FEARS are growing that teething problems in the £50 million IT 2000 initiative are beginning to fester and that the whole programme could be jeopardised. A dispute over pay has resulted in some tutors withdrawing their services and a number of teacher training courses have been postponed.

At Blackrock Education Centre in Dublin up to 50 courses have been postponed and some 650 teachers are affected. The West Dublin Education Centre reports the postponement of 32 whole-school courses, and six courses for up to 90 individual teachers.

IT 2000 tutors - full-time teachers employed by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) - run training courses for other teachers. They are dissatisfied with the £20 per hour, before tax, currently being paid. The Department has made the teacher unions an offer, which is still under discussion. The initiative, launched in November 1997, was described as "one of the most ambitious of its type in the world." 60,000 computers for schools within three years and an Internet connection for every school "within seven months" were promised.

But concerns are being expressed now that IT 2000 is suffering from a lack of planning and poor administration. There is no IT unit within the Department of Education and Science and the national policy advisory and development committee for Schools IT 2000 was only established in November 1998. "The

committee has only met once," notes one source, "yet the initiative runs out in the year 2,000."

According to Jerome Morrissey, director of the NCTE, only 85 per cent of schools have been connected, mainly because of infrastructural and engineering problems. Parents are reporting hair-raising stories: in one six-teacher rural school, three 12-year-olds and a school secretary have been trying to connect with the Internet for weeks because none of the staff has sufficient expertise to do it. In other schools, parents with IT skills report being called in to help.

Meanwhile, some teacher tutors are expressing concern that phase two of the training programme represents too great a transition for those teachers with only a limited acquaintance with IT. NCTE's courses have been subjected to independent review and adjustments are being made, Morrissey reports. In future, after phase one teachers can try out what they have learned in the classroom before moving forward, take a higher skills programme or an option which provides for a greater application of IT in the classroom. It is felt, too, that people are being rushed through the programme. Jerome Morrissey points to the huge demand from teachers for IT training. "We can be accused of rushing, but we have tried to meet the demand as best we could. If we don't meet the demand we will be criticised for being too slow," he says. According to NCTE, over 20,000 teachers have received IT training under the initiative.

Critics also say that the NCTE, which currently employs nine staff, is "hopelessly understaffed" for the work it is required to do. However, the agency is in the process of recruiting 20 advisors, who "will be in place by Easter" in education centres around the State.