Online Off Target Do no pass go, do not collect £200 – a roll of the dice is less haphazard than the shambolic music offerings of Curriculum Online, as Robert Legg discovers As big ideas in education go, Curriculum Online is discouragingly predictable. Hailed at its launch as a governmental panacea for scholastic woes, it is at the heart of the DfES drive to raise standards in schools. But it has proven to be at best a disorganised ragbag, and at worst little more than a wasteful shambles.

In fact, the initial idea behind Curriculum Online wasn't a bad one. Identifying a need to revitalise areas of teaching and learning at all Key Stages, the DfES, in conjunction with the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta), devised a scheme designed to encourage schools to develop their curricula in new and exciting directions.

The key factor in this renaissance, it was decided, was to be information technology. And in order to bring to the attention of teachers and school leaders the huge variety of educational software on offer, Becta established the Curriculum Online website. This online database of multimedia resources, searchable by subject and Key Stage, aimed to bring bright ideas onto our computer screens and into our classrooms.

There was even a substantial pot of money set aside to pay for it. In recent years, every state school has been granted relatively generous funds to spend on curriculum resources. In the academic year 2004/5 the sum was calculated at £1,000 per school plus £9.73 per pupil, meaning that an average sized secondary school could expect to have about £10,000 to play with.

Rather than offering a cash sum, however, the government pays schools in a Monopoly currency of its own invention. By creating eLearning Credits (eLCs), the government effectively ring-fenced the funds for spending on software affiliated to the Curriculum Online scheme. eLCs for each academic year must be spent or committed by 31 August, or else they are be subsumed back into the common pot.

So far, so good. But in large schools like mine, the process of spending eLCs can be complicated. Designated budget-holders – who might be the head teacher or the ICT coordinator – decide what to buy with the available funds, having received recommendations from the staff. This often means that getting your hands on software will depend on fighting a case for music against other subject leaders.

One of the major problems is the sheer specificity of the scheme. Allocated money can be spent only on multimedia resources – which effectively means software – and only from the Curriculum Online list. You cannot use eLCs to buy computers themselves, nor can you use them to buy other computer hardware such as keyboards, microphones, mixers or CD burners. So in music, the government's multimedia benefaction needs to be met with significant extra funding to be of any use to anyone.

As an incentive to purchase software, the scheme has been a modest success. This year I bought a site licence for Sibelius 3 which will in time genuinely revolutionise the way composition is taught in my school. Were it not for eLCs, I probably wouldn't have found the money for such a purchase, given the everyday demands on my already over-stretched budget. Sibelius, in fact, is a shining example of a good Curriculum Online product. Although relatively expensive to buy, it is quick to learn and invaluable as a tool for classroom composing. A casual browse through the full list of other available resources, however, reveals a patchy crop of software. So it certainly pays to be picky.

At KS3, Curriculum Online boasts 76 resources for music. They range from historical research tools and encyclopaedias through instrumental tutors and ear training programs to composing tutors and sequencers. Unless you have the time and energy to trial each product, you'll need help to guide you through the maze of options. Certain products carry online evaluations and teacher reviews but others are still offered without this essential guidance, which makes it difficult to make informed decisions.
It's certainly worthwhile thinking carefully about the claims made on behalf on each product before parting with precious eLCs. It's easy to imagine a CD-Rom packed with audio-visual recordings of African drumming, for example, making a valuable contribution to a Year 8 module on rhythm. But it might pay to be a little more sceptical about software claiming to be a complete instrumental tutor. After all, there are some things about playing the piano or the guitar that a computer can't teach you. And if it sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Surprisingly conspicuous in their absence from the list are any of the integrated music curricula that have existed for years in printed form. Even Heinemann's newest music course, the much-vaunted Opus, is still primarily paper based, with an optional CD-Rom add-on as its only nod in the direction of digital learning. This is typical of the resources available, which tend to be curriculum add-ons and supplements rather than substantive new forays into music education.

The quality of Curriculum Online's digital resources for music education is a concern. Still more troubling, however, are some of the larger philosophical principles that lie behind the programme. Two obvious problems are immediately apparent. First, there is the philosophy of prescription that underlies Curriculum Online. Whilst any source of new money is to be welcomed, the eLC ring fencing is in essence anti-competitive, reducing choices on offer to schools, limiting teachers' autonomy and perhaps ultimately inviting profiteering by software developers.
Second, the scheme seems to offer a dangerously simple answer to a complex problem.
Raising standards in music cannot simply be a matter of throwing ICT resources into the classroom. Music is a vibrant, exciting subject that lives and breathes in time and space. Pupils achieve in music when they are inspired to succeed, and, although computer-based resources can be a part of that inspiration, human interaction must be at its heart.