HT Grant cut again!

[gaz350]

In reply to Tony, at the time we hosted most of the services ourselves already. Things might have changed in the land of embc plc but for us it really did change the way the college was able to use the Internet connection.

[gaz350]

Yup it's really bad our county is at the top of the leader board of top slicers

[john]

Cheers for that Tony, so its guidance, obviously very highly regarded and "pushed" guidance, but clearly could if your head or chair of governors decided it could be ignored but with the risk you could get peanilised for it, especially if your ICT was shown as poor in an inspection due to your non-compliance with the recommendation.

 

Those kinds of facilities you list that EMBC members get are great but we get, as far as we can tell and know from our past research when we did a full cost analysis on moving on our own systems, we have access to nothing of that nature at all. I know your in EMBC land so cannot comment on our systems but if we had access to resources such as EB online, and that would allow students or staff access to them at home that would be great and would all help to justify the significant cost for connectivity which we used to have charged to us yearly, but alas we don't so we cannot see any value in such large costs for connectivity. I just wish we had people such as yourself who are as helpful and provide good examples of why they are better for T&L than ones we've had in the past as they have been less than helpful other than throwing Becta says and its recommended that you do X etc... Any chance we can cloan you about 100 times please

[localzuk]

Yup it's really bad our county is at the top of the leader board of top slicers

 

Wow, truly amazed at that amount. £525k is enough for a veritable army of staff!

[john]

In reply to Tony, at the time we hosted most of the services ourselves already. Things might have changed in the land of embc plc but for us it really did change the way the college was able to use the Internet connection.

 

That is exactly why we still are looking and thinking about leaving, the costs which could come back to us are significant and we want to use the Internet how our TEACHERS and SLT decide not how some people in an office miles away decide. We can decide how we make services available remotely, how they are setup, who we are with etc... Schools mange there own budgets in these days, manage there own curriculum within guidelines and thus should be able to manage there own Internet as well, obviously with guidelines and understand that if they mess up there will be consequences (just like if you spend all the schools cash and hit debt..... or don't teach the curriculum correctly you get special measures.....)

[localzuk]

My interest in this is based on our school's desire to become an academy, so this subject will be brought up if we do - as we'll need provision, and whether we use the SWGfL or not will be on the agenda there...

[matt40k]

Wonder how much they'll charge when you want to buy back in when they roll out 100mb and you're stuck on your bonded ADSL.

 

Problem with LEA broadband is it's not fair, it's never going to be. The cost of connecting a small primary in the middle of no where is always going to cost more then a school next door to a local exchange. At the end of the day, you got to think about it being your donation to getting your entire LEA online. It's all government money, it's not your money. If you think of it as your money, they should introduce you to the poor school(s) they won't be able to give a good connection to because you can't see the bigger picture (hopefully it'll be your feeder schools).

 

At the end of the day it's like the e-learning credits, it's best not to think of it as real money and try and get as much as you can get out of it.

[gaz350]

See this is why I hate the rbc and the "lea" way of doing things. Every school is different, why purchase the same thing for every school? Would the school buy these things if they were to be given that pot of money or spend it on some other software/resource they really need?

[torledo]

The cut is apparently 'to help ensure no additional borrowing this year' and it is 'a further reduction to take this year’s funding down to £100m, allowing schools to reconfigure their broadband and IT infrastructure projects onto a more sustainable funding model' ....

 

The document also says,

 

Q Does this mean that schools will have to abandon broadband contracts that are essential to a data rich IT environment?

A These contracts are a call on revenue, not capital, funding.

[matt40k]

My interest in this is based on our school's desire to become an academy, so this subject will be brought up if we do - as we'll need provision, and whether we use the SWGfL or not will be on the agenda there...

 

Guess that's what that £25k you get for inquirying about is for (among other things). Will you be able to still use SWGfL

[localzuk]

Guess that's what that £25k you get for inquirying about is for (among other things). Will you be able to still use SWGfL

 

I think the question will be closer to 'will we WANT to use the SWGfL'...

