A £30,000 scheme to teach schoolchildren how to use Wikipedia has been condemned as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

An IT expert is being paid the sum by a council to visit schools and show pupils aged 13 and 14 how to ‘critically engage’ with the online encyclopaedia.

The children will be taught how to search for entries and look for mistakes and bias in articles. The scheme is set to begin at secondary schools in Leicester later this year.

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An IT expert is being paid £30,000 by a council to visit schools and show pupils aged 13 and 14 how to ‘critically engage’ with Wikipedia

Council leaders say searching for information online and evaluating its reliability is ‘an essential skill for all citizens’.

But Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘This is a complete waste of money. Wikipedia is an intellectual crutch, often full of mistakes, and encouraging pupils to rely on it does not help them.

‘Schools should have priorities. It would be quite useful to teach them how to read, because 20 per cent leave school without an adequate standard of reading and writing.

‘Our pupils are three years behind those the same age in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. I’m sure children there are not getting lessons in how to use Wikipedia. They are being taught actual subjects.’

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, branded the scheme a waste of money

The Leicester project is designed to improve digital literacy skills and will take a ‘challenging and engaging games-based approach’, according an advert for the role.

It also aims to combat extremism by increasing awareness of how some websites can mislead and misinform.

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and has nearly five million articles in English and many more in dozens of other languages.

Its ‘open source’ format means anybody can add articles and edit them, if they know how. Wikipedia enthusiasts argue that means mistakes are picked up and rectified quickly because millions of users police it themselves.

But there are numerous examples where entries have been found to be incorrect, biased, or self-promoting, and several politicians have faced embarrassment over their Wikipedia biographies.

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales (left). A Wikipedia editor who accused former Tory chairman Grant Shapps (right) of creating a fake online identity to boost his reputation was reprimanded after no evidence was found

Last week a Wikipedia editor who accused former Tory chairman Grant Shapps during the Election campaign of creating a fake online identity to boost his reputation was reprimanded after no evidence was found to substantiate the claim.

Andy Silvester, campaign director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Hopefully teenagers will be able to add this ludicrous spending to Wikipedia’s ever-increasing list of the ways council bureaucrats waste taxpayers’ money.’