Open Letter: Oppose Tesco's 'Computers for Schools' Vouchers Scheme

national | consumer issues | opinion/analysis

Sunday March 30, 2008 13:07

by Mark C - Teacher

Below is a letter that I recently sent to about 120 newspapers. A small number have got back to me to say they are featurising the story. Others are publishing it as a letter. The Sunday Business Post got in contact to see if it was sent to anyone else (I haven't heard from them since I said it was; my personal thought it that if it's not their scoop, they're not interested). It has also been sent to Tesco (without a reply, yet!).

Feel free to copy/distribute/send to Tesco.

Sir –

The recently launched Tesco 'Computers for Schools' scheme claims to provide schools with free IT equipment. This is a fallacy. Simple maths will explain: in order for a school to claim a 'free' computer that retails at about €700, customers will have to spend €344,000 in Tesco (i.e. 34,400 vouchers at €10 each); in order for a school to claim a 'free' battery charger and four batteries (that you could buy for around €10) customers will be asked to add €18,900 to Tesco's bank account, and so on. (Source: 2008 Tesco Computers for Schools Catalogue, available at tesco.ie)

What a scheme like this actually does is allow an under-funded education system to continue to be under-funded by allowing the government to continue to abdicate its responsibilities in this area. The line seems to be: if Tesco are willing to provide IT equipment, why not let them? The same is true of the currently-running SuperValu 'Kids in Action' scheme, which claims to give free sports equipment to schools. These companies are simply preying on a captive audience, an audience made up of the least marketing-savvy and media-savvy conscious people in our communities - primary school kids. Could you imagine the uproar if Tesco et al decided to run a 'Medical Equipment for Hospitals' voucher scheme? Or, 'Better Equipment for the Gardaí' voucher scheme?

The only free thing that comes out of this scheme is free advertising for the supermarkets. A cursory look at Tesco's website gives the following advice to teachers to increase the amount of vouchers they collect: 'Put up posters around school' (i.e. advertise for us); 'Send a letter to parents' (i.e. advertise for us); 'Design and circulate flyers' (i.e. advertise for us); 'send a letter to other local businesses' (i.e. advertise for us); 'prize for the class who collects the most vouchers' (i.e. pit students against students).

The Irish National Teachers Organisation has called on its 34,000 members to 'reject this campaign by sending the vouchers back or by putting them in the recycle bin". Indeed, this is advice that every right thinking parent ought to consider (whilst also writing to Tesco to let them know that we are not going to allow our education system to be co-opted by private enterprise).

Is mise,
Mark C
Related Links:
Campaign for Commercial-Free Education:
http://www.commercialfreeeducation.com/

Tesco 'Computers for Schools' Website:
http://www.tesco.ie/schools/
SuperValu 'Kids in Action' Website:
http://www.supervalukidsinaction.com/

INTO Rep. says send them back or bin them:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0309/pobal_av.html?2347032,...l,230 - report begins at about "20 minutes"

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Comments (3 of 3)

Comething I didn't mention:

Sun Mar 30, 2008 14:04

Tesco's advice on when and/or where to count the vouchers:

"Why not use vouchers for counting practice in Maths classes or to keep children occupied during wet playtimes." (Of course, the silly people forgot to put a question mark at the end of that statement! I guess they're too busy studying maths and accounting to have any time for English and punctuation.) Heaven forbid students might be given games like chess or draughts or hangman during wet playtimes.

Talk about a captive audience.

Mark.

exploitation

by paul o toole

Sun Mar 30, 2008 21:34

pauljotoole at eircom dot net

Tesco are exploiting the governments failure to fund schools properly and getting their marketing and branding claws into children at a young age.
A school in tallagh had to spend over 250,000 in tesco to get soccer balls and a mat for gym.
The parents in my kids school has to spend over 1 mil in tesco for a computer, gym equiptment and some oyher sport stuff all worth in total about e1,800.
I put the feeler out to boycott tesco on the grounds of exploitation and get them to pay up front for he stuff the school was looking for as a gift.....the response was pretty good, very good in fact. The figures speak for themselves.
Tesco is a company which dosent have to disclose how much it makes in Ireland every year??. How does the govt collect taxes.

It's not all that flawed, though it is profiteering

by Garion- teacher

Sat Mar 12, 2011 13:17

garionbracken at hotmail dot com

0852157520

Although I can't say I whole heartedly agree with computers for schools schemes, I have to say that your a little wrong with the flaw you've picked out. Yes a computer ends up costing an incredible amount of money in vouchers. But it's a product of money they spend anyway. It doesn't actually cost the parents, students or teachers anything to get those vouchers.

It just means that they shop at tesco rather than somewhere else. Now for someone who's living in Ireland this is a bit of an issue, because the retail sector's a big factor when you're talking about the ecconomy, but for those living in England it's not such a big deal.

The actual point you're making though, that the vouchers cost a spit load is invalid. I'd say €100 a week would be a modest guess of how much a family of 3 spend on shopping each week. Say a teacher has 120 students in a medium sized school. This would be €12,000 being spent each week. If all that was turned into computers for schools vouchers, you'd have a new computer every 3 weeks.

The point another commenter made on using chess boards is for another debate, one I'd be interested in getting involved in. But it's got nothing to do with what we're talking about here.

There's also a positive to be pointed out here. If we're skimming this cream that Tesco is offering, for shopping with them. Essentially getting investment in schools and in schools' ITC then it's adding funding that schools need, that isn't catered for adequately in most countries by the government and the budget. This funding problem risks leading schools to privatization, which any informed individual will know is definitely not what we want for schools. The idea of putting technology into a school is a good thing if you've thought about it, everyone knows what they're doing and the reason you're doing it isn't because some monster organization wants you to produce a load of students who know how to type and use spss for the next generation of accountants.

Anyway, that's about alls I have to say. I realise this is an old thread, but I'm doing research on computers in schools for my thesis and found it interesting, and figured someone might come along some day like I did and read this and find it useful.

If you want to read the latest catalogue(which was made in 2008) Its available to download in the link I've provided.

Garion.

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Open Letter: Oppose Tesco's 'Computers for Schools' Vouchers Scheme

Comments (3 of 3)