BECTA to be shut down as part of Government cuts

[networkingNut]

BBC News - Jobs threat as Coventry technology agency to close

 

Just wondering what everyone's feeling on this is?

[powdarrmonkey]

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/56668-becta-facing-axe.html is my feeling.

[maark]

They have 240 staff - flipping eck what do/did they all do?

[localzuk]

They have 240 staff - flipping eck what do/did they all do?

 

Think of it this way - 240 people laid off, now needing to claim benefits, paying no taxes, paying no national insurance, simply claiming... Also, not buying things from private businesses - ie. reducing the amount of money going back into the economy.

 

This is why we are likely to have a double dip recession - because lay-offs reduce the amount of money available in the economy.

[maark]

I feel sorry for the staff but they could be working on something more productive - an extra 240 technicians in schools that are short staffed as mentioned in several posts on here.

[buzzard]

BSF next!!!

[torledo]

They have 240 staff - flipping eck what do/did they all do?

 

exactly.

[teejay]

Think of it this way - 240 people laid off, now needing to claim benefits, paying no taxes, paying no national insurance, simply claiming... Also, not buying things from private businesses - ie. reducing the amount of money going back into the economy.

 

This is why we are likely to have a double dip recession - because lay-offs reduce the amount of money available in the economy.

 

Sorry, that argument doesn't hold, they were paid FROM taxes, so the tax contribution is a big fat 0 in the end. By paying them unemployment benefit then we are saving the diffeences between what they were paid and the benefits claimed when unemployed.

Yes the human side of it is horrible, I don't wish unemployment on anyone.

[torledo]

I feel sorry for the staff but they could be working on something more productive - an extra 240 technicians in schools that are short staffed as mentioned in several posts on here.

 

i think you've just answered the claim about double-dip recession......reallocation of the 'savings' from departments needn't necessarily lead to economic woes....particularly if more money is available for more bods in schools if those funds are diverted to where they are needed.

 

otherwise you sit on your hands and do nothing about wasteful spending and malinvestment. there are no jobs for life anymore, the private sector knows that all too well, and public sector orgs subject to reorganisation know that first hand. 'co-ordinators', 'facilitators' or just plain old 'managers' ;0)need to equip themselves with transferrable skills and compete for jobs, not be handed feet under the table jobs and promises of yet another year funding to keep doing whatever the hell it is they're doing. [making a general observation here not specific to any org]

Edited May 24, 2010 by torledo

[AngryTechnician]

They have 240 staff - flipping eck what do/did they all do?

 

As GrumbleDook was pointing out all weekend(!) on Twitter, there are an awful lot of things Becta do that us Joes on the front lines never really get involved with. I personally think that may have contributed to their demise - a lot of people who would have liked advice/info from them never saw it because a lot of it was aimed at LAs or equivalent. Essentially, they weren't seen to be doing much by a lot of people.

 

Also, their website always seemed impenetrable whenever I went looking for something. Half the time I only found what I was looking for by using an regular search engigne and finding an external site with a link to what I was after.

[srochford]

BSF next!!!

 

Scrapping the "building" part of BSF will save vast amounts of money and is likely to happen. Scrapping the outsourcing of IT is much less likely to happen - pretty much every company that wants to save money outsources everything it possibly can. I'd be very surprised if we don't see an even bigger push to outsourcing in the near future in the name of "efficiency"

 

It's easy to say that it's "wasteful" or "inefficient" to employ people to do all sorts of jobs but we then have the statements that we need to get people off benefits and in to jobs. What jobs exactly are they going to do? Where is the money coming to pay for them?

 

Cameron has made it very clear that he thinks the public sector is too big and perhaps he's right but I don't see any private companies standing up and saying "we could employ so many more people if only they weren't employed in the public sector"

[localzuk]

Sorry, that argument doesn't hold, they were paid FROM taxes, so the tax contribution is a big fat 0 in the end. By paying them unemployment benefit then we are saving the diffeences between what they were paid and the benefits claimed when unemployed.

