localzuk Posted November 29, 2009 Posted November 29, 2009 BBC News - Schools urged to save £750m costs The start of the downward slide for school budgets...
GrumbleDook Posted November 29, 2009 Posted November 29, 2009 Some of the targets set are likely to be short term targets due to a short term reduction in funding ... the downside of that is that to make some decent savings in things like power consumption, etc ... some investment may be needed to start off with. If you are moving over to open source software to save on licences then you have to invest in time and training, for support staff as well as the teachers and students. Time for staff to rewrite schemes of work to reflect the new software (they probably have to do this now that folks are swapping up to MS Office 2007 anyway ... perhaps they could dedicate the time to doing it for Open Office instead). Moving to virtualisation can be a cost saver ... but again investment needed ... A big area where you can save costs is by moving to digital media instead of paper. It can get staff to cut down on photocopying, help get them and the students using your VLE and get parents accessing the VLE too to get information about the school and their kids.
laserblazer Posted November 29, 2009 Posted November 29, 2009 Sticking auto door closers would save a fortune here. Everyone seems to hae been born in barns!
beeswax Posted November 29, 2009 Posted November 29, 2009 A big area where you can save costs is by moving to digital media instead of paper. It can get staff to cut down on photocopying, help get them and the students using your VLE and get parents accessing the VLE too to get information about the school and their kids. Perhaps you can have a word with the teacher who wants us all to think carefully before printing out emails, and sent us the message by printing it out 150 times on good quality A4 paper and sticking the results in our pigeon holes. 2
cookie_monster Posted November 29, 2009 Posted November 29, 2009 Perhaps you can have a word with the teacher who wants us all to think carefully before printing out emails, and sent us the message by printing it out 150 times on good quality A4 paper and sticking the results in our pigeon holes. I hate the pigeon hole culture in schools it's so wastefull. 1
beeswax Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 I hate the pigeon hole culture in schools it's so wastefull. As a side issue on this I've recently been running a couple of surveys in school which are both paper-based (stuck in pigeon holes) and online. Replies to the paper-based surveys are about 4X the number of online replies. With the online survey you get a rush of answers at the time people read the email mentioning this, and then numbers fall off drastically; whereas paper-based surveys in pigeon holes are "live" issues for much longer. that is, they stay fresh in the pigeon hole until the allocated person empties it. Emails are immediately read and then (in most cases) forgotten. I agree that it's very 19th century or even older and does leave itself open to the sort of abuse I mentioned above, though the teacher didn't realize the irony of it all until it was pointed out.
localzuk Posted November 30, 2009 Author Posted November 30, 2009 I do wish staff were more keen to use electronic systems. For some reason they always claim it is quicker for them to fill in a piece of paper than click on a few buttons. I've never understood that, because once they've filled in said paper they then have to get it to me. Much like the claims that using the helpdesk takes too long, so they spend their free looking for me, rather than just filling in an online form, or sending the software an email. The thing with all these sort of issues is that it has to be SMT led. If you attempt, as a lowly IT manager, any sort of changes you'll just get sidelined. Ahh, but then, that'd be a dream world wouldn't it, where SMT lead a digital project and actually enforce it. 2
cookie_monster Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 @ localzuk Much like the claims that using the helpdesk takes too long, so they spend their free looking for me, rather than just filling in an online form, or sending the software an email. Ahh, but then, that'd be a dream world wouldn't it, where SMT lead a digital project and actually enforce it. We have the problem here that some people refuse to use email I can't imagine working anywhere else where it's optional if you've been told by your boss that's how they will communicate with you. We've had several pushes and some still refuse claiming there aren't enough computers or they don't have time, the 'fact' that they all must use a computer at least once a day as they have to register their classes and there's a PC in every room seems to pass them by. Funny how they all find time to check their hotmail.
Soulfish Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 @ localzuk We have the problem here that some people refuse to use email I can't imagine working anywhere else where it's optional if you've been told by your boss that's how they will communicate with you. We've had several pushes and some still refuse claiming there aren't enough computers or they don't have time, the 'fact' that they all must use a computer at least once a day as they have to register their classes and there's a PC in every room seems to pass them by. Funny how they all find time to check their hotmail. Our SMT actually had us block personal email account providers within the school for all staff and students. Too many staff using their personal email accounts for school business, and sending infomation that shouldn't ever leave the school. There was a bit of resistance at first but now they all seem to love using the internal email system!
