Educational cutbacks following latest govt announcement

[mthomas08]

1 minute ago, PotNoodleTech said:

 

Thats exaclty why I've never set up cloud printing on the 1:1 chromebooks.

 

It can technically be accomplisehd - but sure as heck I aint setting it up!!!

We had email to print but it wasn't heavily used. The majority of our printing was done by staff.... and they didn't have laptops or devices..   just PCs in every classroom. They simply didn't care and would print print and.. print. The limits weren't set. Reports didn't work. It was a free 4 all.

[DrCheese]

Yes, I've seen a few places that have done 1:1 schemes with students saying it's going to reduce printing costs, only for them to stay the same, if not dramatically higher (due to having it always accessible)

 

It's so bizarre 

[Roberto]

I think its difficult to save money at the best of times, no one thinks they're wasting it in the first place, do they?

I would expect that most of you have already taken most or all of the low-hanging fruit at your employers from previous budget cuts and restrictions. What's left now should be less of a "IT / Department X budget cut" and more of a "school or MAT-wide efficiency drive", which might mean some people having to give up what they want because it isn't what they need. This needs real leadership from the top, not just the head of whatever team.

[mavhc]

Schools have barely recognised the existence of the printing press, still have people standing by a board sending out information to groups of people.

 

When picking any kind of software the main question should be: how do we export this data when we want to switch? If it's not easy they're going to put up the price one day, you should make them fear that, not embrace it

[ITGuyNW]

I've been pushing for a member of SLT to become an IT lead as per DFE standards but they're just not interested so this leads to inefficient working.

 

A classic example is departments taking out platforms such as sparx and seneca, with part of the reason being to reduce printing. Now a couple of years later, printing is as high as ever. 

[Olliedawg]

6 minutes ago, ITGuyNW said:

I've been pushing for a member of SLT to become an IT lead as per DFE standards but they're just not interested so this leads to inefficient working.

 

A classic example is departments taking out platforms such as sparx and seneca, with part of the reason being to reduce printing. Now a couple of years later, printing is as high as ever. 

Same here, we don't have one at my school. I've asked in the past but they're not interested, and i'm not a member of SLT

[Davit2005]

The printing topic has gone on for years. In 2009 a secondary school we had tons of desktop printers and a whole repro graphic department at that school but people would still send pages of prints to their desktop printers. In one admin room there was an MFD, each of 3 staff members had a desktop printer on their desk and the room was no bigger than 5m square. The users desktop printers were requiring replacement toners at least once every 3 months. No backup from SLT to remove the desktop printers.

Edited April 1, 2025 by Davit2005

[Andrew_C]

For secondary / 6th form - forget paperless for now.  Exams are still hand written - the kids still need to be able to write.  It isn't going to change any time soon.  I do know that some boards are trying it...

 

Years ago we started sending revision materials home on DVD, then via a link.  The kids just didn't do it.  We've gone back to paper (MUCH paper) and they do do it.

[paulkerton]

20 minutes ago, Andrew_C said:

For secondary / 6th form - forget paperless for now.  Exams are still hand written - the kids still need to be able to write.  It isn't going to change any time soon.  I do know that some boards are trying it...

It isn't about going paperless entirely, it's about making smart decisions on working and when it's needed. Do they need 30 copies of that worksheet that you tell them not to write on, which they do anyway - or could they work from the worksheet and produce their work on a piece of paper or in a workbook instead, which is far less costly than the print.

[Bumhug360]

3 hours ago, theeggmaster said:

Printing is the biggest bugbear I have/had. It's definitely a cultural shift but it's embedded so deeply into education that a school has to take a stance from Governors/SLT. IT can't make that change directly unless they are represented well on SLT or are a member of that team.

 

My partners nephew had some homework set. For art, create a tiki image board on 1 page of A4, has to be handed in and has to be in colour. The homework was posted in Teams, it serves no purpose at all to print it out when it could just be uploaded to teams, its not just the printing costs you also have to pay to get stuff disposed of, teacher is going to spend 30 seconds looking at it and its going in the bin.

 

[Koldov]

Or the classic...

 

Print 30 worksheets from Twinkl, get the kids to fill it in...

 

Then stick it in their workbook...

Edited April 1, 2025 by Koldov

[theeggmaster]

43 minutes ago, Bumhug360 said:

 

My partners nephew had some homework set. For art, create a tiki image board on 1 page of A4, has to be handed in and has to be in colour. The homework was posted in Teams, it serves no purpose at all to print it out when it could just be uploaded to teams, its not just the printing costs you also have to pay to get stuff disposed of, teacher is going to spend 30 seconds looking at it and its going in the bin.

 

My daughter is in secondary school. My son is in primary going into secondary. Daughter has some work set on Teams, some on Spark Maths, some in person, some in her homework book and some she has to remember. No consistency at all. My son has an iPad which stays at school and all homework is set online, which he does from his Chromebook or my laptop. Secondary school my daughter goes to has always been against using IT, but when Covid hit they just couldn't get work to the children. So far behind the times (rant over).

[mavhc]

What systems are we providing to make something like Print to PDF better than printing to paper?

 

I'm thinking an automatic archive of all the work you do on a computer, indexed with student names, dates, classes, teachers, subjects, levels and grades

 

People understand paper, they stick it in a book with the child's name and subject and class so they can find it again later

[Koldov]

We are also doing parent's evenings at the moment and all the books are piled up on the sides of the class for the parents to look through.

 

Not sure if flicking through a digital device screen would be better?

