Many years ago, Sinclair Research released the ZX81. It was largely due to this machine that home computing in Britain became widespread.

It seems, also, that the Government woke up to the existence of micros and made an attempt to place one in every school. It is now time to look at what this aim has and has not achieved. Are we now producing more computer literates than before? Sadly, due to the organisation of these new resources, I fear not. The scenario below may help explain why not.

A 380Z, supplied by Government and local council funds, and three or four ZX81s, supplied by school funds, are likely to be the computer available to a school initially, stashed away for the use of pupils under the supervision of a teacher.

It is highly unlikely that this teacher will be able to stay late every day so pupils may use the computers after school hours. This means the five available compuerts may only be used at lunch times, about an hour a day, thus servicing adequately approximately 25 pupils a week.

Suppose the pupil population of a school is 900, from this 25 pupils mentioned above represent only about 0.03 per cent.

If more than 50 pupils wish to use the computers the time each pupil may spend on one becomes so ludicrously short that they become virtually inaccessible to all, and in a school of 900 pupils this may well happen.

In an attempt to make the computers of some use, teachers may place artificial restrictions upon the number of pupils using the machines by, say, limiting their use to members of the fourth and fifth years or in extreme cases, imposing fees to join a 'computer club'.

On admittance to this elite after-dinner club more problems arise. An almost natural result of sitting in front of a computer for the first time seems to be an incorrigible urge to play games. This is fine; they are an excellent introduction to computers and an incentive to develop further computing skills. Unfortunately, the teachers may consider them a complete waste of time and try to ban them, making it harder for pupils to cultivate a healthy interest in these machines.

The remaining members of the 'computer club' must settle down to learning programming. But the teachers are themselves just learning programming and so do not have the knowledge to teach this subject. Thus pupils are left to their own devices, which leads to inefficient, badly-structured programs.

Thus the poor organisation of school computer resources has meant many pupils who may have wished to use computers have not been able to, pupils who may have become interested in computers have been discouraged and, most seriously, pupils who have gone on to use school computers have been turned into scrappy, inefficient programmers.

Although this scenario may depict an extreme example, the problems mentioned have been experienced by schools and perhaps explain why many computer-related jobs cannot be filled by people who have been through the British educational system.

If the Government had spent its money more wisely, these problems might have been avoided.

Antony Smith, Huddersfield

On the other hand, at least the Government took this initiative and put Britain well ahead of other countries. Unfortunately, as you point out, this is only a start. - Ed