Arcath Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 We had one of our schools try to get out of replacing all thier ancient machines when one teacher said a local secondary school had just got these cheap small pcs that go on the back of the monitor (thin clients basically). IT Co-ORD thought brilliant we can do it cheap. we then pointed out that she would need a new server cause the old one is begining to show its age. she would also need a big re-cableing job to get the kind of net speeds needed to run thin clients. they are now back at trying to find a new excuse to stay on machines that we said needed replacing a couple of years ago
p858snake Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 I hate the pigeon hole culture in schools it's so wastefull.If people learnt to save paper it would be better, eg instead of a whole page filled with clipart, just a quarter of the page with the details that it needs! they you have multiple ones on the same sheet that you just cut up. And learn to use duplex mode..... it would be nice if people learnt what light and fan switches were or closed doors/windows when the aircon was on.
cookie_monster Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 Our SMT actually had us block personal email account providers within the school for all staff and students. Too many staff using their personal email accounts for school business, and sending infomation that shouldn't ever leave the school. There was a bit of resistance at first but now they all seem to love using the internal email system! I just can't get that pushed through even after explaining the issues with staff conducting school business using an email system that we have NO control over. If it was hijacked we might not be able to get it back and there could be all kinds of sensitive information on there. I'm not too bothered about them using it for personal mail especially if it's in their break times but for school business it's a nightmare unfortunately some of SMT are the worst offenders.
cookie_monster Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 If people learnt to save paper it would be better, eg instead of a whole page filled with clipart, just a quarter of the page with the details that it needs! they you have multiple ones on the same sheet that you just cut up. And learn to use duplex mode..... it would be nice if people learnt what light and fan switches were or closed doors/windows when the aircon was on. If only they could learn to turn off computers as well, the instructions are simple if it's the last period of the day then turn off the computer when you leave. My shutdown scrips turn off over 60 PC's every night, they would all be on all night every night otherwise.
Soulfish Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 I just can't get that pushed through even after explaining the issues with staff conducting school business using an email system that we have NO control over. If it was hijacked we might not be able to get it back and there could be all kinds of sensitive information on there. I'm not too bothered about them using it for personal mail especially if it's in their break times but for school business it's a nightmare unfortunately some of SMT are the worst offenders. I wouldn't mind letting them use personal email, but the problem we found was that if they had access to personal email they'd be using that rather than their school email account. We were lucky that none of SMT seem to use personal email accounts within school so they were behind the idea.
mossj Posted November 30, 2009 Posted November 30, 2009 As a side issue on this I've recently been running a couple of surveys in school which are both paper-based (stuck in pigeon holes) and online. Replies to the paper-based surveys are about 4X the number of online replies. With the online survey you get a rush of answers at the time people read the email mentioning this, and then numbers fall off drastically; whereas paper-based surveys in pigeon holes are "live" issues for much longer. that is, they stay fresh in the pigeon hole until the allocated person empties it. Emails are immediately read and then (in most cases) forgotten. I agree that it's very 19th century or even older and does leave itself open to the sort of abuse I mentioned above, though the teacher didn't realize the irony of it all until it was pointed out. When ever I send out surveys, I a) offer an incentive (usually a prize of a bottle of wine or something) b) stagger the sending into blocks, so word of mouth starts to travel in ripples. Thats for a commercial business, but I would imagine the same would work in a school enviroment,
somabc Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 It's not only Schools, all public services will be hit. BBC News - Police spending in England and Wales 'to fall by £500m'
localzuk Posted December 2, 2009 Author Posted December 2, 2009 It's not only Schools, all public services will be hit. BBC News - Police spending in England and Wales 'to fall by £500m' They could make 10 times that in savings in a very easy way - getting rid of the massive amount of target keeping, paper work and statistics. Average cost of dealing with a violent attack in 04/05 was £5890. In 07/08 that increased to £9376. There is only one reason for that - paperwork. 1
somabc Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 They could make 10 times that in savings in a very easy way - getting rid of the massive amount of target keeping, paper work and statistics. Average cost of dealing with a violent attack in 04/05 was £5890. In 07/08 that increased to £9376. There is only one reason for that - paperwork. So if instead of allowing violent muggings we just gave criminals £5,000 we would still be quids in!
sandeep2504 Posted December 2, 2009 Posted December 2, 2009 i dont think our staff are ready for belt tightening and wont be. a large have the attitude if its broken cant you just buy a replacement (a lot the equipment can be fixed either under warranty or by ourselves but they dont have patience) we have the pigeon hole culture at our school and the amount of memos, colour newsletters, etc in our pigeon holes that are read once and binned is shocking. im tempted to sticker my pigeon hole with "no junk mail please". i could go into a the whole energy savings topic; i overheard one of our teachers saying the other day "oh they except us to turn off lights now" regarding the 2nd link "A White Paper on policing says IT and administrative costs can be cut." "The Home Office document also says officers should patrol the streets alone, rather than in pairs, to make them more accessible to the public. " IT costs are a easy target and i totally disagree with officers patrolling streets alone.
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