Michael Heseltine this week announced a Pounds 10 million project to link more than 200 schools and colleges to the information superhighway in an attempt to wrest the technology initiative back from Labour. The deputy Prime Minister launched 23 pilot projects which will incorporate interactive multimedia and video.

In a sideswipe at Tony Blair, who recently announced that Labour would work with British Telecom to connect UK schools and health organisations to the superhighway, he said: “Real achievement in this area will not come about as a result of hasty measures designed to provide instant solutions.”

Mr Heseltine told a conference in Cambridge on education superhighways: “We need dialogue and understanding between the education service and those industries developing superhighways and their services, so that the needs of education can be identified and fully taken into account.”

Most of the key information technology firms in education are involved, including Acorn, Research Machines, ICL, British Telecom and Microsoft. The projects will be managed through the National Council for Educational Technology, and its Scottish counterpart.

Don Cruikshank, director general of Oftel, the communications industry watchdog, told the conference he wanted a scheme in which business and domestic telephone users would help to subsidise connection, equipment and training costs of schools and colleges. “What I am talking about is neither government policy nor anything to do with BlairBT deals,” he said.

A frequent talking point at the conference was integrated learning systems, which set on-screen tasks that can be customised to pupils’ individual levels of ability. They have created controversy among educationists who fear they will be seen by politicians as a “quickfix” to anxieties about problems with literacy and numeracy.

But an initial evaluation by the NCET last year of the maths element of the American Successmaker program revealed a 20-month gain in maths skills in six months.

The final evaluation by the NCET is expected in January, when it is also rumoured Mr Heseltine will make an announcement on integrated learning at the BETT technology show.

His office has asked the NCET how much it would cost for a national ILS scheme - estimated at Pounds 100 million.

The pilot projects announced by Mr Heseltine include video-conferencing for rural schools in Wales and Scotland; school administration in Northern Ireland, home-school links in Cambridge, Reading and Essex; professional support and development in Cambridgeshire; multimedia for open learning in London; interactive and flexible learning for FE in Burnley; international links for modern languages in Tyneside; modern languages and English in Kent; school networks and the curriculum in Bristol and Birmingham.