Scotland’s school intranet cost an “astounding” £69 million to run in the decade between 2006 and 2016, Tes Scotland can reveal.
The £69 million figure - revealed through a freedom of information request - has raised questions from education leaders and opposition politicians over the cost-effectiveness of the “clunky” system. Education Scotland is the body responsible for the Glow system.
While some teaching unions support the government’s investment in digital learning through Glow, they say that the intranet service is being let down by woefully slow internet connectivity.
Investing in Glow while failing to address this problem was like “having a colour printer and buying black and white cartridges”, said Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association.
Connectivity ‘in the dark ages’
“I’ve heard our members talking about how good Glow is - it’s definitely worth having - but I would argue we need to invest more,” he said. “The internet connection in some local authorities is in the dark ages because councils are trying to save a few pounds, and that’s the complaint we hear: it takes so long to log on in the morning and get the thing started to do the basics.”
Mike Corbett, a national executive member of the NASUWT Scotland teaching union, said that teachers continue to complain about Glow’s inflexibility, have issues with its search and navigation functions, and express concerns about security.
“A number of local authorities will only refer to pupils by their initials in emails because of a lack of trust in its security,” said Mr Corbett, a teacher of English. Teachers in “at least one” local authority had been told to use the corporate email system instead of Glow when discussing children, for security reasons. “None of this makes the day-to-day job of a teacher any easier,” Mr Corbett added.
Maureen McKenna, president of education directors’ body ADES and Glasgow’s director of education, said: “I am astounded that that is the cost, but I think [Glow] is being well used. We use it now, which we did not do for years when it was going through its teething problems [see box, left]. But £69 million is a massive amount of money.”
Labour’s education spokesman, Iain Gray, said that schools in his East Lothian constituency used the free apps for education made available by Google, rather than Glow, because teachers had found it to be “slow to keep pace with developments”.
He added: “Given how much money has been spent on Glow, there are at the very least questions to be answered about whether this is the most cost-effective approach or not.”
Tes Scotland understands that Highland, West Dunbartonshire and Aberdeen City also favour Google’s G Suite for Education for their digital-learning services - although teachers who work in these councils are still signed up to the Glow service and use it to access national resources.
However, we can reveal that, as of September, G Suite for Education will be available through Glow for the first time, alongside existing Microsoft tools.
A spokeswoman for Education Scotland said that although Google’s education tools were free, there were “associated account-management services and costs”, but these would now be met by Education Scotland. She added that the potential to share learning, as well as for teachers and pupils to collaborate online, was “massively enhanced” by Glow.
Glow gave schools access to up-to-date technologies at no cost to them, she said. Costs, meanwhile, had “significantly reduced” since the current version of Glow was launched in 2014, she added. Just short of £5 million was spent on the system last year; this compares with £6.6 million the previous year.
The spokeswoman added that rigorous security measures were in place to ensure it was “a safe and secure environment”.
According to Education Scotland figures last month, 63 per cent of teachers and 15 per cent of unique pupil users logged in to Glow - a 33 per cent increase on the previous year.
However, Mr Corbett said that only a “minority” of teachers used Glow to do more than check emails, and even these expressed concerns about its “clunkiness”. “In summary, it has not been worth the money that has been spent on it,” he added,
A Scottish government spokesman said the government provided a high-speed broadband connection to a central point in each local authority to support the use of digital technology in education and it was up to councils to ensure onward connectivity to schools.