[mikes]

I don't mind exams being printed as we don't have the equipment for computer exams plus they cost way more in staff resources to administer than we'd save in print costs

We have those staff who have their classwork done on computer, handed in on google classroom, then they print off hundreds of sheets of kids work a week to mark with a pen and then throw away. This same staff member used prints as a "print preview"  i.e. kids would do some work on computer, print it out unfinished "to see what it looks like", the teacher will then mark/look over this work and tell the student what needs to be finished. As if it wasn't on the screen ???   This same teacher as a grown adult broke down into tears when the printer in her room was going to be moved (1 printer per floor)

Not everything is better on a screen e.g. I could maybe accept people printing out PDF manuals to text to read, rather than read on screen (I'm happy screen reading) but some people take the proverbial when it comes to printing

Edited April 1, 2025 by mikes

[mavhc]

There's only 1 solution, charge the department for their printing costs

[Rob_D]

12 minutes ago, mavhc said:

There's only 1 solution, charge the department for their printing costs

We do that, and we still have one department that, on average, prints over 17,500 pages a month. I'd hate to think how bad it would be if we didn't.

 

It does bring to mind my first school (many many years ago),who were very blasé about printing. Then the school got a fancy new MFD under a lease which purportedly included x number of "free" copies per year (based on average expected usage - I think you can see where this is going...), with what I assume were higher pay-as-go-costs if you overrun. They blew through the included copies in under a week. At which point we were asked to remove teacher's ability to print to the MFD, and staff had to request usage with the front office.

 

[gaz350b]

I'm going to go against the grain a little and say if you can get your printing under control its actually a cost effective learning tool but it has to be done right and I also realise every schools layout is going to bring its own challenges to how you approach printing. We are fairly lucky that our school is based around classrooms with a resource area so deploying a solution around MFDs is easy (with an ID Card system in place).

We reduced access to Colour copying for staff - only team leaders and above have colour copying access but all staff can still print colour. if staff want colour copies they have to go through either repro or Team Leaders.

Team Leaders get a weekly email with their teams printing summary (most seem to keep an eye on this and raise concerns with their teams if one is blowing the budget).

 

We have 2 virtual queues for staff and students - Mono and colour, Mono is always the default printer.

 

Give students access to free Mono printing on their print credits but keep their monthly printing top-up as low as possible. for example our year 7 only get 10p a month to accommodate final work.

Reducing Colour printing for students is a quick win.  Also apply restrictions such as max copies and max page counts (educate staff and students what these restrictions are).

 

Remove as many small personal printers as possible. If you can get this down to just Senior Leaders you have done as much as you probably can.

 

 

 

[mthomas08]

19 hours ago, theeggmaster said:

My daughter is in secondary school. My son is in primary going into secondary. Daughter has some work set on Teams, some on Spark Maths, some in person, some in her homework book and some she has to remember. No consistency at all. My son has an iPad which stays at school and all homework is set online, which he does from his Chromebook or my laptop. Secondary school my daughter goes to has always been against using IT, but when Covid hit they just couldn't get work to the children. So far behind the times (rant over).

This. This. This.

 

Oh and the 'here is a Teams piece of work, now print it for me'.

 

I don't know our full printing costs but must be an average of £20K-£30K a year. Certain depts are pushing for G Suite or Teams, yet still printing en mass.

 

What people don't fully understand is, it isn't just about print per copy.. or toner for non managed printers or even the staff hours required to maintain them.... it's the cost of the printer itself. We've just spent some money upgrading our main fleet for the summer. Then there's the biometrics on them which is an annual contract - costing us money with the print MFDs and separate biometric support. One company does the hardware - another does the software.

 

All this money adds up and at a time when student numbers are dropping and we are having our Ofsted review (due to a bad Ofsted last year). Don't get me wrong, financially we are very well managed and doing better compared to most schools in our area - even ones doing far better on Ofsted reports. We have money left in the pot every year.

 

Just that printing culture..... it is a culture.. lets be clear....  and all that money adds up at the end of the year.

[machy]

4 minutes ago, mthomas08 said:

I don't know our full printing costs but must be an average of £20K-£30K a year. Certain depts are pushing for G Suite or Teams, yet still printing en mass.

 

What people don't fully understand is, it isn't just about print per copy

 

I Wonder if we started going "Full time staff equivalent" rather that price per page if it would make a difference. 

"we could have had 2 full time TAs for the amount we have printed" 

[gaz350b]

I actually think if you related it per student it would be better as each student comes with money. We need an extra 30 students in the school over the next 5 years to cover our printing costs would be much more powerful.

[Rob_D]

Visualizing the sheer volume of printing certainly doesn't help. My previous manager managed to get enough (mostly empty) paper boxes to cover how much we print a year and we stacked them up in the school hall for inset, and I've done a stack of our annual printing verses London landmarks (I can't find it now, but we beat Big Ben)

[ITGuyNW]

Papercut says since 2016 we've used : 

 

• http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxx/images/icons3/16x16/tree.png?71485papercut-mf 575.8 trees
• http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxx/images/icons3/16x16/data.png?71485papercut-mf 60,944 kg of CO₂
• http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxx/images/icons3/16x16/lightbulb_on.png?71485papercut-mf 1.4 hours running Times Square

Restricting colour toner is an interesting one. That might be something to investigate.

 

Has anyone else also had an uptick of coloured paper? An increase in accessibility has meant more demand however I'm trying to keep an eye on it as some departments are trying to use it as default.

 

[jthompson]

YMMV but after various rounds of trying to rationalise the printing situation, some subject areas just do want to print more. We charge printing to subject areas, so they're aware of the cost and all that, and have made the determination that they're happy to spend their money on whatever volume of printing/copying they're doing.

I'm not going to get into shaming people with environmental impact stats, since they could be diligently cycling to work for all I know.

[Fin]

On 01/04/2025 at 14:36, Koldov said:

Or the classic...

 

Print 30 worksheets from Twinkl, get the kids to fill it in...

 

Then stick it in their workbook...

then you have to factor in the cost of the glue sticks too........