Is BECTA Facing The Axe?

[jsnetman]

just another way of privatising education by the back door

 

At least it may not come with the managed IT service that BSF does. Well I'm hoping anyway !

[sparkeh]

BSF was a flawed policy from the start, there is more fundemental things wrong with education other than shiny artsy buildings and spangly new computers. Putting crap in a new box may look good at first and may feel like you have somethng other than crap, but when you open the box it still just contains crap.

 

As you may note from my post I did make any claims to worthiness of the scheme. The contention was that nobody would miss BSF if it were axed, this is simply not true.

[IanT]

Looks like BECTA is going

[ict_support]

At least it may not come with the managed IT service that BSF does. Well I'm hoping anyway !

Yes the managed ICT service is just jobs for the boys

[flyinghaggis]

"Becta, the education IT procurement quango, is to be scrapped as part of the new government's £6.2bn cuts this year, announced by George Osborne this morning."

School IT quango to be expelled

[broc]

I would imagine that Tory councils will be pressuring the Govt to continue some level of BSF funding, especially where the LA has already rebuilt some BSF schools. They may not want to have to face their local council electors & explain why their kids have to continue to learn in clapped out schools.

 

Local Govt elections come round more regularly than general elections, and people often vent their fury about national issues by taking it out on their local councillors.

[GrumbleDook]

A quick summary of what publicly has and hasn't been mentioned.

 

1 - 670m pounds are being 'saved' with the Dept for Education.

2 - 80m pounds of this is from the closure of becta and savings from other QANGOs within Education.

3 - There will be other savings within the DofE but these are now to be rolled back into Education to prop up front-line services.

4 - Some fo the ringfenced money which goes into local govt will now no longer be ringfenced to allow councils to make the best use of it, however money for schools and susre start centres stays ring-fenced. Another 'however' is that not all of the money used for schools is ring fenced anyway ... so you will have to see what happens in each council to get a firm picture about what will happen locally with education.

5 - The exact breakdown of how money will be re-used is not public yet so we have no real idea about whether any of the Becta tasks will be rolled out to other groups.

6 - This includes BSF. Certain aspects of what becta did to support PfS (IT infrastructure, embedding of technology to transform learning) is still uncertain until DofE announce what they are going to do with BSF, Academies and PCP.

[GrumbleDook]

"Becta, the education IT procurement quango, is to be scrapped as part of the new government's £6.2bn cuts this year, announced by George Osborne this morning."

School IT quango to be expelled

 

Lovely article ... misses a few facts. Becta was scrapped to save on numbers, not because it did a bad job (Expelled?). The frameworks are that ... frameworks. You don't *have* to use them ... but if you do then it helps with the savings. LA were not forced to use teh frameworks. Schools are not forced to ...

[ict_support]

Last year Becta's £220,000-per-year chief executive Stephen Crowne defended it against cuts, claiming it "saves many times more than Becta costs to run".

Can this salary really be justified along with thebudget BECTA was given? did they really have that much impact? Some of the studies they did where very interesting however did we get value out of Becta's £112.5m annual budget. The money would of been better spent on the front line where it could have the most impact.

[AngryITGuy]

Last year Becta's £220,000-per-year chief executive Stephen Crowne defended it against cuts, claiming it "saves many times more than Becta costs to run".

Can this salary really be justified along with thebudget BECTA was given? did they really have that much impact? Some of the studies they did where very interesting however did we get value out of Becta's £112.5m annual budget. The money would of been better spent on the front line where it could have the most impact.

 

Some of that £112.5m was ringfenced for the Home Access program as mentioned by GrumbleDook early on in the thread.

 

Becta had already been identified as one of the educational QANGOs to be cut or downsized by all parties in teh run up to the election, it has just been a case of whether it would be a complete cut or just chopped to hell. This year Becta had a £112m budget, but a large chunk of that (approx £55m) was for the Home Access program as capital. This has already been in and out of Becta's book (from what I could tell) so when they talk about Becta cuts, they say it is about £65m.

[ict_support]

Yes but again has the home access program had that much of an impact?

[DrCheese]

The frameworks are that ... frameworks. You don't *have* to use them ... but if you do then it helps with the savings. LA were not forced to use teh frameworks. Schools are not forced to ...

Which is probably why they were scrapped, there's not much point in coming out with a bunch of frameworks if they have no power to enforce them. You'll have a few places using them but it's not worth the money.

[penfold]

Which is probably why they were scrapped, there's not much point in coming out with a bunch of frameworks if they have no power to enforce them. You'll have a few places using them but it's not worth the money.

 

Totally agree, and thats exactly the problem from the beginning. How many times have people on here asking about policies and procedures and then been informed of following guidelines outlined by BECTA? If you then cant enforce these guidelines then what is the point of having an entity who have no real power? Its a shame really, because if schools had to follow regulations then it *should* result in similar levels of infrastrcutre & support without the need to go down the outsourcing route. But again it looks like a good idea poorly executed, and now it's bye bye BECTA.

[torledo]

Nope, they've not mentioned anything at all about it today.

 

do you think we might hear some more about that and it's direction in the autumn with the supposed academies bill ?

 

what i'm confused about is these 670m of savings within the DfoE.....if they are to be 'rolled back' into funding for schools does that mean it part funds the pupil premium, or is additional monies to be found for implementing that scheme [assuming it goes ahead].

[torledo]

Yes but again has the home access program had that much of an impact?

 

well, it didn't win labour the election after all ;0) so maybe not the desired impact. LOL

[plexer]

Bye bye BECTA:

 

By closing the quango British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) the government hopes to save £80m.

 

http://awurl.com/o3O9Porfo

 

Ben

[Face-Man]

this outlines more of the savings

 

Schools budget to be protected until 2011 | Teachers TV

 

only saved £10m this year from becta other £65m is ongoing costs even I know that doesn't add up to £80m savings .. so back to spin once again

[Polish]

I work for an IT publication and we've been following developments at BECTA with interest

 

Links that may be of interest

 

Resellers seek answers over BECTA framework uncertainty

BECTA hits out at imminent closure

 

Regards

 

Polish

 

 

Just heard this on the BBC News during some routine channel surfing.

 

Anyone know if this is true?

 

Google wasn't much help at the moment, only thing I could find apart from something on TES was this George Osborne unveils £500m bonfire of the quango.

[torledo]

Dr John Dunford, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said: "As we face the tougher funding climate of the next few years, the government's top priority for education funding must be to get the maximum amount into the core budgets of schools and colleges. All education expenditure outside school and college budgets must continue to be rigorously reviewed against this priority".

 

spot on. especially the last line.

[gsk]

I guess there won't be much interest in these jobs then...

About Becta - Becta

[Alis_Klar]

Does this affect Harnessing Technology funding?

[localzuk]

Does this affect Harnessing Technology funding?

 

I thought that grant had disappeared already?

[sparkeh]

I guess there won't be much interest in these jobs then...

About Becta - Becta

 

No, they just need to recruit someone to switch off the lights and padlock the building now.

 

I thought that grant had disappeared already?

 

No its still around, might as well not be as our LA have retained it in full for the last 2 years (but that's a different rant). Clicky

[gsk]

Could edugeek harvest some of the more useful parts of the becta sites for archive? Things like the JD creator and FITS assessment tools would really add to the site IMO.

[DrCheese]

Could edugeek harvest some of the more useful parts of the becta sites for archive? Things like the JD creator and FITS assessment tools would really add to the site IMO.

 

Probably copyright protected...