Schools: Costs of "Free of IT"

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How much money do we spend a year on IT?

How much could we save if we went Open Source?

How much could we save if we went “Free of IT”?

These are very important questions and require a lot of time to really think through the repercussions.  Good example would be losing a projector which would mean more photocopying so would it save us £5000 a year? No.

Our current IT (if you agree on it or not doesn’t matter it’s a fact).

·         Site MFD printing (plus several small printers)

·         Cashless catering

·         MIS SIMs.net + Learning Gateway

·         600+ PCs and Laptops

·         Site Wi-Fi

·         100 classrooms all with PCs, Projectors, stereo systems and most with IWBs

·         Financial Software

·         ADMIN performing day to day duties of printing (we don’t outsource)

·         IT run events and setup daily screens in areas

·         Exam software

·         Two School websites

The important part to remember is we are a typical Academy in our area.

Although our reliance on IT has dropped in the recent two years mainly because of alterations, checking and planning to make sure it’s serving a purpose (making life easier).  Anything that’s a waste of money is scrapped, anything that fails that doesn’t need to replace is removed and license fees are heavily evaluated.

In the event of further budget restrictions we will implement considerations of Open Source software and removal of any more annual costs.  These though will have implications.

·         Scrapping Office 365 in favour of Open Office £4000 a year

·         Cutting Broadband speed £2500 a year

·         Scrapping Microsoft Windows in favour of Linux £15,000 a year

·         Cloud based email with Gmail – New server cost at some point £20,000-£30,000 one off

·         Cloud based data storage with Google Drive £20,000-£30,000 one off

·         Scrapping all laptops £2000 a year

·         Removing financial software £4000

Before “removing IT” we would consider these options although it would require everyone doing things different and taking IT less for granted surely it would be the first path.

You also have to take in to considerations of employing IT staff to maintain this software, servers and the system.  If you consider only employing an IT Manager who can the simple tasks to system maintenance.  Now some of the above you don’t have to remove but with each item you keep you may have to resort to employing two IT staff costing the School £50K+ because an IT Manager who was qualified and experienced isn’t going to work for less than £25K.  Remember the 50K also includes pensions because Schools have to budget for this.

So what would the knock on effect of removing IT do to the costs and staffing:

·         MFD printing and employing a reprographics person due to the increase of photocopying reliance (BTW we help maintain this PaperCut > MFD system minus engineering calls) £22,000

·         Removal of cashless catering system and employing another member of staff £22,000

·         Removal of register system which collates data from exams, attendance, staff, DFE requirements, assessments and progress.  Employment of a full time attendance and exam officer (perhaps even two attendance because they chase up every late arrival plus data inputting for 100 classrooms per period).  £44,000 to £66,0000

·         Removal of all projectors outside of ICT creating “more” workloads of teachers/SLT.  Employment of additional 4 teachers (I’ve already put this question to a senior member of staff). £100,000

·         Houses (something most Schools are adopting to cover behaviour, communication with Parents etc.) currently employ 1 per house would have to be increase to 2.  £88,000

·         Removal of finance software would require a 3^rd part time worker £15,000

·         Removal of IT for events would require external companies to setup everything lights, sound and IT (I know how much we currently pay and that’s only for lights). £15,000

·         No iMacs, iPads, tablets or laptops.

Although there isn’t sufficient classrooms for additional teachers I will take in to consideration that we have a staff room for those 4 teachers.  So no extra classroom costs (I still think we would need more classrooms to allow classroom per teacher which currently is NOT the case).  Each teacher is currently moving classrooms several periods a week preventing them from pre-writing on boards instead of using projectors.  You have to take in to consideration the time it takes from a teacher to get to another room while also carrying all those books and copies – again lack of IT saving/reliance.

Total cost of the above £328,000.  This is a perhaps slightly over egged amount but realistically it’s potentially creating a large exposure for a School.  Remember a School can’t take risks where the day to day duties are not performed (a lot of these are Ofsted and legal daily School requirements that we can’t pretend doesn’t exist).  The School must make sure it’s able to provide every class with a teacher while still pursuing results and Ofsted “outstanding” grade due to Schools not being allowed to be coasting.  Potentially if you kept the MIS system you can save yourself the majority of this money but that creates more reliance on a senior on site technician being employed putting the total to £152,000.   Remember the “more” IT you keep the more reliance you have on two on site technicians instead of a single one plus annual budgets to replace the equipment and maintain the servers.  Meaning you’re NOT accomplishing anything by creating a “free of IT School” and you’re just being a time waster, troll or perhaps some that is quite clueless (usually the youngsters) who lack experience of seeing what happens in day to day life of a School outside the IT office.

As mentioned before we are a typical Academy and reverting back to “Free of IT” outside the majority of Admin>ICT is possible but costs are very high.  You have to take in to consideration how easy an MIS system takes data where it’s not one single person updating it it’s actually around 20 staff per day.  It’s easier for a single person to locate one students contact details > behaviour > alerts from teachers > what Parents to talk to (not all of them have contact with their children) plus backup contact details.  Which would also mean more paper copies of each parent and updates made often (we currently have 1 part time person who updates all this daily).

What IT would we actually keep if we count ICT > ADMIN:

·         7 ICT Suites of 31 PCs = 210 PCs + 7 projectors and IWBs  (Equipment being replaced recommended age 5 years: 45 PCs, 2 Projectors (slightly over predicted for failures etc) budget required £20,000 including MISC.

·         15 PCs to cover whole of Admin – Included in above.

·         Cloud based email – Free (once breached costs are involved)

·         Cloud based data storage – Free (once breached costs are involved)

·         Possibility of “outsourcing IT” this would only require a single IT technician during term time.   Depending on how much IT kept IT Manager £30,000

·         Broadband £12,000

·         Open Source operating system, Office and others -  Free

·         MPD with Papercut software – Currently annual costs £50,000 (including printers) increase due to copier reliance.  £80,000.

Note: the staff salaries includes pensions which add around 10-15%

TOTAL IT COST:  £142,000

Even if you added up the lowest possible costs of £100,000 a year to employing other staff you’ve still got £242,000 and most Schools don’t even spend this in total.  Even though is a non-egged total we could potentially see a total cost of up to £470,000 to cover current IT of “free IT School” and to cover the extras caused by scrapping IT.

If I’m wrong say where?  Perhaps we would get away with employing less staff?  Perhaps we can employ just a simple technician at £20,000 to maintain a system?

Perhaps we can cut down our printing require and purchase more text books (which again are not cheap but would require students to look after them). 

What about Music would we see more reliance on equipment instead of iMacs?  More instruments etc.

What about Art who produce work on computers would we require more consumables?

Would we see more teacher meetings because again they would need to do that more often?

Some Schools do manage with minimal IT, in fact one of the best Schools in this Country has a Linux system with around 400 PCs.  They have 2 on site technicians and generally reliable equipment.  Their full IT budget is around £160,000 to cover everything – this is an “Outstanding” School and it’s expected that every Student goes off to their choice of University.  Problem is – this School is not a “Free of IT” outside of ICT/Admin.  It still relies on IT Suites outside of ICT, there’s areas with a handful of PCs, they have a projector in every classroom with a few IWBs.  One thing they don’t suffer from is a standard behavior problem and only employ 2 staff to cover the whole “house” system.  Which saves the salary of two staff members compared to other secondary Schools this size.