In what has been described as the most significant educational advance for decades, Saltus Grammar School has announced that it is logging on to the Information Age.

Computer giants Toshiba and Microsoft Corporation have invited Saltus to participate, along with 42 other pioneer schools in Australia and North America, in their revolutionary `Learning with Laptops' programme.

By the year 2000, says headmaster Trevor Rowell, all Saltus students from the age of ten through Graduate year will have their own laptops, the school's curriculum being computerised through an elaborate link-up in every classroom.

With the programme due for launch next year (initially with J7 and Senior 2 students), information sessions are now being held for parents, trustees, teachers, Saltus Association officers and, of course, students.

Using the Toshiba/Microsofts's `Notebooks for Schools' package, students can use their computers in school and at home, surf the Internet, send E-mail, save and retrieve files to or from other `SchoolNet' sites such as the library and, eventually, activate a modem to access `SchoolNet' from home. This concept of learning `anywhere, any time' is reflected in the title of an upcoming British Technology Exhibition, emphasising the reduction of the traditional barrier between home and school.

"I believe that `Learning with Laptops' is the most important and exciting educational opportunity that I have encountered in my teaching career,'' enthuses Mr. Rowell. "It will enable us to conduct school in a way that has never been done before and will certainly place the Saltus curriculum firmly at the international forefront. This is not a programme about computers, but about an amazing toolbox -- a modern means to an end.'' Gil Tucker, Saltus trustee and partner at Kempe & Whittle, agrees. "I will not hire anyone in this firm who is not computer literate. Expertise in this area is no longer a luxury -- it's an entry level requirement. If Bermudian children want to compete in the global economy they must have that ability.'' On his arrival here two years ago, the new headmaster found the consensus among trustees, staff and parents was the need to invest in and to coordinate information technology (IT).

"Most schools have been failing their students by providing inadequate preparation for the information age,'' says Mr. Rowell. "Today's students were born `cable ready', encountering IT in almost every area of their lives, yet, in many schools around the world, students are taught with `2D' medieval technology: a pen, paper and black and white print.'' The school's computer capacity has recently been vastly increased with the establishment of the new Donald P. Lines Computer Centre, financed by Lines Overseas Management and the Bank of Bermuda Ltd. This will now become the launching pad for Saltus' new `SchoolNet' -- a teaching centre linked by fibre optic cable to the new Library Research Centre, class, staff and administration rooms.

The opportunity to provide students with 100 percent computer access arose when Trevor Rowell and deputy head Nigel Kermode attended an Atlanta `summit' hosted by Toshiba and Microsoft.

"For too long we have taught in fundamentally the same way that we ourselves were taught. Times have changed, however, and the disparity between our teaching methods and the requirements of the modern world is increasingly apparent.

"We are in danger of becoming an antiquated irrelevancy if the way in which we teach remains out of step with the times. As educators, we must give our pupils the expertise and confidence in handling what will certainly be a commonplace in the world into which they will ultimately graduate.'' He allays, too, any fears that academic standards will be compromised. Quite the reverse, he maintains: "As a teacher of English literature, I was delighted to find that from my laptop I could access a fully interactive web site for Shakespeare's `Macbeth' with full text and glossary, character studies and thematic analyses. I was able to visit related sites, all of which broadened the range of my research. The content was all that I would have expected from a quality reference text: the only difference was that it was presented in the medium of our cable-ready children. Yes, this may sound euphoric -- but what you are hearing is the excitement of a `traditional' teacher!'' `Learning with Laptops' is an expensive proposition, both for parents and for the school infrastructure. The cost over three years, says Mr. Rowell, will be $1.3 million. Of this, the school is bearing $300,000 for such essentials as staff machines, training and network improvement.

Each laptop is available to parents at a substantially reduced cost of $1,899.

Through fundraising and donations, financial aid and a graduated payment plan will be available for those who who require it.

He points out that most North American universities require students to own computers and that the UK will require IT competence for qualified teacher status in 1998-9.

The Bank of Bermuda is donating $350,000 from a revolving fund to parents to make the scheme affordable. "Youth development is the cornerstone of the bank's charitable programme,'' says executive vice president Barry Shailer.

When asked "why Toshiba?'', Mr. Rowell replies that the scheme began in Australia some seven years ago: "It was only after it had produced such promising results that Toshiba became involved, bringing it back to the US and perfecting it.'' He points out that Saltus, with its British-based curriculum through GCSE level, will become a true pioneer for the UK, which has also expressed keen interest in the scheme: "Right now, we are ahead of anything that Britain are doing,'' he reveals.'' Writing for the Journal of the Headmaster's Conference Common Room, Mr. Rowell notes that "...laptops change the relationship between teacher and students -- the teacher becoming `less the sage on the stage, more the guide by the side'.'' Vital to the success of the programme is an adequate lead-in period to ensure training for the teachers integrating the use of the new technology in the curriculum. Forty laptops, purchased through donations, have already been distributed to teachers and, under IT development coordinator Trudy Roberson, a training schedule has been devised. As part of that process, Saltus has organised additional workshops with two laptop trained teachers from the US.

Cynthia Abate, from the Fairfield Country Day School for boys in Connecticut, and Janice Gordon, a teacher at Community School District 6 in Harlem, New York, obviously inhabit very different working worlds.

They agree, however, that after one year, exactly the same exciting results are evident. Both have seen a remarkable improvement in student attitude to the learning process.

"I think we have to give credit to the power of this new tool,'' says Ms Gordon. "Harlem has a 90 percent poverty rate, but I think it's very significant that many of our one-parent/income families are paying half the cost for these laptops (the District pays the other half). We have a lease agreement and, to date, have never had one instance of parents not paying their $35 per month. They realise the benefit of helping will lead their child into the 21st century! They have said that even if they had to pay for the whole thing, they would still do it!''