My Budget this year.

[ninjabeaver]

Hi everyone.

 

I think this is going to be a topic close to eveyones hearts.

 

My personal view is that there is never enough money to buy ICT related bits, you could go on forever and continuosly upgrade / improve / replace and add equipment and software but I think there is very little chance of that happening.

 

Anyway, my budget this year was £2600 (Two Thousand Six Hundred). From this budget I have to purchase :-

 

1:. Paper for printing on. £500

2:. Toner / Ink for all IT Suites and my Office £2250

3:. 150 new Optical Mice to replace all the IT Suites £330

4:. PDA x 2 for myself and my Technician £440

5:. Spare Parts £500ish

6:. Floppy Discs and Blank CD's £100ish

 

I've already "borrowed" £1250 from the Technology College fund to purchase the other half of the inks / toners.

 

As you can see I'm well over budget. I'm also not allowed to spend more than 70% of the budget before September this year. I'm well and truly fed up and totally screwed.

 

[MkII]

Do you have another pot for the big stuff then Ninja?

 

...and what size is your school/Technology College?

[Geoff]

1:. Paper for printing on. £500

2:. Toner / Ink for all IT Suites and my Office £2250

 

There's a fairly solid arguement that can be used that these items can and should come out of the general 'stationary' budget thats not tied to the IT budget. After all other people use the printers other than IT staff do they not?

 

Alternatively, you can invest in some printer quota/control software.

 

The third option would be to ask individual departments to buy their own toner/paper/etc for their own printers.

[russdev]

here we have about 600 budgets...

 

ngfl for major upgrades and now that county decided that they are going to take our broadband cost before giving us ngfl money..

 

elc for software....

 

a budget for teaching it

 

a budget for ictac... which toners and and papaer comes out off..

 

Russ

[Mungo]

I agree with Geoff.

 

Its a difficult point to get across to those that be but you need to draw a line between IT infrastructure and IT consumables. Pushing the ownership of consumables back to a departmental budget instead of IT budget certainly makes people think twice about pushing 600 page pdf's through a deskjet. It is also a fairer way of doing it as some people do take the pee if they know they aren't paying for it.

 

The other thing that really does work is spending more money on larger printers (get a decent 3 year warranty while you are at it, makes your job sooooo much easier) as you get a much better scale of economies in printing costs.

 

As an example, we ripped over 40 deskjets out of a primary who had a consumables bill of nearly £2k per term, MADE them buy 4 large B&W and 2 Colour lasers. Their consumables bill dropped to just over £1k per annum saving nearly £7k. The printers paid for themselves in the second year. Do the business case and put it in front of them!

 

Another thing Geoff mentioned was the quota s/ware which is a great way of taking their usage info and handing it back to their line management. It does make people uncomfortable but if your pitch is saving money then there shouldnt be much of an argument.

 

Ninjabeaver, dont know how many boxes you have but it sounds like ur getting screwed over cos ur management aren't 'IT' facing yet. Be interested in knowing more about your setup.

[ninjabeaver]

What do you need to know?

 

I'll post what I can.

 

I'm alrready using Printer Management / Quota system in school and it's cut paper usage dramatically.

 

My IT Budget is made up of about £500 out of the main pot, and then 5% of each departments budget to 'cover' their toner and paper usage. I'm just getting peeved that there are more pressing things to spend the budget on like replacing a vandalised IT Suite (which is 6 years old already!!), improving IT Suite security (IP Cameras) etc etc.

 

And whoever said the school is not IT facing hit the nail on the head. The headship team consist of people, bar one person, who rarely use the technology, but have to becasue they are forced into it.

 

Mark, no there is no other Big Pot. I have to go on my hands and knees with a case to get extra bits. The school is a Secondary School with about 900+ pupils.

 

All I seem to be doing lately is cobbling stuff together to get it working again, but all that is is a short term solution.

[MkII]

Feel for ya there dude! The effectiveness of IT provision is dependant on management support - something should be done about that.

 

As a colleuage of mine says - prepare an open and shut case - emphasising the benefits to the school. It's a major waste of your time propping up dud stock - the school needs to have a plan of rolling replacement in place - allowed for in the budget - so that they can meet the need responsibly.

 

The welsh assembly [bless 'em ] quoted a standard of 1 PC for every 5 pupils in a school - which is what we're always quoting.

 

How are your central support guys? Lancashire sound like they've got this part sorted - it really helps to have a good team at the helm.

[Ric_]

Well my budget this year was about £23K (that's the one I can spend willy-nilly) plus there are the grant 31 budgets which have wiered and wonderful things done with them.

