrums will have to be replaced. He called for national software standards and reputable development and evaluation teams to support teachers.

The conference covered such topics as networking, laboratory data capture, music-making, Prolog, LOGO and communicative language work as well as mini-courses in Structured Basic, assembly language, and Z80 machine code.