Scotland’s school intranet cost an “astounding” £69 million to run in the decade between 2006 and 2016, Tes Scotland can reveal.

The £69 million figure - revealed through a freedom of information request - has raised questions from education leaders and opposition politicians over the cost-effectiveness of the “clunky” system. Education Scotland is the body responsible for the Glow system.

While some teaching unions support the government’s investment in digital learning through Glow, they say that the intranet service is being let down by woefully slow internet connectivity.

Investing in Glow while failing to address this problem was like “having a colour printer and buying black and white cartridges”, said Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association.

“I’ve heard our members talking about how good Glow is - it’s definitely worth having - but I would argue we need to invest more,” he said.

Mike Corbett, a national executive member of the NASUWT Scotland teaching union, said that teachers continue to complain about Glow’s inflexibility, have issues with its search and navigation functions, and express concerns about security.

“A number of local authorities will only refer to pupils by their initials in emails because of a lack of trust in its security,” said Mr Corbett, a teacher of English. Teachers in “at least one” local authority had been told to use the corporate email system instead of Glow when discussing children, for security reasons, he added.

‘A massive amount of money’

Maureen McKenna, president of education directors’ body ADES and Glasgow’s director of education, said: “I am astounded that that is the cost, but I think [Glow] is being well used. We use it now, which we did not do for years when it was going through its teething problems. But £69 million is a massive amount of money.”

An Education Scotland spokeswoman said Glow gave schools access to up-to-date technologies at no cost to them. Costs, meanwhile, had “significantly reduced” since the current version of Glow was launched in 2014, she added. Just short of £5 million was spent on the system last year; this compares with £6.6 million the previous year.

The spokeswoman added that rigorous security measures were in place to ensure it was “a safe and secure environment”.

A Scottish government spokesman said the government provided a high-speed broadband connection to a central point in each local authority to support the use of digital technology in education and it was up to councils to ensure onward connectivity to schools.

This is an edited version of an article in the 28 April edition of Tes Scotland. Subscribers can read the full story here. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here. Tes Scotland magazine is available at all good newsagents.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook