The UK Government's Microelectronics Education Programme ran from 1980 to 1986. It was conceived and planned by a Labour government and set up under a Conservative government during Mrs Thatcher's era. Its aim was to explore how computers could be used in schools in the UK. This was a controversial time for Conservative school policies.[1] The programme was administered by the Council for Educational Technology in London, but the directorate operated, unusually, from a semi-detached house on the Coach Lane Campus of the then Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University).