nathan Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 I'm just being nosey on what other people do in there organisations with regards to level of devices for staff members, do people have a fixed budget or a certain spec level for certain level of staff? I've always gone down the route of you'll get a device that will allow you to carry out your role, but even with this you could go for a cheap £250 laptop or a £500 laptop. I see various staff from the organisations that are using Surface Pros or Surface Books (the latter being around £1200) - i just can't warrant paying that for a single staff member.
TechMonkey Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 We try and go for a standard device unless there is a compelling reason/business case, for something out of the ordinary. So our desktops are all the same except a few have CD Drives and a much smaller group have much more powerful machines because of multiple monitors and because of the types of work they do. For future devices we are looking at staff devices we are looking at a price point of around £300-£400. We want to make sure the device is responsive enough that staff don't get frustrated and end up not using them (so no £250 laptops), but don't need to be super spec. We are approaching the rollout with a standard use case, internet, access to school docs and report writing, and that will apply to everyone including SLT. If anyone comes to us with a real need for a super whizzy need then we will consider it but I can't see any case that will be granted as there are enough PCs around the school for use and we provide Remote Access. This has been made easier by having the support of SLT, so no wanting the shiny and everyone else seeing what they don't have. We got some Surface 3s and a single Surface Book when the price crashed a while back but the price has skyrocketed so drastically that we would never consider them now. Lovely devices but hard to justify.
bossman Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 We gave up years ago supplying staff with nice shiny laptops or devices to their wish lists.... Laptops for teachers was the last time any of our staff were given a laptop... If they want to use a laptop at school they bring there own and only have access to the internet... All classrooms have desktops (Some 8 years old) connected to ancient Promethean Interactive WhiteBoards (All still work as good as when they were new some nearly 15 years old) We have hardly any budget at all...£10k running costs and as for projects its £0 We beg for bits and pieces to maintain what is a pretty reliable network which over nearly 20 years has seen only 13 hours of unmanaged downtime.... We are to move into a brand new school next September with a brand new infrastructure but because the EFA doesn't have the money for this part of the country (Up North) they cannot afford to replace our kit so we have to devolve all this ancient kit over to the new school..... Question I would like to ask is this: How the hell can schools afford to finance the likes of what has been discussed on here like Surface Pros or Surface Books or even IPads? My servers are secondhand given to me by someone on here which were at least 3 years old then and this was nearly 5 years ago my backend Synology units were the only new kit we obtained and that was because they were dirt cheap and came with 5 years warranty.... Our Cisco switches are nearly 20 years old!!! Since the JRE I'm £11k per year down in wages.... It really beggars belief that some schools can finance all these pieces of kit and some cannot where is the difference and why? Sorry to take over the post with a rant but feeling rather fragile and annoyed!!!
Primus Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 We gave up years ago supplying staff with nice shiny laptops or devices to their wish lists.... Laptops for teachers was the last time any of our staff were given a laptop... If they want to use a laptop at school they bring there own and only have access to the internet... All classrooms have desktops (Some 8 years old) connected to ancient Promethean Interactive WhiteBoards (All still work as good as when they were new some nearly 15 years old) We have hardly any budget at all...£10k running costs and as for projects its £0 We beg for bits and pieces to maintain what is a pretty reliable network which over nearly 20 years has seen only 13 hours of unmanaged downtime.... We are to move into a brand new school next September with a brand new infrastructure but because the EFA doesn't have the money for this part of the country (Up North) they cannot afford to replace our kit so we have to devolve all this ancient kit over to the new school..... Question I would like to ask is this: How the hell can schools afford to finance the likes of what has been discussed on here like Surface Pros or Surface Books or even IPads? My servers are secondhand given to me by someone on here which were at least 3 years old then and this was nearly 5 years ago my backend Synology units were the only new kit we obtained and that was because they were dirt cheap and came with 5 years warranty.... Our Cisco switches are nearly 20 years old!!! Since the JRE I'm £11k per year down in wages.... It really beggars belief that some schools can finance all these pieces of kit and some cannot where is the difference and why? Sorry to take over the post with a rant but feeling rather fragile and annoyed!!! The difference is how schools choose to spend their cash - I speak as someone based at a school in the NE with far more realistic budgets than yours - you have my sympathies as it sounds like a rubbish position to be in! 1
nathan Posted October 30, 2019 Author Posted October 30, 2019 I agree with Primus, it's down to what schools decide to spend there money on. Back on the topic, do people categorise by cost or spec although i understand they will be linked.
DGardiner Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 The difference is how schools choose to spend their cash - I speak as someone based at a school in the NE with far more realistic budgets than yours - you have my sympathies as it sounds like a rubbish position to be in! Yup. at one school last year i had £2k in the it budget! I also bought 60 ipads, 30 chromebooks, replaced 6 projectors with touch panels. We still get plenty opportunity to spend on projects, just gotta keep the powers that be in the loop so when funding becomes available you get to have some - I also get most the stuff i ask for for anything else. it probably comes down to how conservative the school is budgeting and how hard you get hit with unexpected stuff
psydii Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 Standard Laptop (pro/enterprise grade) for most. Desktop for those entirely based at a single location. iPad for extremely mobile people (typically Learning Support members who work 1:1 with student, and the student is often the one using the device) Desktops for IT suites where physically possible. Some odd shaped multi-use based rooms use a bank of laptops or iPads again depending on use case. HP/Dell/Lenovo/Apple hardware only. Enterprise grade for best support through SCCM 3rd party updates. At this scale the standardised enterprise grade kit saves probably £12-20K of technician time each year. We're lucky enough to be able to refresh everything every 5-7 years. If things got tighter we'd go refurbed but the same grade of kit.
mavhc Posted October 30, 2019 Posted October 30, 2019 70% of a school budget is spent on staff, then there's heating/power costs which are high in an old school. IT budget is a rounding error, they can double or halve it without noticing really. Hire one fewer TA, now you have 20k more budget. As for devices, everyone here gets the same, on the plus side the head's not asking for something fancier to prove they're important, on the minus side they don't care about IT enough to fund it properly.
nathan Posted October 31, 2019 Author Posted October 31, 2019 What phase is your school? 70% is fairly low for primary.
mavhc Posted October 31, 2019 Posted October 31, 2019 What phase is your school? 70% is fairly low for primary. Picked some Nottinghamshire ones at random, 70-80% was normal, one had 92%, and a special school had 84%, anyway, higher it is, the better my point is.
jthompson Posted October 31, 2019 Posted October 31, 2019 Regular mid-range business machines all round here. Tends to be one batch of laptops and one batch of PCs each year to keep the range of hardware as narrow as possible. Staff laptops get reassigned quite regularly, increasingly so now that imaging is easier and cloud storage is being used more than local storage. Staff learn not to think of the laptop as 'theirs' for the next several years. In terms of different grades of machine, we will shuffle deployments around according to the age of the machine. New, they'll all have been equivalent spec, but the most recent purchases tend to be deployed to rooms that need more computing power: ICT, Graphics, Design Tech, Music. Older stuff then gets moved out to rooms where usage is more just regular productivity and web browsing, or where the hardware will get treated with less care.
nathan Posted October 31, 2019 Author Posted October 31, 2019 Picked some Nottinghamshire ones at random, 70-80% was normal, one had 92%, and a special school had 84%, anyway, higher it is, the better my point is. Definitely, High 70's sounds the average for Leicestershire.
mavhc Posted November 1, 2019 Posted November 1, 2019 Only problem I've had with slightly older machines is the new Blender won't run, needs a higher open gl version, need some cheap half height gpus I suppose.
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