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By Sally Watson, 18 January 2000 00:30

NEWS The UK government's school inspection agency, Ofsted, is being forced to delay the launch of its flagship software project after a series of embarrassing failures. The electronic inspection notebook - known as Wizard - was developed by an inhouse team of programmers to make life simpler and quicker during evaluations. It was intended to enable inspectors to electronically file reports, which could then be emailed to Ofsted's head office. But after templates failed to work, the project was dubbed "disastrous" by contracting companies who employ school inspectors on a short term basis. Silicon.com spoke to one contractor based in the Midlands who said: "There were significant problems. The program was easy to install but hopeless to use." He continued: "I think it's safe to say that all contractors have been unable to use the system; there were far too many hidden embedded items. We were constantly getting error flags. Whilst Osted software support sought to resolve problems raised, they were unable to correct the faults." "We, and many other contractors we have spoken to, have spent a significant number of hours with our software administrators endeavouring to make the Wizard practical in order to support inspection teams. These actions have proven to be fruitless." A spokeswoman for a Middlesex-based inspection firm agreed: "We have had huge problems with Wizard. We sent out the notebooks to our inspectors but there were lots of problems - there wasn't enough space to write reports." Ofsted originally told inspection firms that unless they had the software installed by January they would no longer be eligible for contracts. One small company told Silicon.com it had been forced to upgrade its hardware at a significant cost in order to support the new system. The software was used for the first time last week, but after only a few days Ofsted called inspectors to tell them to abandon the project. According to one source, the inspectorate was apologetic and admitted the system hadn't been trialled properly. A spokeswoman for Ofsted admitted Wizard had been temporarily withdrawn from use. "We've had a few problems," she said, "but they're just teething troubles." Inspectors will now return to using Microsoft Word or paper-based systems, pending Wizard's relaunch.