[matt40k]

See this is why I hate the rbc and the "lea" way of doing things. Every school is different, why purchase the same thing for every school? Would the school buy these things if they were to be given that pot of money or spend it on some other software/resource they really need?

 

You get to go to the meeting where they decided what they are going to do. Broadband is one of those things I think every school needs.

[matt40k]

I think the question will be closer to 'will we WANT to use the SWGfL'...

 

Not sure if E2BN will stretch to you lol

[localzuk]

Not sure if E2BN will stretch to you lol

 

I think we'd be looking more at a commercial offering, such as business grade ADSL load balanced or something like that.

[GrumbleDook]

The document also says,

 

Q Does this mean that schools will have to abandon broadband contracts that are essential to a data rich IT environment?

A These contracts are a call on revenue, not capital, funding.

 

HT Grant is also used to maintain and continue capital investment, and some in some LAs the schools said 'keep (some of / most of / all of ) the money as you will only give it to us and then invoice to get it back' ... It is shoving money around to fit the need to send it out and then get it back to force it to be banked as 'revenue'. Pointless bureaucracy to make bean-counters happy to label it something.

[gaz350]

You get to go to the meeting where they decided what they are going to do. Broadband is one of those things I think every school needs.

 

I agree, but we don't need to procure 20 other services we don't want at the same time just to get it

[john]

Wonder how much they'll charge when you want to buy back in when they roll out 100mb and you're stuck on your bonded ADSL.

The day our LA put out 100mb lines I think will be the day that the oceans freeze over. Were told 10mb is all we need and if we want more the costs will go up and we have to pay more. All secondary schools are on 10mb and no plans to increase this over the next few years was the last conversation on that I had, and tbh for the size of my establishment who can survive very well on an 8mb ADSL without detriment to T&L the 100mb cherry is nice but I'd rather have flexibility, reduced costs and a good service over that figure of oooh look at my dark fibre incomer.

 

Problem with LEA broadband is it's not fair, it's never going to be. The cost of connecting a small primary in the middle of no where is always going to cost more then a school next door to a local exchange. At the end of the day, you got to think about it being your donation to getting your entire LEA online. It's all government money, it's not your money. If you think of it as your money, they should introduce you to the poor school(s) they won't be able to give a good connection to because you can't see the bigger picture (hopefully it'll be your feeder schools).

 

At the end of the day it's like the e-learning credits, it's best not to think of it as real money and try and get as much as you can get out of it.

 

Do you pay for Internet or Connectivity? We never pay for Internet but Connectivity were told, fine without connectivity we don't get Internet (yes its a vicious circle), this is one thing that in my view seems a way of escaping people saying the Internet is expensive.

 

What I find scary is we all pay the same base plus a cost per pupil, which is better than you all pay £x flat as it gives some level of your bigger so pay more, but this is an incredibly high costs for connecting us, were incredibly rural here, fine not as rural as say Zerohour's homeland up in Scotland but we are quite rural, had to campaign to get ADSL in our exchanges etc but the costs just seem so high to me and others. If I could see a huge list of real world T&L benifits, included resources, services, systems etc that we get for no extra cost as part of the "connectivity" then I would think twice but all we see it is is we pay for "connectivity" and that gets us Internet, Email and Web hosting, all of which are not suitable for our needs, we've removed the e-mail angle, the only reason we feed the SMTP via them is we have no choice, but I can assure you we don't want it via there systems, we pay an external firm to host our website due to the limted services originally offered when they did the site (yes this has changed since but its the usual locking the stable door after the horse has bolted), and the Internet, may work according to contract, but in reality isn't working for a 21st century curriculum which surely is what we are trying to teach.

[GrumbleDook]

See this is why I hate the rbc and the "lea" way of doing things. Every school is different, why purchase the same thing for every school? Would the school buy these things if they were to be given that pot of money or spend it on some other software/resource they really need?

