Birmingham City Council's - Aston Pride Computers in the Home project (CiTH)  Winner of the UK  'Building a fairer society with e-Government services',  e-Government National Award (2008)

In a 2006 British Government survey the community of Aston, in Birmingham was identified as a significant 'digital divide' community because of its very low levels of home computer ownership (15% of homes against the then national average of 89%). This was recognised as hindering children's academic potential and affecting the employability of adults.

The Aston Pride Computers in the Home (CiTH) project was established in 2005/6 with the aim of transforming Aston into a computer literate, internet capable and connected community.   

The initiatives unique approach to this objective was to empower the young people of Aston, frequently the most Information, Communication Technology (ICT) competent family members (sometimes termed 'digital natives') - as the primary educators and the 11 Aston schools as the focal hub of the initiative. To support this objective the learner's families were given a home based desktop computer with community wireless internet access. This innovative project has made a positive impact on pupil attainment, equipped parents with computer skills, enhanced families' educational, social and economic prospects and provided improved access to Council services.

The computers were widely welcomed by the families and to date over 800 homes have been connected. 2300 homes - nearly half of the homes in Aston - will be connected by 2011.

Research shows that each of the 800 computers has around six users ranging from pre-schoolers to grandparents, reaching around 4,800 community members.  Among the many instances of the computers aiding employment there is the case of one lone mother who found online translation work which paid well and fits in with her family commitments.

The CiTH project has made computing and the internet financially viable and accessible to an otherwise deprived community, with safe internet provision through Birmingham City Council's secure education network. Most parents agreed to donate £10 per month for the computer, internet access and IT support. These contributions went part way to creating a sustainable model which could be scaled out across the community, enabling more families to benefit.

"This partnership between local development funds and schools has resulted in hundreds of families going online. The results have been staggering." UK Schools Minister Jim Knight at the 2008 BETT conference

"Parental engagement is a major strength... a prime example is the school's involvement in the Aston Pride Computers in the Home Project. There is a noticeable growth in confidence in certain children thanks to the home access project." BECTA, awarding Prince Albert School 'Best Whole School' in the BECTA ICT Excellence Awards 2007.

"Through an online translation service, I now earn 50p a minute translating for organisations all over the world. The computer has given me the flexibility to work from home at a time that's convenient to me." Warda Mohammed, mother of 11 year old Mohamed Abdullah from Mansfield Green School and a beneficiary of the project.

Lessons learnt

• The community was 'afraid' of the internet. The project has changed this perception. The benefits of community ICT capability were underestimated.
• Choose the right technology
• Creating a sustainable project structure needs careful and consistent planning. The model developed by the project is replicable                          

Policy Context

Aston Pride is a part of the £2billion British Government's New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration programme which aims to reduce the gap between 39 of the most deprived neighbourhoods and other areas. Launched in 2001, Aston Pride focuses on the five core economic areas: Health, Housing and the Environment, Employment, Education, and Community Safety.

The CiTH project is part of the Education Theme of Aston Pride and is integral to the regeneration theme. It's main objective is to address the digital divide that exists between Aston and the other areas of Birmingham. It has been recognised that this objective has been delivered in an exciting and innovative way which has led to it being used as a model for other initiatives.

The project is also linked to theBritish Goverment's Digital Challenge initiative which is building exemplars of good pratice in digital inclusion. For example in Aston diabetes is endemic. To support community awareness on this health issue, an interactive CD has been created that teaches English through the context of the health issue.

The CiTH project in Aston, Birmingham is recognised as part of the European Living Labs project- Birmingham Communities Building Capacity (CBC). It addresses the recognised digital divide of the community and provides them with the skills, and infrastructure to address that divide within sustainable structures.

Description of target users and groups

The target group is the Aston community.