 

IT doesn't seem to have been the focus for some time here and some fool got the school tied into RM and we are still suffering (RM Connect 2.4 - yes, NT4 & 98 ).

 

Luckily, I should be getting up to £90K to buy 10 servers, a SAN and assorted gubbins to implement a thin client solution using Citrix. We WILL drag the place kicking and screaming into the 21st century if we have to!!!

 

(Oh yeah - I intend to use Print Manager Plus to charge all the departments for stuff).

[Geoff]

I might of got the wrong impression but it seems its all going downhill fast. Let me guess. Your basically under funded and under staffed? Unfortunatly thats a common problem in educational IT support.

 

If it was me, I'd put into writing the increasing insurmountable problems your facing and why they can't be permenantly solved. I'd expect this mostly revolves around lack of money to buy the equipment you need and lack of time to implement a full and proper solution.

 

I also think what you need to do is step back and look at the big picture. Rather than asking for extra money every little thing that comes up, take the IT infrastructure as a whole and work out what it would cost in both time and money to put right. You should compromise somewhere between what you want and what you need.

 

Ultimately, if after all that, management does not respond and you feel you aren't making progress then I believe you should resign your position. It sends a very clear message there's a massive problem.

 

There's plenty of other schools out there that need your skills where ICT is well funded. I see no point in wasting your time in a school that does not value its IT infrastructure.

[chrisash]

Don't all schools get the ngfl funding?

 

On top of the ngfl grant which is used for primarily for cross curricular ICT development I also get around £22k to cover repairs, upgrades, new PC's etc. We don't have any PC's in ICT rooms over 3 years old.

 

The bleedin' kids still smash em to pieces though! which is an entirely diferent issue! costs us a fortune in mice and keyboards! guess its a good job we're well funded!

[ninjabeaver]

Can I ask all you guys to post your IT Budgets in total you have to spend and where in the country you are? Just so I can get a country wide idea.

 

I'm shocked at how little I have to work with. I was an IT Technician for over 6 years, but got tired of the travelling so I wanted to settle down, and when this came up I was off like a shot.

 

I'm going to sound like boasting now, but I have single handedly turned this school's IT system around in three years starting off with the worlds oldest NT4 server and 70 PC's. I'm now managing an IT Technician (who is only with me 50% of the timetable!!) and seven servers, plus all the Bromcom and Admin software. The school has nearly 350 PC's of varyin ages and 60 Laptops.

 

Perhaps it is time to wake up senior management. I'll get the same reply though. NO MONEY!!

 

I've got 3 PC's on my desk I can't repair because of lack of funds, perhaps I should not have purchased the two PDA's for myself and my tech and saved £440 but we need them for taking down all the requests people ask us as we travel around the school.

 

FFS, my Techie has had to bring in an old PC from his house so that he has got something to work on in the office. I was without a decent machine for three years before they eventually stumped up the cash to get me a laptop.

 

Perhaps it is time to start looking around.... Anyone want a Network Manager in the Norfolk area? lol

[Geoff]

I work at a secondry school and also I work at nine primary schools. I do not know the budget of the secondry school as it isn't relevant to my job.

 

The amount of money avalible in the primary schools depends on how many children go to the school. On average its around about two to three thousand. Around half of this money comes from LancsNGFL.

 

If more money is required its usually possible to shuffle things round in the budgets. I recently paid for a laser printer out of the furniture budget for example.

 

If all else fails, or there's a purchase for over three thousand it has to go to the governers for approval. Combined with this its usually possible to extract money from the PTFA for the school. That also has to go past the school governers.

 

There are also seperate subsidised schemes run by LancsNGFL. For example the laptops for teachers and the whiteboards schemes which have been touched on in other conversations.

 

Its also possible to take a 'loan' out from LancsNGFL to otherwise pay for equipment and work that otherwise wouldn't be affordable and repay the 'loan' over several years. This has been done in several primaries to pay for their ICT suite.

 

I'm in West Lancashire.

[KeithFermor]

Hey there Geoff! You're right, if the budget hat doesn't fit, and no-one is listening, then move... But! I must admit that it hurts to leave a school where ICT is such a dirty word and where, ultimately, the students suffer. At the end of the day, I make it my prinicpal to try my darndest to improve the ICT lot of the students - and stuff Senior Management!

 

It appears that the perception of the majority of school staff is that supporting the ICT resources (and quite often any other electrical equipment going, plus ICT furniture) is equivalent to cleaning floors - and that's not such a simple task! We are assumed to have respective fingers on ALL of the buttons ALL of the time, AND to have a deep technical knowledge of ALL software AND hardware... Phew! And then to have to beg for financial resources...

 

Why, oh why do we do it!