Yes the human side of it is horrible, I don't wish unemployment on anyone.

 

Ah, you're ignoring the bit where they pay into the economy also. Without that part, private businesses have less customers, less demand means less employment... It has knock on effects. Think about it from the simplest point of view - those people will all most likely have eaten their lunch either in a canteen (which bought foods from local businesses) or from local cafes etc... That is less custom for those businesses - which'll mean they won't need as many people working at lunchtime. It has a big knock on effect!

 

By your reckoning, we'd be better off as a country if we sacked all 'non-essential' (read 'not core to the running of the country') staff, as we'd only have to pay their benefits.

[somabc]

I feel sorry for the staff but they could be working on something more productive - an extra 240 technicians in schools that are short staffed as mentioned in several posts on here.

 

The skills to work in BECTA particularly if you are directing policy and to be a Technician in a school are probably not that closely related.

[somabc]

Ah, you're ignoring the bit where they pay into the economy also. Without that part, private businesses have less customers, less demand means less employment... It has knock on effects. Think about it from the simplest point of view - those people will all most likely have eaten their lunch either in a canteen (which bought foods from local businesses) or from local cafes etc... That is less custom for those businesses - which'll mean they won't need as many people working at lunchtime. It has a big knock on effect!

 

By your reckoning, we'd be better off as a country if we sacked all 'non-essential' (read 'not core to the running of the country') staff, as we'd only have to pay their benefits.

 

I think you can go two different ways. The Scandinavian view where you have large well paid public sector / large benefits / high taxes or the American way where government is as small as possible / benefits are low / tax is low.

[localzuk]

I think you can go two different ways. The Scandinavian view where you have large well paid public sector / large benefits / high taxes or the American way where government is as small as possible / benefits are low / tax is low.

 

I prefer the Scandinavian view. The quality of life in most such countries is leaps and bounds ahead of the USA.

[torledo]

It's easy to say that it's "wasteful" or "inefficient" to employ people to do all sorts of jobs but we then have the statements that we need to get people off benefits and in to jobs. What jobs exactly are they going to do? Where is the money coming to pay for them?

 

but then surely that's a lack of imagination and planning on the part of govt. That they didn't have a plan for employing people and advancing public purpose without huge waste. IT seems to have been a strategy of throw some money at this area or that area because it ticks the right 21st century boxes....and not scrutinize whether the money is spent wisely and whether funding should continue.

 

instead they could have put to work people who'd become the housebuilders, engineers, maintenance engineers, dentists for basic stuff like improving quality of life at a reasonable schedule.

 

there are never too many jobs for that type of work. Look at the pre-war and post-war periods and what was accomplished by the public sector. Yes, we have some shiny new buildings and horrificly overpriced housing to make everyone with a job in said shiny new building and with access to credit feel wealthy and we may be a more knowledge based economy so we have to accomodate more jobs of the 'non-' variety, but then that wasn't enough to eliminate the cynism. Maybe there was too much malinvestment and not enough to meet housing need targets or to get on top of schemes like warm front. who knows.

[PiqueABoo]

IT seems to have been a strategy of throw some money at this area or that area because it ticks the right 21st century boxes

 

Wasn't the Great Plan that we would be a world leader in a) Financial stuff, b) IT? Finance speaks for itself. The IT bit was always a complete crock given India and the like ... and everyone said so but did they listen...!!

 

The Scandinavian view where you have large well paid public sector / large benefits / high taxes or the American way where government is as small as possible / benefits are low / tax is low.

 

An assertion: The reason good private sector folk don't like working in public sector is less about the money (especially if you get one of those £200K+!!!! jobs), it's the rubbish [bleeping] Kafka-esque system they can't stand.

[teejay]

By your reckoning, we'd be better off as a country if we sacked all 'non-essential' (read 'not core to the running of the country') staff, as we'd only have to pay their benefits.

 

Yep, pretty much. Not a nice thought I know, but public sector does not drive the economy, unfortunately the private sector does.

