DISCUSSION TOPIC 3

Managing the budget

T

he issue of how schools can manage today’s financial pressures while keeping up-to-date with the fast-moving

world of technology is a tricky one. For many schools up and down the country,

the squeeze on their budgets has resulted in teachers struggling with insufficient or poorly performing ICT equipment. Another problem arises when lack of technological expertise leads to schools spending too much money on the wrong things. The delegates were keen to exchange ideas about how schools can get the best value for money and buy systems that are both effective and reliable. “There has been any amount of infantile

spending in schools,” said Kester Brewin, deputy head of mathematics at Sydenham High School in London. “Schools need to think very carefully before they throw huge amounts on technology about how they are going to get the best out of it.” Several senior leaders stressed the

importance of making sure that the procurement process is efficiently managed right from the outset. They also advised that schools should ask tough questions about how individual bidders’ technology will impact on learners and help schools’ Contextual Value- Added (CVA) scores. Dave Ford, acting deputy headteacher at

Castle View School in Canvey Island, Essex, said that schools should be very clear about their priorities and make sure that the protocol is established at the start with companies bidding for contracts. Castle View will be re-opened in 2012 on

a new site as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme and there will be

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significant ICT investment. Mr Ford said that he had been impressed by the successful bidder’s clear understanding of the school’s ethos and mission statement and the way in which its advice was aimed at enhancing Castle View’s CVA. Mark Creasy, headteacher of Arrow Vale

High School in Worcestershire, agreed with this approach. “ICT can’t be a separate entity or bolt-on,” he said. “When you look at ICT, you need to start off with: what are our priorities, our ethos and our vision?” A common theme expressed by delegates

was how to find the money needed to pay servicing costs and make improvements in technology, and, for newly built schools, to sustain the equipment they have. They agreed, however, that it was “embarrassing” when schools asked for expensive ICT equipment for nothing. Chris Foreman, vice principal, learning

systems at Homewood School and Sixth Form Centre in Kent, outlined a list of innovative strategies that his school has successfully used. By appealing for voluntary donations, the school has been able to spend £1.5 million on ICT since 2005. Another approach has been to engage with

technology companies to explore partnership potential. The school has also applied to become a technology repair centre, enabling it to carry out its own repairs. Kevin Bennett, assistant principal at Belvoir

High School in Leicestershire, said that his school had done a lot of its procurement in partnership with local primary schools, while Mr Ford added that his school had been able to fix apprenticeships, work experience, job

shadowing and CPD for staff through the procurement process. Another way to reduce the cost of ICT is to

encourage pupils to bring their own devices into schools. As Mr Bennett said, this not only removes the initial outlay and servicing costs, but it means that youngsters are using devices that they find “almost second nature”. Mr Foreman was concerned, though, that

using devices that were sometimes linked to school networks and sometimes linked to outside networks might raise difficulties in terms of safeguarding children online. Other delegates, however, said that technical solutions were available to deal with this issue. Meanwhile, Chris Mackintosh, head of

information, communications and e-learning at Bristol Brunel Academy, wondered whether the advent of technology might spark new staffing structures in schools. “We spent a lot on technology and someone

said ‘that’s almost the cost of two teachers’,” he explained. “I don’t think we should sack teachers to fund technology but don’t we need a different staffing structure, a different set of skills? There are people who don’t need to be teachers who can run two-hour learning sessions in the evenings, for instance.” Another suggestion to help schools fund the

cost of ICT resources and systems is to share them with the wider community. “A school is a very resource-rich place,”

said Mr Brewin. “We take children from the community and educate them – so why isn’t the community using the school’s ICT facilities too? Then it isn’t about the schools finding the money for ICT, but communities finding the money.”

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