From Census data in 2002 Aston is recorded as having an area of 6.4 km²/ 451.5 hectares. Aston is a very diverse community, ethnically, with 70.6% (19,030) of the area's population being of an ethnic minority compared with 29.6% for Birmingham. 36.9% of the population was born outside the United Kingdom, over double the city average of 16.5% and nearly four times the national average of 9.3%. The largest ethnic group is Asian at 49.8%. More specifically, the Pakistani ethnic group was the largest at 22.2%. White British was the second largest ethnic group at 26.0% and Black British was third with 21.5%. The smallest broad ethnic group was Chinese and Other at 2.2%, double the city average of 1.1%. Islam is the most prominent religion in the ward with 44.3% of the ward's population stating themselves as Muslim. Christianity is the second most prominent religion in Aston at 32.4%.

A total 99% of the residents live in households, above the city average of 98.3% and the national average of 98.2%.. There is a total of 9,939 occupied households in Aston at the time of the census resulting in an average of 2.8 people per household, above the city average of 2.5 and the national average of 2.4. 37.7% of households were owner occupied, below the city average of 60.4%. 33.5% of households were rented from Birmingham City Council, above the city average of 19.4%. 454 households were stated as being vacant. 41.7% of the total households were stated as terraced, above the city average of 31.3%. 28.2% of households were stated as purpose built blocks of flats, just over double the national average of 14%.

11.6% of the population was of a pensionable age, below the city average of 16.7% and the national average of 18.4%. 57.7% were of a working age, below both the city and national average. The largest age group in the ward was 25-44 at 28.1%, compared with the city average of 28.3%. This age group is also the largest for Birmingham and the country. Birmingham is now recognised as being the city with the youngest age profile in Europe.

46.7% of the residents were in full time employment, below the city average of 59.9% and the national average of 61%. At 20.6%, Aston had an above average unemployment rate with the city average being 9.5% and the national average 5%. 35% were in long term unemployment, below the city average of 36.3% but above the national average of 30.3%. 20.2% had never worked. The manufacturing industry provided the most employment to the ward at 18.2%.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The project is led by Birmingham City Council, in a unique partnership with Aston Pride New Deal for Communities (NDC), Service Birmingham (a joint venture between Capita and Birmingham City Council),  pupils, parents, schools, Birmingham City University, National and Local e-Learning Foundation, local support groups (Saathi Centre, Titan Partnership), IT companies (Gaia, Microsoft, Tempus) and Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF).

The CiTH project is managed, on behalf of the Aston Pride Board and Birmingham City Council by Service Birmingham.

The key stakeholders in the project are the community, the families and the schools. The stakes for the:

• community are enhanced communication, improved employment prospects, greater prosperity, Aston as a desirable place to live and learn. 
• family members, young and old, uncles, aunts, cousins have better access to services, extended family communications, learning opportunities, saving money, ICT empowerment, finding out about things that matter.
• schools a new culture for learning, improved home/school interaction, greater parent involvement, achievement and attainment raised, the professional development of the school staff, esteem within the community.

These stakeholders have an input into the project via the ICT Steering Group which has an oversight of the project through the Project Management Office (PMO)

Project management is provided by the Aston Pride CiTH Project Manager, a Prince 2 qualified Project Manager who reports directly to the Aston Pride Education Theme Group.

The Implementation Manager oversees daily operational duties, with financial management provided from within Service Birmingham. This post reports directly to the Project Manager who reports to the Steering Committee.  The ICT Steering Group is made up of all project stakeholders, including: ICT Implementation Manger; School Liaison Manager, Primary and Secondary Head Teachers (or their representatives); the Aston Pride Education Theme Manager and Partnership Board Community Representatives. 

The Implementation Team is the technical team that supports the implementation of the wireless network and the computers in the home. It also supports the payment of contributions from CiTH members. This team is multilingual and represents the languages of the community.

The Project Management Office (PMO) provides a single point of contact for administering first line Service Desk calls, utilising the Assyst.Net Service Desk tools and systems available within Service Birmingham. It also provides administration support for schools including the processing of new installations, which will be reported as part of the ICT Steering Group agenda

Roles

The Aston Pride CiTH Project Manager has overall responsibility for the development/delivery and success of the project. The Aston Pride CiTH Project Manager reports directly to the Education Theme Manager (monthly) and into the Service Birmingham -Head of Operations (monthly).