 

The issue arises (and YMMV in each RBC and LA but principles are similar) that when you try to get a range of services to sit on to of the connectivity you have to get economies of scale. I know that lots of people on here will shout that they can do better but remember that you are just a section of the schools out there and it is often difficult for many schools to sustainably provide all the services they need, whether it is decent filtering (I do not count Dansguardian with a bit of fiddling decent ... or ISA with a blacklist updated by the IT team decent either ... you get what you pay for!) email, video conferencing, authentication, VLEs, T&L resources ... and the time, effort, cost and skill set to setup, maintain and improve these is often more costly to a school (almost back to the middleware discussion about whether it enables you to get on with other things) and also provides a risk ... especially if it is something 'bespoke' that has been setup which the next network manager will say is rubbish and rip out for *their* preferred solution (how many times have we seen folk post on here about having to do that!)

 

In an LA with a wide variety of types of schools you will get some which will get a good deal by moving to a commercial carrier as they are really close to an exchange, and others who will cost a fortune. LAs are going to try and smooth that.

 

Back to services though ... there are times when you are trying to set up services and when you are working on the contractor and you want a framework agreement (you only pay what you take up) then the unit cost can be quite high. When you start saying that actually, you know that 20% of the schools will make use of the service then a flat cost an work out cheaper ... especially when you start saying that 15% use it now, but it could go up to 35% ...

 

Personally I prefer framework agreements as I come from a background of choice and flexibility ... but there is also the leadership bit of the only way you will get some schools adopting various chunks of technology is through pump-priming ... force it into schools to make a difference ... and yes, this is schools without IT support and who need direction from someone. They might only pick up 2 things out of 10 ... but those 2 things could keep them satisfactory or even move them up to good ... and then inspire them to take control themselves.

 

If an LA does its job right it might not be needed once schools are at the right level. But schools aren't yet. There is still a big gap and the removal of funds is going to make that gap bigger.

 

Then again ... a chunk of what is going on is politics and power. The funds are just a tool in this and it will mean a cut in services as schools drift away to do their own thing ... and that will put up costs both now and when the strategy changes in 2-3 years' time.

[torledo]

HT Grant is also used to maintain and continue capital investment, and some in some LAs the schools said 'keep (some of / most of / all of ) the money as you will only give it to us and then invoice to get it back' ... It is shoving money around to fit the need to send it out and then get it back to force it to be banked as 'revenue'. Pointless bureaucracy to make bean-counters happy to label it something.

 

isn't the point that how much is now required for capital investment to meet broadband targets, and how much of it is actually 'maintenance/provision' of the service. The argument seems to be that the heavy lifting capital spend should have been undertaken, and now maybe this will focus minds on delivering the same for less ? If not, then surely it needs to be explained why it can't be. Why it continues to require the same level of capital spend despite previous years investment to put infrastructure in place...

 

It's alright to say, we need the money for capital investment. But isn't what your talkng about effectively running [revenue] costs as far as delivering a broadband service. It's not pointless beuracracy to distinguish between a capital investment and the running costs of the initial capital investment

[GrumbleDook]

@Torledo

 

Look at it like this. There is a pot of money called Capital which contains £10k for your school. The schools in general (schools forum) have agreed that they will be billed for connectivity and services. The LA send you your £10k. They then send you a bill for £10k and this comes back into the LA in a pot called revenue. It is the same money! It is a waste of everyone's time.

 

The problem is that some LAs do this for some, most or all of the funds ... giving a very mixed approach. The sophistry that goes on is stupid.

 

If an LA sorts out a VLE contract for 3 years (the HT grant timescale) then the setup, running and training can be put as a capital investment. After that it is revenue and you put the choice out to schools to buy it. Or you do the capital for one year and then bill schools for the other two as revenue?

 

And I know there will be those that say 'well, once we have the money the LA is not getting it back!' ... but the LA will just cut the other monies by the required amount if they need to. There is a careful balance between schools collectively agreeing something and each school only looking after number 1. They tend to want to all be treating equally unfairly as they never know when they will take a big hit and need support.

[localzuk]

@Torledo

 

Look at it like this. There is a pot of money called Capital which contains £10k for your school. The schools in general (schools forum) have agreed that they will be billed for connectivity and services. The LA send you your £10k. They then send you a bill for £10k and this comes back into the LA in a pot called revenue. It is the same money! It is a waste of everyone's time.

