Building Schools for the Future plans to be scrapped

[mthomas08]

always one that has to be picky ...... stop drinking coffee i didnt want to make the post even longer by being specific!

 

I am talking about the arguement about quality of teaching and blaming the day and age or blaming the kids or when we was kids etc etc. I dont really want to be specific.

 

BSF was never about changing the above, maybe make the kids a bit less stressful and maybe more space for teaching is the only way it would of effected them. The main objective for BSF was to bring schools up to scratch and no crappy old buildings/ICT Equipment/Out source IT Support. Am I missing anything? yes it has to do with the kids well ....... its a school. But the arguement was going off topic, so i put a little sarcasm there. BSF was never a debate over our generation or the previous generation being better taught etc. Thats where the topic was going.

Edited July 7, 2010 by mthomas08

[jason2234]

A lot of the IT companies have been lying to us saying if its not in warranty we can't have it in the new school. This is a load of rubbish. You can take whatever you want to the new school the new equipment just doesn't go on the same managed system ie. the it company doesn't have to fix it with in 10 mins etc. Don't listen to the IT company they will tell you what they want to happen not what you can do if they like it or not.

[mthomas08]

I think thats one problem with have had with northgate, they tell us in ball point that the way they are doing things is the way it goes. BUT they fail to mention that its not a must have.

 

Our Heads were told BSF+ICT is the way it is, but we found out that out sourcing ICT was only a choice. You can go BSF and get the new buildings and not out source the ICT. Doesnt matter now

[tmcd35]

Now that BSF is mostly done for I'm hoping more people will be less defensive and stop massively over-selling the benefits of something that's rarely genuinely innovative about their Windows systems and perhaps focus instead on some serious, economical best practices, where amongst other things "economical" definitely includes accounting for your time and energy.

 

I think it'd be fairly obvious that I'd disagree with this.

 

It's easy to take a step back and a blanket view and say - all schools have servers, they generally have home folders and public shares, they can all use vanilla windows and we can put in £300 Dells with Win 7 Pro in every classroom, job done.

 

But at the moment the decisions I make are based on whats best for this school, and what is right for this school might not be right for a school 10 minutes up the road. We have focused on providing laptops for all teachers, shyed away from Wifi and looked at Multiseating to cut costs. Like I said above a quick view down the networking, VLE and MIS forums will quickly show off how different each school is.

 

Now it may be great to get a sudden influx of investment and having new 'standard kit' put in. Fine, but what happens in 6 months time when the librarian wants to purchase a new database that will require a new server? Can I instantly provision a new VM? Do I need to get in touch with the management company and wait 2 weeks on a SLA? Will they charge us $$$ extra because it wans't part of the original spec? Will they so 'no' because they refuse to support a server with that database on?

 

What if we take on an additional member of staff and need PC for their office? What about conflicts in general day to day SLA's? How quickly will they resolve a fualty class room PC? or a projector lamp failure? What if I want to set up a temporary suite of 5 thin clients for staff training over three days?

 

Yes there is economics of scale, I just don't think centrally managed ICT is the right solution. Buying consortiums of secondary schools, maybe sharing a NM between two of three schools. But wholesale central managent, I think overall end user serice will suffer.

[jason2234]

Totally agree with you. The school's strive to be outstanding but surely making a standard managed solution from a school takes away the flexability and ingenuity needed to create an outstanding school. I just don't think Managed services understand how flexable a school needs to be.

[mthomas08]

That's the problem, it will cost more. We found out each user added to the system will cost. We had a long list here of the costs of anything extra you had and we couldnt believe it. Also what happens to something very basic when it comes to support. My boss worked for the post office IT before they out sourced and now (he keeps up to date) things are not at all peachy.

 

What about that person who needs a quick question, quick job, like just now a file needed converting and a camera installed on a PC (needed admin rights). It took me 1 minute to fix the camera install and 25 mins to get a converter working. Also installing two pieces of FLV software to get youtube videos of a course and play them.

 

Both jobs took a total of 40 minutes and would of taken them how long? to call up northgate and get it done? I just had to image a new laptop - done within 25 minutes. Staff now has the laptop back.

Edited July 7, 2010 by mthomas08

[PeteM]

Ours would hav erequired us to pay them a fee for each device they took, so made more sense to throw them.

 

Would that have worked out more expensive than paying an inflated price for a new piece of kit? eg a PC that you could buy for £500 from a reputable supplier costing £750 from the IT supplier once they've added their cut and service agreement costs in.

 

We were told that the IT provider for our LEA would get £22m over 5 years to run 8 ALC's. I'm still getting my head round why they would charge for taking/refurbishing old kit or charging for new kit. Surely the £22m will cover the cost of new kit/service desk/engineers etc. All the backoffice networking/broadband etc will still be provided by the Council.

[russdev]

Unfortunately it has already had an impact: clicky

 

 

Yes but someone coughs in city and share price goes down. Long term will not make any difference RM will have planned few stuff over next month to announce to city and shares will go up.

 

Maybe its time to go and buy some rm shares

 

Russ

[mthomas08]

Think I would rather not buy anything with RM. This used to be an RM school and was over priced for what you was getting.

[ROBOCOP]

I've heard of a school that wasn't allowed to take decent, working Smartboards to the new build. They had to be binned and replaced with new ones.[/quote

 

I find that hard to believe as the BSF ICT contract documents have specific provisions for the transfer of so-called 'Legacy Equipment" - even if the Smartboards are'nt considered suitable for transfer to the new school due to compatibility or support issues then why on earth didn't they get transferred to another school not in the BSF?

[david_1152]

the scrap came too late for me in Birmingham, my technicians now work for 'the company' and I've taken another job. So the news within the scheme now reads something like this.

 

The learning platform has been scrapped

the e-reg - scrapped

library system - scrapped

cashless catering - scrapped

 

data centre - ?????? - no body knows, but I'm guessing here but I'd say - scrapped.

 

OK - now to define scrapped. What I mean is no single solution will be provided via the scheme, they cant afford one. So the money, which we've just learnt isn’t enough to get the systems, will be given back to the school - into local choice - where by the school can go out and get one.

 

Is it me? Does anyone else see the problem with this?

 

Also, when I say local choice, what I mean is we have to buy out of the company’s catalogue, at their prices - really dont get me started with this one. I guess these forums do have eyes from the outside on, so I'll leave it at that point.

[jason2234]

Seems like most things are being scrapped in this so i ask the question whats the point of an expensive IT company who don't really know what they're doing (or it seems that way to me )

 

Seems a big waste of money and time to pay someone double what i can do myself without them. I really hope that the schools and specifically my school can get out of this whole thing before christmas!

[localzuk]

Seems like most things are being scrapped in this so i ask the question whats the point of an expensive IT company who don't really know what they're doing (or it seems that way to me )

 

Seems a big waste of money and time to pay someone double what i can do myself without them. I really hope that the schools and specifically my school can get out of this whole thing before christmas!

 

The reasons have been explained quite a few times before. Such as providing a standardised IT infrastructure within a geographical area, ensuring that there is a baseline level of IT provision, make sure that schools aren't cutting corners, not all schools have competent staff, etc...

 

Sure, the reason why there has been so much discussion on it is that each one of those arguments can be countered.