The first $116 million worth of computers in the Australian Government’s $1.2 billion Digital Education Revolution has been doled out – a milestone barely noticed.

It must be hard graft being a politician. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard did her best to talk about PCs and schools and funding agreements, but a quick read of the doorstop transcript reminds you that NSW Labor factional warrior John Della Bosca and his wife Belinda Neal had recently been to a Central Coast noshery – and therefore dominated proceedings.

Still. Ms Gillard was able to tell us that 896 secondary schools across Australia would receive funding for 116,820 new computers under the Rudd Government’s election promise to better equip schools for the digital generation.

These schools have been identified as being most in need of new school computers with a ratio of one computer for every eight students or worse. The $116 million spent on these schools would bring the ratio to one in two for these schools.

She said the Rudd Government believed there was an urgent need to upgrade the information and communications technology in our secondary schools through a Digital Education Revolution.

The Rudd Government announced an extra $200 million in the recent Federal Budget taking the total funding for computers to $1.2 billion over five years. This includes $1.1 billion for the National Secondary School Computer Fund and $100 million towards the Fibre Connections to Schools initiative.

“This is good news for the 896 schools involved, it's good news for the students at those schools,” Ms Gillard said.

“To get an education in today's world, you need to be learning with today's technology.  Schools over the past decade have been trying to introduce computers into their learning program.” The Deputy Prime Minister said.

“The Rudd Labor Government program is about turbo-charging those efforts, making sure that there is available an additional $1.2 billion, to help schools get into the digital age.”