 

The problem is that some LAs do this for some, most or all of the funds ... giving a very mixed approach. The sophistry that goes on is stupid.

 

If an LA sorts out a VLE contract for 3 years (the HT grant timescale) then the setup, running and training can be put as a capital investment. After that it is revenue and you put the choice out to schools to buy it. Or you do the capital for one year and then bill schools for the other two as revenue?

 

And I know there will be those that say 'well, once we have the money the LA is not getting it back!' ... but the LA will just cut the other monies by the required amount if they need to. There is a careful balance between schools collectively agreeing something and each school only looking after number 1. They tend to want to all be treating equally unfairly as they never know when they will take a big hit and need support.

 

Surely using a HT Grant in this way is poor accounting and misuse of it? If schools ARE using their HT grant to pay for their internet connection, and not what it was originally planned for, or if LAs are top-slicing it (with agreement from schools) and using it for non-capital expenditure, then that is proof that the HT Grant has done its original job - there aren't the level of capital expenses requiring that grant any more. That will be precisely why the government is slashing it.

[Pottsey]

john said “All secondary schools are on 10mb and no plans to increase this over the next few years was the last conversation on that I had, and tbh for the size of my establishment”

I wish we were on that much. Our secondary school is on 2meg and often capped out. What I find crazy and never really understood is why schools internet connection are so slow. I can get a 50meg download at home for a fraction of the price of what our school pays. Why can EMBC and others not offer schools similar packages to what you can get a home. I would love something like a 10, 20 or 50meg download and 2 or 5 meg upload at work.

 

Is it the upload speed that costs so much? Filtering software, something else? Why not cut the price down by only boosting download speeds. Do we really need upload speeds to match download for every school?

[GrumbleDook]

Surely using a HT Grant in this way is poor accounting and misuse of it? If schools ARE using their HT grant to pay for their internet connection, and not what it was originally planned for, or if LAs are top-slicing it (with agreement from schools) and using it for non-capital expenditure, then that is proof that the HT Grant has done its original job - there aren't the level of capital expenses requiring that grant any more. That will be precisely why the government is slashing it.

 

I honestly thought it would take forever for someone to raise the largest part of the problem with Govt grants. Once capital grants have been established, used and the results are embedded, then you have to establish replacement revenue grants (notably smaller usually) to cover the running costs. That is why the HT grant (along with many other capital grants) cover capital *projects*, not just purchasing kit. Most people expected to see the revenue grants for next year increase to cover the drop of this capital grant ... and that is not happening from what anyone can see.

 

So ... no matter how you look at how the HT grant is used / has been used the running costs for many things is no longer there.

[GrumbleDook]

john said “All secondary schools are on 10mb and no plans to increase this over the next few years was the last conversation on that I had, and tbh for the size of my establishment”

I wish we were on that much. Our secondary school is on 2meg and often capped out. What I find crazy and never really understood is why schools internet connection are so slow. I can get a 50meg download at home for a fraction of the price of what our school pays. Why can EMBC and others not offer schools similar packages to what you can get a home. I would love something like a 10, 20 or 50meg download and 2 or 5 meg upload at work.

 

Is it the upload speed that costs so much? Filtering software, something else? Why not cut the price down by only boosting download speeds. Do we really need upload speeds to match download for every school?

 

Most of our secondary schools hit their 10 meg cap each day pretty early on. Those who have had their upgrade to 20 meg are also starting to hit their cap ... the few very large schools with 30 meg are also hitting their cap already.

[Disease]

Cuts are what happens when a previous government spends shed loads of cash it does not have.

 

We are currently getting a BB throug our LEA at a cost of 18k rising to 24k next year, for 100mb to the LEA and then out through their 100mb pipe, which is shared with all schools. I can however get now from BT 100mb true 1:1 contention direct to internet pipe with free install and 100% uptime SLA for 20k, we are talkingabout it at the moment.