The reasons lie with a head in the sand attitude of school managers who see their hierarchical authority base being eroded. The cult of managerialism crept into NZ schools in the 80’s with the publication of the Picot report. Since that time competition between schools has been has been encouraged to the detriment of collaboration.

School principals are now wholly concerned with compliance issues and see themselves as being responsible for the commmunity profile of the school.

Schools are generally ambivalent about the use of blogs for instance and the first reaction of senior managers is often to discourage staff, refuse to link blogs to the school website (yep most schools stick with the static website and send out paper newsletters that are screwed up to litter the locality. School intranets and platforms to deliver content are available but the justification for their introduction is usually based on irrational fears of the inherent dangers of the internet. Kids need to protected from this monster….keep the internet out and leave us with the responsibility for communication with the community.

The professional development budget is another are heavily gaurded by school management (if we lose all these management responsibiliies what are we here for?}The best professional development can be found on the web by directly contacting those at the cutting edge ( in my case Ewen Macintosh at Learning Teaching Scotland and Derek Robertson at the Consolarium). In other words I can sort out my own PD and have no need be tied down to the usual “literacy” and “numeracy” initiatives

The school systems worlwide preoccupation with assessment is a factor in reducing the amount of time teachers have to address the whole web 2.0 thing.

……….aaaaargh thanks for the opportunity to rant