Teachers want computer games in the classroom

Good news for truancy officers. There may soon be fewer pupils bunking off as teachers in the UK have given their backing to a scheme which intends to bring computer games into the classroom.

While many will clearly write it off as the latest fad, a narrow majority of teachers have said using computer games as learning aids could help to modernise education methods and motivate children.

According to the findings of a MORI poll, 59 per cent of teachers said they would consider using computer games in the classroom.

Teachers polled by MORI said computer games can improve students' knowledge and help them to develop, with 91 per cent of respondents saying they believe computer games improve motor-cognitive skills and 60 per cent saying games can improve higher-order thinking.

Marius Frank, headmaster at Bedminster Down school in Bristol, who has already embraced computer games in the classroom, said he is intrigued to see how pupils will react to something so often regarded as the enemy of homework.

Frank said: "I am excited by the prospect of using gaming technology in the classroom. Individualised learning, at rates hitherto thought impossible, may be the norm if we get it right."

A spokesman for computer games maker EA, who commissioned the research, said the results are encouraging.

He said: "The poll confirms what we have long believed at EA - that interactive computer games have the capacity to engage both teachers and learners."

EA is currently drumming up support for a 'Teaching with Games' campaign which it hopes will give it a foot in the door with school-aged games players.

Critics of the scheme, however, may liken the advances of such corporations into the classroom to the deals struck by the makers of junk food with school canteens.