Budget - per capita?

[pantscat]

Hi All,

I've recently jumped back into the chaos of being a school ICT Manager after a break for 18 months or so doing something slightly different.

One of my first tasks here is to try and convince management that we need to adopt a proper lifecycle approach to all hardware and thus need to put forward a new budget proposal (present forecasted spending for this year puts us overbudget by £20k or so and still leaves a lot of old machines around).

Something I've picked up is that (as an independant school) management don't like to hear that other schools are spending more money on things than them (especially state schools) - so my question is this:

Q: How much money per pupil does your school spend on ICT?

Also - what does it cover?

My budget has to cover all hardware and software, consumables, paper, cabling infrastructure and odd things like plasma screens for display boards around the school.

I think my best tactic is to go for a multi-version budget approach - standing still, doing a little bit more and doing a lot!

Thanks,

Ant

[j17sparky]

We have 1200 pupils. A few years ago our budget was £110k just for BB, hardware and software. This year it is only £70k which just isnt enough. Next year we will be forced to spend more as 100 PCs will be out of warrenty.

I couldnt tell you our consumables budget, but it is a seperate pot which all the departments chip into. At first i thought it may mean some departments would make sure they got their fair share but with abit of training in using the Pause button on the printers we have actually managed to decrease spending while increasing the number of printers in the school.

[Gibson335]

We have around 1500 users. I get approx £100,000 a year to spend on ICT development in the summer - this includes the cost of our 3 year cycle of replacement, which can mean 100 stations and 50+ laptops. When you add staffing, printing, warranties, software maintenance, external support and the Internet, I'd say our ICT costs are at about £200,000.

[matt40k]

Personally the head gets suck with a choice.

Build a physical school
or
Build a new computer network

Personally you do the computer network, not because i'm IT. But because have you ever asked for money to be invested in new computer? Simply you can't get it. You can get some old kit maybe. However business don't mind donating for something they can see. Like a building.

Worth a chat with the governers\head whoever. Just need to find an IT supplier who'll sponser that new gym hall

[CyberNerd]

We worked out how much equipment we had in value (IIRC it was aroung £300,000 worth).
then explained to SMT that to replace it over 10 yrs is £30k p/a over 5yrs is £60k.
We have a 5yr lifecycle for all equipment unless it breaks first.

[User3204]

The total ICT related spend this year will be £200k, for 1500 students, but, some of that was for things I have no control over, SIMS etc (I don't think it included salaries).

Out of that, I spent about £80k on hardware, £5-10k on software/licenses, consumables is around £2-3k (although the budgetted amount is £5k).
This is the normal amount I spend, on a 4 year replacement policy (less for laptops), we have about 500 computers, for staff and/or students.

[localzuk]

We spent about £250k over 2 years on IT - hardware, software, infrastructure, and the refit of 3 suites (inc furniture).

~600 kids.

[joe90bass]

Okay I'm jealous!

Management here have just put aside £40k a year for hardware. 1250 kids, and around 540 PCs/laptops/thin client. I'm looking at a 4 year lifecycle, but haven't had time to look into it too much yet.

[User3204]

...Management here have just put aside £40k a year for hardware...

We're a Tech College, so there's a big pot of money for it.
Out of that spend, I got 2x Computer Rooms, 40x Staff Laptops, 30x Student Laptops, 1x Kick-Ass VM server, and sundry other "items". I've not finished spending yet, there's still 6 months to go, and I was hoping to get another 30x student laptops and some Asus eeep!c machines (but this may not be until next year).

I have no budget of my own, everything over £2k has to be pre-agreed.

[pantscat]

Thanks for the replies so far!

Seems that I'm not doing too terribly here budget wise - it just seems that where some of the money is going is a little bit concerning and needs some trimming (1/3 of the budget is going on software licences and service renewals!).

Cheers,

Ant

[User3204]

...it just seems that where some of the money is going is a little bit concerning and needs some trimming (1/3 of the budget is going on software licences and service renewals!)...

That trip to Barbados is an essential part of the ICT training programme, you can't cancel it.

We spent about £6k on SIMS Learning Platform (Capita's VLE), and it was never used.
Unfortunately, that was per year, for a three year contract (SLT decision, with no input from ICT or Staff).

[rayfleming]

BESA (the British Education Suppliers Association) do an annnual survey of schools ICT, and one of the things they (eagerly!) look for is ICT spend.

Although you have to be a member to download the full report, on this page, you can download the summary report for absolutely nothing.

Average primary school ICT budget is forecast to be £15,850 in 2008/9 (from memory, average=240 pupils)

Average secondary school ICT budget is forecast to be £68,000 in 2008/9 (from memory, average=860 pupils)

The sample size is over 1,000 state schools in England, so pretty representative. (Not that I'm saying that everybody here isn't )

[localzuk]

BESA (the British Education Suppliers Association) do an annnual survey of schools ICT, and one of the things they (eagerly!) look for is ICT spend.

Although you have to be a member to download the full report, on this page, you can download the summary report for absolutely nothing.

Average primary school ICT budget is forecast to be £15,850 in 2008/9 (from memory, average=240 pupils)

Average secondary school ICT budget is forecast to be £68,000 in 2008/9 (from memory, average=860 pupils)

The sample size is over 1,000 state schools in England, so pretty representative. (Not that I'm saying that everybody here isn't )

I discovered that in the last 3 years, my school has spent £1m on ICT... I've been here for 2.5 years, so i spent most of it! We're only a 600 strong middle school too. So pretty good going really.

[User3204]

As an addendum to this,

I got called into the Bursars office last week, as I'd gone over budget, but apparently it was all down to me buying things under the wrong code..

[maniac]

I sat down with the business manager the other day and explained that we need a minimum spend of £125k this year just to bring us in line with other schools. Luckily his response was 'that figure doesn't scare me' which was a relief, so looks like most of the proposals I've put forwards are going to get the green light over the course of the year. It's amazing how quickly things add up when you take everything into account, licensing agreements, extended warrantys that may be needed, consumables, maintenance and spare parts and a small contingency for failure of current equipment etc. etc.

We're quite a small academy school with about 350 students, but the ICT we inherited from our predecessor school is so dated it needs massive investment over the next 3 years to purge the 4-5yr old DELL GX60 workstations that are the main stay of our system at the moment. As well as our aging CC3 servers some of which are getting on for 5yrs old as well, and to purchase some more storage as we just don't have enough at the moment along with a million and one other things that are just lacking in our school at the moment!

Mike