This article is more than 1 year old

Gov considers website to teach tech skills

And sharks to teach swimming

A review of England's computer skills has found over 11m people who lack even basic IT abilities.

The report by Baroness Estelle Morris recommends free IT training for all adults in England. The report found 11.6m English people lack basic tech skills.

Morris reckons a marketing campaign to show people the benefits of going online would help, along with a website to train people and various skill providers to help with basic stuff like mouse and keyboard skills.

A website to help people get online? Really?

Since 2004/2005 there has been a 54 per cent fall in numbers enrolling on ICT courses - some of this accounted for by people signing up for longer courses.

The government is currently involved in over 70 different projects to improve skills, Morris recommends simplifying this and making one department responsible for digital literacy. Anyone wanting to improve their skills must first choose between a confusing number of providers - including online centres, public libraries, voluntary organisations, adult or further education centres and other private sector training providers.

The report also notes that the government signed up to the Riga Ministerial Declaration in 2006, which pledged to halve the gap in internet usage for groups at risk of exclusion by 2010 - the government was unable to provide any information on this target.

There's more info here, but amusingly you'll have to cut and paste to see the whole report because someone has buggered up the HTML on the link. ®

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