[Ric_]

Don't forget that there is also the usual 'need' to increase the number of machines. This never seems to be a problem and money tends to appear. However, how often does the maintenance budget increase to compensate for the addition of more computers? Sounds like ninjabeaver has the same budget now as when the school bought its first suite!

[MkII]

Luckily, I should be getting up to £90K to buy 10 servers, a SAN and assorted gubbins to implement a thin client solution using Citrix. We WILL drag the place kicking and screaming into the 21st century if we have to!!!

 

Don't get me going on Citrix! - When I started here 4/5 years ago the school had just bought into Citrix. They presumed it'd do multimedia including audio and video [LOL], entirely over the thin clients [ROTFL], 90 of which were 5yr old + rubbish, 25 new Wyse terminals. Don't get me wrong - Citrix is a wonderful thing - and fantastically good at what it was designed for - text editing and low screen demanding stuff. And administration is a breeze. But a student can take down an application server by holding the down key in excel [you need a memory limiting app to throttle sessions], and anything animated is never smooth but a slow flick book - also a server killer.

[Mungo]

We are an education team recently merged with the corporate IT support. as a county we have 14 secondarys and 84 primarys. We manage nearly all the primarys and half the secondarys in terms of day to day support and all of them in terms of infrastructure (outbound link) support.

 

We have a number secondarys with the Technology Status (each have about a thousand kids) and their budget is £120k pa EACH purely for IT. We managed to get in early with a few of them with the idea of showing them how to spend their money wisely and that has really worked. we are getting to a stage now where the internal infrastructure (active kit) is bought & paid for with another 3 to 4 years life left and the desktops & servers are on a 3 to 4 year rolling replacement program. Next year a couple of them wont have anything to spend their money on apart from the fun bits (i.e. no bodging or propping up of network, just new toys)

 

I really feel for Ninjabeaver knowing that is where we have come form 3 to 4 years ago and I know exactly the situation. I suspect Ninjabeaver has a much bigger budget than he realises but he will never see it. I have seen IT budget (Standard Funds Grant for instance) 'redeployed' into other areas (highly illegal but they are their own law in that respect) because the mgmt team dont realise the importance of IT or the fact that they are not running IT in a cost efficient manner. Ironically enough we now have a couple of instances that are completely the reverse, budget from other areas being redeployed to IT because they realise that IT is there to make their workload more manageable. Its our job to make sure it does. If you are able to accomplish this, you budget wont be a problem.

 

Something that has helped us is giving kit a specific lifetime (3 to 4 years in this case depending on role) and leasing it over three years (Dell seem ok for this). That way they have a planned expenditure over three years. Every year then you get rid of a bit and take on a new bit. Its not a huge expenditure all at once but spread over a time but they need to realise that kit doesnt last forever.

 

IMHO IT in schools is better funded than most private business but its case of:-

A) Getting you hands on the money

B) Making sure the money is spent as wisely as possible

C) Reducing teacher workloads to guarantee continual spends in IT

 

and most importantly.......

 

DONT RESCUE ROPEY KIT.....if you know it on its last legs and you know what the problem is and you know you can fix it...DONT. It is seriously in your best interests to put that doggie down. It surprising where they can pull money from when they have to but if we keep propping it up and putting it back on its feet then they will never put their hands in their pockets to replace it. Firm but fair!

[Ric_]

Citrix has moved on somewhat. This could be a whole thread on its own but it has its pros and cons.

 

Multimedia authoring is out (try to find a midi port on a Wyse terminal!) but FULL USB support is now there and the process throttling is built in. You can apparantly even run autocad although I am slightly sceptical.

[MkII]

Thanks for the great advice there Mungo!

Something that has helped us is giving kit a specific lifetime (3 to 4 years in this case depending on role) and leasing it over three years (Dell seem ok for this). That way they have a planned expenditure over three years. Every year then you get rid of a bit and take on a new bit. Its not a huge expenditure all at once but spread over a time but they need to realise that kit doesnt last forever.

We looked at leasing for the very same reasons recently - i'd be very interested to know what sort of agreement you have with Dell - how the loan pans out each year. We couldn't get past the councils Procurement Section who's advice was that the deal needed intense scrutiny but that no-one would do that.

Citrix has moved on somewhat.

My lips are sealed!

[Mungo]

Hi Mark,

 

The way we have got round that debarcle is the fact that we are told that for our county, 'schools are their own authority'. This has been a double edged sword in the fact that we cant 'force' them to do anything as an IT team within the council as they slip through our corporate governance. But we can advise them on an individual basis, so we setup the paper work and build the deal up but the deal is directly between the school and Dell in each case. It may be different from county to county but thats how it works for us. Its a little extra work for us on the pre-sales side but the benefits are worth it.

