When the Department for Education and Skills (DFES) emerged after the election in May, organisations such as the National Association of Advisers for Computers in Education (NAACE) and the e-Learning Foundation had reason to be afraid. Under the old DFEE, there was a minister, Michael Wills, whose sole responsibility was learning and technology.

However, the new slimline set-up saw Cathy Ashton (her formal title is Baroness) given responsibility for technology in schools as part of her wider portfolio as schools minister.

Ashton comes across as warm, friendly and not at all like a career politician. It is perhaps a reflection of her career that Westminster did not figure until she entered the House of Lords in 1999.

Until then, Ashton, 45, had chaired a Hertfordshire health authority since 1988 and was a director of Business in the Community from 1983 to 1989. She is married to Evening Standard political journalist Peter Kellner and has an 11-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter as well as three step-children.

As the minister responsible for education in the Lords, Ashton has to be up to speed on all issues. If some feared this meant technology would slip well down her list of priorities (other areas include early years, special needs, local education authorities and governors), she conceals the fact well. Ashton says enthusiastically that she is “sold on new technology in schools” and having been a chair of governors at Spencer Junior School in St Albans for the past two years, and a governor for seven years in total, has some idea of how it can help pupils in the classroom.

Ashton points out, though, that there is still a lot she has to learn because of the need to “understand how the decisions I make impact on schools”. It is likely that Spencer School is in the minister’s mind when she assesses the effect of policy on staff and students in a typical small rural school.

In her view, the Government has made good progress with getting computers into classrooms. With the building blocks in place, the priority is the “next push” - delivering curriculum materials online. Because it is an “inordinately complex” issue, the DFES has taken time to decide how to move forward following its consultation for Curriculum Online, though a decision from education secretary Estelle Morris is imminent.

The software industry, alarmed at the BBC’s plans to produce its own online “national curriculum” free for schools, will take some comfort in Ashton’s comments that the pound;140 million earmarked for the project is “taxpayers’ money” and has to be spent effectively. There is a market that needs stimulating and while “the BBC does some great stuff, so do Granada, RM, lots of other people - they need to be able to play a full and active role. We must allow creativity in the market to flourish.”

Schools may be spending more on technology and increasingly recognising its importance, but Ashton feels it may not be until compelling online content is made available to all schools that attitudes will change and expenditure on computers is thought of in the same way as books.

In the meantime, one of the minister’s priorities will be improving technical support for schools - a concern Ashton had as a governor. More help is needed so “ICT co-ordinators don’t have to be technicians as well”. Later, she adds that schools also need better information about suppliers, so they are “not left to their own devices” so much.

We move on to the question of how to provide more teachers with their own computers, and Ashton says frankly that “targeting didn’t work” - a reference to the most recent round of the Computers for Teachers scheme that was divisively open only to key stage 3 maths staff.

Determining whether leasing would be better than another subsidised purchase scheme is one issue Ashton has been trying to resolve, though she says no decisions will be made until a review is completed.

Whatever is decided, she is “very keen” that technology is used to help reduce teachers’ workloads, though notes that good training is the key to making this happen.

Anyone hoping for another national ICT training like the New Opportunities Fund programme is likely to be disappointed. Ashton says a ring-fenced initiative like the NOF one was important, but such training now needs to be part of teachers’ ongoing development. “It’s part of a whole philosophy of saying that computers in schools are part of the mainstreamI they should be part and parcel of how schools are developing.”

Ashton is not the only education minister with responsibilities for ICT - she works closely with adult skills minister John Healey and both Estelle Morris and Stephen Timms have a keen interest in technology. Ashton adds:

“It’s a much more collegiate approach. I feel it’s not one minister but six.”

The minister will need all the help she can get if rapid progress is to be made on the issues Ashton has prioritised in ICT: Curriculum Online, better technical support and getting technology used as a tool in the classroom. “If I can contribute to that then I shall feel I have done something useful - it is a huge priority for me.”