[Dos_Box]

there are never too many jobs for that type of work. Look at the pre-war and post-war periods and what was accomplished by the public sector. Yes, we have some shiny new buildings and horrificly overpriced housing to make everyone with a job in said shiny new building and with access to credit feel wealthy and we may be a more knowledge based economy so we have to accomodate more jobs of the 'non-' variety, but then that wasn't enough to eliminate the cynism. Maybe there was too much malinvestment and not enough to meet housing need targets or to get on top of schemes like warm front. who knows.

 

As Maggie once said 'The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money'.The whole boosting of IT spending in UK school was, and is IMHO, one of the better policies of the past 13 years, it was however let down by the curriculum whic had not, for the most part, progressed any further than basic office skills. Real IT skills such as programming, networking and a knowlege of the hows and whys of computing rarely got a mention. Compound this with a lack of exprienced and able IT teaching staff and we are over half way to realising why it has not given us the amazing IT industry 'they' thought it might.

[CyberNerd]

As Maggie once said 'The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money'.The whole boosting of IT spending in UK school was, and is IMHO, one of the better policies of the past 13 years, it was however let down by the curriculum whic had not, for the most part, progressed any further than basic office skills. Real IT skills such as programming, networking and a knowlege of the hows and whys of computing rarely got a mention. Compound this with a lack of exprienced and able IT teaching staff and we are over half way to realising why it has not given us the amazing IT industry 'they' thought it might.

 

It's made a lot of competent MSOffice users though, some large software firms would be very pleased with the results!

[john]

Real IT skills such as programming, networking and a knowledge of the hows and whys of computing rarely got a mention. Compound this with a lack of experienced and able IT teaching staff and we are over half way to realising why it has not given us the amazing IT industry 'they' thought it might.

Well said that man! Bring back REAL IT to the world of kids and we will get some-way to having a decent IT Industry in the future, the number of people that say they are in IT yet cannot do simple things like patch a PC in etc is worrying!

[featured_spectre]

My school has taught "REAL" ICT as you call it since I have been there.

 

Whilst they are only 9-13 year old, in our school they go through the Microsoft Academy Digital literacy exams (which takes them up to OCR National levels), they do relatively in depth databasing (MySQL, and using actual SQL programming to create tables, input data into tables, drop tables, run Queries etc), they also touch on HTML, CSS and Java as a part of the web design elements.

 

That said my school is the only one in the county (that we know of) pushing the limits set out by BECTA and the government guidelines.

[maniac]

The more important question is now BECTA will cease to exist, maybe it's edugeeks time to shine as an independant source of good advice on schools ICT? Of course it could never become another BECTA, but there's certainly areas which it could become an authorative source - particularly if it was possible to license some of the material on the BECTA website, all the masses of documentation some of which is actually very useful? just thinking out loud.

 

Will the BECTA website remain as an archive does anyone know - be a shame to lose it all.

 

Mike.

[localzuk]

As Maggie once said 'The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money'.The whole boosting of IT spending in UK school was, and is IMHO, one of the better policies of the past 13 years, it was however let down by the curriculum whic had not, for the most part, progressed any further than basic office skills. Real IT skills such as programming, networking and a knowlege of the hows and whys of computing rarely got a mention. Compound this with a lack of exprienced and able IT teaching staff and we are over half way to realising why it has not given us the amazing IT industry 'they' thought it might.

 

Its the same every time new things are suggested though. It always ends up as a box-buying exercise, and the training, maintenance and integration into existing infrastructure and operations are ignored. This is one of the main failings of public sector spending as I see it. Governments love running schemes that look and sound shiny, and cost relatively little in the short term (LFT is a prime example) but then a couple of years later, when that scheme runs out the benefactors are now suddenly lumbered with a giant bill.

 

BECTA was useful because it tried to stop the box-buying and tried to get schools and LAs to actually do the appropriate legwork before and after purchase to make technology a long-term useful tool.

[apoth0r]

Did someone forget to mention the head honcho was on £220,000 a year? Living in poverty my arse!