Quite understandably at this present time, there appear to be plenty of thought and initiatives going around as to how to reduce the cost of ICT provision in schools.
I am not surprised by this but I am concerned by it.
I am concerned that it is the perceived need to cut costs that is driving current thinking and, to my mind, this can be a dangerous route to take. Education is not a business, it is not an industry; for us, the bottom line is not our profit or our costs. A school will not be judged or praised on its ability to cut its costs, it will be judged and praised (or criticised) on the performance and attainment of its learners.
There is a very careful path that needs to be trod between cutting costs and maintaining/improving the performance of learners in a school.
It seems to my mind that rather than setting out simply to cut costs, schools need first to establish control of their costs. For this, I would recommend schools look at Becta’s investment planner tool, which I believe is still available online. This tool is not a full TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) tool but it was derived from Becta’s original TCO model. The original TCO tool was more encompassing in seeking to identify costs more accurately and relate them to usage and performance. There is not time or space to detail TCO fully in this article but I would be more than happy to talk to any school wishing to explore a fuller TCO in order to better understand and control its ICT costs.
With the improved knowledge and understanding that TCO brings, a school can identify which costs it can control and any that it cannot. The school is then better positioned not only to identify cost-savings but also to anticipate the effects of such measures. A classic example of cost saving comes from a school believing, rightly so, that it can reduce its costs by cutting back on printing, particularly inks and paper costs. While a school can make savings in this area, a full TCO generally reveals that this is only a very small cost and any reduction is almost insignificant.
Not only can current costs be revealed by TCO but a school will be better placed to explore potential costs/savings for future provision, even to the point of being able to compare different options for continuing or replacing software, hardware and services.
While it has to be acknowledged that there is pressure upon schools and headteachers to reduce costs, particularly of their ICT, I would maintain that it is important first for schools to resist the temptation to make cost cuts without first gaining a better understanding and control that could be brought about by TCO.
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Tags: Becta, Business, Education, Energy, ICT, Information and communication technologies in education, Technology, Total Cost of Ownership
Specifically on the point about printing, small costs add up when you do 100+ schools on the same policy. £500 per school turns into £50,000 which can be spent on client facing devices. Reducing in printing also tends to spur new collaboration using new tools and increased confidence in new technology. FYI we actually do this in schools and it does actually work, this isn’t just a theory. Also worth noting
I agree that schools should look at Becta’s investment tool, but it is hard going into a primary school and saying “look at this tool from a quango that has been scrapped…”
It’s not about saving money, it’s about spending the money in the right areas that have the most amount of impact, AKA Efficiency.
Thanks for the comment, John. You’re absolutely right to say that it is about spending money efficiently, which is why I advocate that schools should seek to understand and control their costs rather than blindly cutting where they feel they can.
I mention consumable costs, printer ink and paper, as this is an ‘easy’ target for schools and is often the first to be cut. However, it alone is unlikely to achieve the cost savings individual schools are likely to need. Even at £500 per annum, it is very small compared to other areas of ICT spending.
I welcome your insight into tackling the printing issue as being a way to introduce new ways of working via collaboration, that would be a very positive benefit to both schools and learners.
It may well be hard going into schools and saying look at this tool but at the present we have no other, without going back to an industry model and repurposing that for schools; which would be both costly and time-consuming, two things were are trying to reduce in education
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Spending money efficiently is absolutely right but government controlled organisations, whatever their ultimate goal, will be accountable for costs – rightly or wrongly in the case of education. Nevertheless, there are many areas of ICT where clever spending can save money in the long-term be it virtualisation (in larger schools), eco-PC’s (now cheap to buy and run), managed printing, low energy projectors, etc. All too often schools will choose to buy the cheapest equipment when trying to fulfil a particular requirement and not pay enough attention to longer term running costs.
The investment planning tool is now a bit long in the tooth – I have been meaning to update it to make it more relevant and take into account wider range of TCO issues, lifecycle costs, web services etc. The TCO model that drove it – dating back to the ICT Test Bed project and Becta’s prior TCO studies – was done at a time when the main expenditure was on desktop machines and it was generally accepted that they had a 3 year replace lifecyle.
The challenge referred to here and in other replies remains the same. School leaders are often not aware of the amount that they spend on ICT or the full range of TCO factors – let alone identify possible efficiencies and cost savings. The latest Harnessing Technology School Survey (2010) reveals that around a third of school leaders simply do not know what percentage of the overall school budget is spent on ICT (with a rough average of 6% for the ones that do).