Managing budgets
use of ICT in the classroom and operationally for administrative functions. Using outsourced support services will minimise unforeseen costs, mitigate future risks and support long-term cost savings of at least 15%.
If you’re in a group of schools, you could also scale up and share IT support across the trust and when coupled with preferred ICT agreements and volume purchasing, ICT costs can be scrutinised at a central level, ensuring all schools in the trust are receiving the financial benefits delivered through economies of scale.
Thinking through your ICT spend We frequently encounter schools whose ICT investment has been driven by the latest technology trends, where ICT investment hasn’t been steered as to how the technology could and would support their pedagogy. For example, we have seen schools invest in iPad technology but without the right support and ideas about how to embed them into the curriculum, consequently they are often left in the drawer.
Conversely there are other schools that have always had an ICT suite of 30 computers and as they get older they begin to slow down, the school simply goes out and buys the same again because that’s what they’ve always done. If this approach sounds familiar, consider this; what if you don’t even need these computers? What if your pupils are only really using them to write a few documents or do some brief research on the internet? In that case, you probably don’t need a PC at all and would probably be better with something like a Chromebook, which gives you access to tools like Google Classroom for free. And, since the devices are half the cost of a PC, you’re immediately reducing your spend as well as using a more collaborative tool which will help give your students future career skills.
As the preferred ICT provider to The Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), RM Education have, over the last two years, been part of a project which has helped AET to migrate their academies over to Google Apps for Education, complemented by a more cloud-based and server-less approach across all of their educational and operational functions. As part of the project, AET has explored potential cost savings derived from embracing these cloud tools. Over five years, the Trust are predicted to save £900,077 in costs as well as a substantial £7,701,044 in benefit savings**.
Keeping up with fast-moving changes It is well documented that there is an increasing pressure on schools to keep up to date with fast- moving changes in technology. These demands however aren’t necessarily coming from the government or any curriculum-based changes though, although there is a need to deliver at curriculum level on subjects such as coding. Rather, these drivers ultimately come from children and parents since they are regularly using the latest technology in their everyday lives. We need to ensure that our lessons reflect the reality of their technological lives, and provide access to the solutions, platforms and devices they are likely to encounter as they enter their working lives.
To ensure they can share news of the latest technology, forthcoming developments and facilitate access to and its integration to teaching and learning, every school’s ICT provider should hold strong partnerships with the three globally recognised main platform providers; Microsoft, Google and Apple.
There will always be challenges implementing any new technology, but your ICT provider should know your school well enough to be able to
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www.education-today.co.uk
make tailored recommendations about what technology could work best for you and solve issues which are unique to your individual learning environment.
Mitigating lost teaching time Ever-decreasing budgets aren’t the only issue schools face when it comes to technology; time is a huge factor too. There are only a set number of teaching hours in the school year, so if your network goes down and you lose days of teaching time – particularly during a GCSE year – you will reach a point where that lost time can never be regained.
Through focusing on the pedagogical outcomes to which your school aspires and using them to shape your ICT strategy, precious budgets can be spent in a manner that provides the maximum return. Major cost-effective technological trends in education - such as the introduction and embedding of cloud-based applications and services - place ICT back under the control of your senior leadership team. From here, you can focus on maximising the benefit to teaching and learning, reduce excessive support costs and re-purpose existing resources – consequently, that precious teaching time is no longer lost, your staff can focus on engagement and attainment, and your students are best placed to realise their maximum potential. For more information on the above, and to read about the experiences of other schools already on this journey, visit
www.rm.com
* Based on RM Education’s independent survey, 2015
http://bit.ly/1RhUUvU
** AET, Google Apps Cost Savings and Benefits
http://bit.ly/1Rs8jzK
www.rm.com March 2016
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