 

In terms of what Dell offer, they are no better or no worse than anyone else but the lease deal did represent good value plus as a corporate we are into them in a large way so we can throw a little weight (just a little mind) behind it.

 

I will try to dig some figures out for you but I will have to get them from a school. The education team at Dell are pretty good for an example quote also.

 

Have fun!

[ninjabeaver]

DONT RESCUE ROPEY KIT.....if you know it on its last legs and you know what the problem is and you know you can fix it...DONT. It is seriously in your best interests to put that doggie down. It surprising where they can pull money from when they have to but if we keep propping it up and putting it back on its feet then they will never put their hands in their pockets to replace it. Firm but fair!

 

That's a good point, and something I'm doing more and more know. 1. Because I'm busy with other things that take priority, and 2. I get no thanks for repairing and saving the school money.

 

On the note of hidden budgets I've got some people I can talk to on the Governors and I'm trying to find out about another budget I've heard about. Could be the money pot I'm looking for by the sounds of it.

[MkII]

'schools are their own authority'.

hehe! - priceless! - and true here too.

...so we setup the paper work and build the deal up but the deal is directly between the school and Dell in each case. It may be different from county to county but thats how it works for us. Its a little extra work for us on the pre-sales side but the benefits are worth it.

That would be so good. We just couldn't get county to move:(

 

In terms of what Dell offer, they are no better or no worse than anyone else but the lease deal did represent good value plus as a corporate we are into them in a large way so we can throw a little weight (just a little mind) behind it.

Powys are big on Dell too now.

 

I will try to dig some figures out for you but I will have to get them from a school. The education team at Dell are pretty good for an example quote also.

I'll give 'em a call. Who did the finance - was it Dell themselves or a third party? If I could use yourselves as an example i'm sure it'd help persuade the management team that this'd be a good thing.

[russdev]

Don't all schools get the ngfl funding?

 

On top of the ngfl grant which is used for primarily for cross curricular ICT development I also get around £22k to cover repairs, upgrades, new PC's etc. We don't have any PC's in ICT rooms over 3 years old.

 

The bleedin' kids still smash em to pieces though! which is an entirely diferent issue! costs us a fortune in mice and keyboards! guess its a good job we're well funded!

 

all state schools do i think

 

but this is last year so what schools are going to do next year..

 

i feel sorry for the schools who used ngfl for toners etc and not spending it on infustrucute like it should of been..

 

Russ

[Dos_Box]

My tuppence worth. After spending several years in the trenches as a high school network manager I remember clearly being told that my first budget was £900. What they didn't tell me was that the £900 was also the IT departmental budget. The department at the time was run by an English teacher with almost zero knowlege of IT. By the start of the next school year we had all new ICT teaching staff, all of which were enthusiastic and wanted to sort the problem out. As Network Manager I managed ALL bugets and managed all technical aspects in the school. The teachers taught. It was a great system and my next budget was £6000 for network reasources and whole school printing, which was pooled, and funded by all departments. When I left the annual IT technical budget was approx 15k.

As part of my new post I often hve to vosot schools to give advice on what they are doing wrong with their networks. Sometimes the schools are shining beacons of efficiancy and good management with a network manager who know their stuff and a modern and well stuctured network kept up to date by

a decent rolling upgrade program.

Then their are the other schools. The ones where the school management has starved the IT department of funds and have not in vested a bean in their network for years. Indeed, to quote on school I visited recently when I asked the deputy head what their annual IT budget was his reply was 'Whatever NGfL money we receive'

Not good. Especially as this was a technology college who had been diverting funds into another department.

Until a school realises that ICT is a school asset and not just a department then there will still be people running single servers with 20GB drives an Windows 98 on the desktop.

Becta, source of all information is still too teacher-centric and is (IMHO) still very patronising to IT technical staff, and until Becta start to issue edicts to schools nothing will change!

[russdev]

Becta, source of all information is still too teacher-centric and is (IMHO) still very patronising to IT technical staff, and until Becta start to issue edicts to schools nothing will change!

 

had this conversation with someone from becta recently that until schools stoping seeing IT as seperate thing and whole it from teaching to network management should be intergrated for years it as neem it support as a add on to the school and integral part of schools.

 

Fits does start to improve this but only schools already doing this proccess are going to look at fits.

 

russ

[Mungo]

Dos_box, you are spot on.

 

On a similar note, here's a link to a bit of a rant i through into Becta's forums a couple of years ago. Had a bit of 'mixed' feedback about it. lol.

 

LEA baiting is such fine sport!

 

http://lists.becta.org.uk/pipermail/research/2003-May/000240.html