In addition he/she  is responsible for coordinating  reports on the progress of the project from the Service Birmingham Finance Officer, Implementation Officer, Service Delivery  and Schools Liaison posts, including the production of monthly Management Information reports for the ICT Steering Group

The Implementation Manager is responsible for the overall technical delivery of the project and report to the Aston Pride CiTH Project Manager.

Service Level Agreements

Service Level definitions form part of the detailed Service Delivery Plan

Technology solution

The project supplies desktop computers to the families and links them to a wireless cloud which broadcast an internet service generated by the Aston schools. In the initial stages of the project the community had a considerable distrust of the internet. This distrust was partly solved by supplying them with filtered internet access. The homes receive the same filtered access that the schools have access to. This filtered access is then supported by training of adult members of the family on internet safety and giving them access to CyberSentinel monitoring software.

An alternative to the wireless cloud would have been ADSL provision, however at the early stages of the project it was realised that in the long term this would be unsustainable for the majority of low income families within Aston, thus the development of the wireless cloud. The wireless model has been so successful that there are now proposals to create a similar network over the whole of Birmingham.

The home computer uses the Microsoft operating system and is supplied with the Microsoft Office suite and other proprietary software which the schools think will be useful for home based learning. Because all the schools use the Microsoft operating system open source was rejected because it was felt important that the learning family met the same environment at home as well as in training. In many cases our use of education proprietary software on home based computers led to software companies developing community licences for the first time.

The project examined a series of wireless options before deciding on the Gaia solution.  The latter provided a backbone point-to-point network across Aston within the 5GHz light licensed band and then distributes this using sector and omni distributional antennas on a mixture of unlicensed 2.4GHz and the light licensed 5.6GHz frequency. Gaia's network proved more cost efficient and reliable as the technology was able to interoperate with the city's education network.

 

Technology choice: Proprietary technology, Standards-based technology, Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA)

Main results, benefits and impacts

The key stakeholders in this project were the community, families and school.

The Community

At the start of the project only one in ten households in Aston had a computer with internet access. At this stage (2009) of the project between 5 and 6 households in Aston have a computer with internet access. In three of the eleven project schools every family has a computer with internet access. The project has so far distributed over 800 computers and plans to distribute at least another 1700.

A major impact of the project has been its influence on the female members of the community. A large section of this community is comprised of women who have language difficulties or have cultural restraints that have presented them with difficulties in the process of integrating into the wider community. To this group the school is recognised as a safe haven and is therefore an appropriate venue to support ICT competences, and through this, other competences.

Those families who have received a computer are contributing £10 per month to the Birmingham e-learning Foundation (a registered charity). During the duration of the project this income will be returned to the schools as payment for adult training. When the project finishes (April 2011) this money will be used to support the sustainability of the project. It will be used to support the maintenance of the network and the continual distribution of resources to those most in need.

The donation represents the communities 'ownership' of the project and the importance of ICT in their lives. In the first five years of the project not one of our computers has been stolen.

As ICT competences have increased the opportunities available from both within and outside of the community have also increased. Community members are beginning to find employment through access to ICT. Although these numbers are not high it is significant that they would not have been possible without the availability of the computer with internet access. For example the case of Warda who uses the internet to support an interpretation business, Mohammed who uses it to support his design work and Mrs Begum with her peripatetic nursery illustrate the potential of the resource. In other instances the ICT has been used to find employment.

Communication is important for the Aston community. Access to the internet, email, online newspapers and software like Skype has transformed communication with relatives abroad and within the community. The development of Birmingham based wireless resources such as Fiz ( Free Information Zone) and local websites has begun to transform the way the community accesses local information.

Families

The effect of ICT on learning and the impact on the families and the whole community has been hugely powerful. Listen to the families talking .... family 1, family 2, family 3 or view (13 minutes). For both the children and families it has had a real impact on their lives with children that are motivated, confident and eager to learn and parents who are now actively involved in their children's learning.

A crucial element in the family learning process is the child. For most of the communities families the 'digital native' within the family is the child. The children of the community leave the primary schools with a very high competence in ICT skills. The project empowers the children to use these skills in teaching their family members.

