Parents' and Students' Satisfaction with the Use of Information Technology in Government Schools in Queensland, Australia

King, J. and Bond, T.

This paper describes some information technology aspects of a school opinion survey carried out over 1,200 government schools in Queensland, Australia. The focus here is on determining the levels of satisfaction of parents and students with the ways in which Queensland government schools organise and use information technology for learning and teaching. A sample of parents was obtained across all grades in each school, except for small schools (n<30) where all parents were surveyed. Students were sampled only from Years 7 (primary), 9 and 11 (secondary) at each school site where these years were present. For small schools, all students were surveyed in the grade involved. A total of some 36 000 parents and 40 ,000 students responded to the survey across the state. While the overall satisfaction levels across all items in the survey were high, with some 81% of all parents and 75% of all students reporting that they were satisfied or very satisfied that 'this is a good school,' technology items were among those for which both parents and students expressed least satisfaction. Comparison of the technology items, two for parents and three for students, revealed some marked variations across different types of schools with students generally exhibiting lower levels of satisfaction on the technology items than their parents. This may in part relate to their more intimate knowledge of the school environment than their parents. Clients of schools of distance education displayed marked differences from those of other school types. This may relate to the greater need for computers to act in this environment as surrogate teachers, or to be used as communication devices. Smaller schools, including special schools, exhibited comparatively higher levels of satisfaction. This may relate on one hand to a greater level of access possible in these environments, or to the individual access needed for particular purposes in the case of special schools. Analysis of responses to technology items by gender revealed that female parents and students reported higher satisfaction on the technology items overall, suggesting that fears of gender inequality regarding access to and use of technology may be disappearing.

Cite as: King, J. and Bond, T. (2002). Parents' and Students' Satisfaction with the Use of Information Technology in Government Schools in Queensland, Australia. In Proc. WCCE2001 Australian Topics: Selected Papers from the Seventh World Conference on Computers in Education, Copenhagen, Denmark. CRPIT, 8. McDougall, A., Murnane, J. and Chambers, D., Eds. ACS. 55-59.

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