The chid's empowerment is actively supported by the development of adult/pupil teaching programs which include 'Inspire Workshops', 'Keeping IT in the Family'   'The Aston Pride ICT Certificate' and the DC 10 'Language Learning Programme'. 'Inspire Workshops' are a specific Birmingham initiative linked to parents and children working together on school based curriculum work (in this case ICT). 'Keeping IT in the Family' is a series of support comic books designed to help children teach adults ICT skills.Suchis the scheme's succes it has attractedan additional £38,000 funding from BECTA ( agovernment agency).  The 'Aston Pride Certificate' is planned as a specifically designed externally validated course and the DC10 'Language Learning Programme' is a course framed around diabetes (an endemic community illness) aimed at supporting language development through ICT.

Already 200 family members have been 'formally' trained using the 'Inspire Workshop' model and it is intended that by the end of the project it is planned that 1250 adults would have undergone a training programme.

Schools

During the Computers in the Home project, there has been a reduction in the achievement gap between all local Aston schools and the Birmingham average. This is particularly evident in the improvements seen in reading, writing and mathematics at KS1. At KS2 results have improved in English (L4+) by 19% over the last 5 years compared to a Birmingham average improvement of 6%, and in maths there has been a 5% improvement compared to a Birmingham average improvement of 1%, so the gap is closing (KS1/ KS2 results 2006).

Teachers reported impacts of a transformational nature with pupils working more independently and accessing their school work from home, of their own choice.

At home parents are engaging to a greater degree in their children's learning. As the schools become e-schools parents will be able to access assessment and attendance data online as well as being able to see reports on their children's performance in school.

During the first four years of the CiTH project a formal evaluation was commissioned from the Department of Educational Research at the University of Lancaster and from Deloittes Consultancy.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

All of the evaluations of the project have been published online on the Birmingham Grid for Learning . Case studies have been produced on the Digital Birmingham website.  The project has made a variety of appearances at conferences including those by the DCSF (formerly the DfES) and BECTA. Information on the project is published on the Aston Pride website. 

At the opening of BETT 2009 School Minister Jim Knight mentioned the project in his BETT conference introduction - "This partnership between local development funds and schools has resulted in hundreds of families going online. The results have been staggering."

The project won a major BECTA award in 2007 and Prince Albert School, a school within the project has won a major BECTA award.

The project was a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge Awards 2008 and won a prestigious UK e-goverment award in 2008.

The project has, in Birmingham, been used to support the British Goverment's Computers for Pupils project (CfP) and the Universal Home Access (UHA) scheme.

It has also shared 'Keeping IT in the Family'  by making it available as a downloadable resource.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 Know your community

We were unaware at the start of the project of the community's distrust of the internet and there total lack of knowledge about it. However since we were delivering the project through the community's schools this problem quickly became apparent and enabled us to tackle it. The community trusted the schools and in turn trusted the way in which the schools used the internet. Working with the schools, their teachers and pupils we have created sustainable structures for the continued development of the community's use of ICT.

Lesson 2 Choose the right technology

From the very start of the project our preferred choice for delivering the ICT into the home has been the desktop computer. The project believed, and still believes that the desktop computer is a family computer while the laptop is an individual's computer. The project is focussed on developing the ICT competences of all family members, the mother, father, grandparent, uncle, aunt etc so it is important that the technology is available to all family members. A desktop computer can more clearly provide the environment to allow this to happen. In the early days of the project evaluations showed that each computer had on average of 8 (now 6) regular users.

The choice of wireless technology was also important. Three different approaches were trialled in Aston before adopting the Gaia model.

Lesson 3 Get the sustainability structure right.

Sustainability is important to the project but maybe not so important to the client. Three years into the project our records on payment were very sketchy and families were beginning to ask questions about their monthly donations. There computer was now three years old so why should they continue paying? What was the money being used for?

We havenow developed a robust transparent online system of recording payments and a coherent well structured message on the use of the payments and the future sustainability of the project.

The sustainability is also dependant on the competencies of the user and the capability of the schools in continuing training programmes. The project has sought and is still seeking additional funding to support the schools in building their ICT infrastructure. This will in turn support training programmes and enhance the professional capabilities of school staff in delivering an imaginative curriculum supported by ICT.

Scope: Local (city or municipality)