anyone thinking of ditching the LA for internet

[Edu-IT]

and I just hope that in the years to come when people wonder why we have schools struggling for money and having to make a choice between including filtering with their connection or not, when they are on a bare-bones connection with poor speeds (in comparison with same size schools 5 miles away) and it is affecting what the school can do ...

I don't understand this point. Can you explain what you mean?

[oxide54]

"Not quite" in your limited view, my limited view is different and I see "absolutely, definitely", but again there are no universal rules for any of this. For instance, when I worked in the real-world I didn't have to ring the ISP very often because they didn't do anything for me besides provide raw connectivity.. was just calls to complain about outages, transit problems to corner of the world etc., none of which anyone with a phone answering support job would fix in 5 mins.

 

---

 

 

With my tax-payers hat on and very little inbuilt socialist, the simplistic manner in which this topic keeps getting raised is irksome. In a perfect world the Gov[tm] would ensure all schools get connectivity (+preferably flexible web-filtering) same way they get electricity i.e. at pretty much the same unit price everywhere. In the imperfect real world I have no problem whatsoever with some schools effectively subsidising connections for others that would never be able to afford the real cost for a 1/2 decent rural connection. If enough Secondary, up-their-backsides Academies et al abandon their LA/RBCs/Whatever then I guess we'll see some smaller schools (Primaries etc. which might be feeders for a Secondary that went their own independent way) drop off the net, at least for usable teaching/learning purposes.

 

Don't know what it's like anywhere else, but I guess the main difficulty is that some LAs/RBCs/Whatever might be genuinely terrible, nothing at all like that 100% perfect service you provide your users, or have several features you might not want at all bundled into an all-or-nothing deal? So what's wrong with sorting that out collectively instead of this fragmented every-school-for-themselves idiocy?

 

Basically if this kind of issue does apply to your corner of the world (seems to me it could apply to lots) and no one is thinking about this specific aspect very hard, then you are not providing the 'value' I expect for my meagre share of the money paid for a public service.

 

 

PS:

 

 

 

Is Edugeek pretty much resigned to endorsing and being an explicit marketing tool for such companies (who will happily help bring about the above scenarios) then?

 

my limited view ...???? what ever, depends on what your "definition" of the real world is

[oxide54]

It's not a matter of endorsing anything. If rumors and the current state of play ref funding for schools is anything to go by then many schools may find themselves in the position of having to provide their own internet feeds in the next 5-8 years due to he fact RBC's may not be around (these are strictly rumors mind). Because of my previous posts I am in the position of knowing several reputable companies (one in particular) who can give our members impartial advice at the conf about what they need, how much they should be paying and what facilities they should be offered. For most schools, this kind of move is way off in the distance, however for quite a few, it is happening now or in the very near future, and I feel our members deserve the best advice they can get on these matters.

 

thats my "limited view" to plan for something before it happens .........

[SYNACK]

Don't know what it's like anywhere else, but I guess the main difficulty is that some LAs/RBCs/Whatever might be genuinely terrible, nothing at all like that 100% perfect service you provide your users, or have several features you might not want at all bundled into an all-or-nothing deal? So what's wrong with sorting that out collectively instead of this fragmented every-school-for-themselves idiocy?

 

As someone looking at this form of all or nothing nonsence creaping up on NZ schools It is something that rather irks me. One of the main reasons is that it does not have to be this way if the providers are not being such chimps about it. Sure you can keep it simple for some schools and manage the lot but provide it propperly by giving the local school router a routed address space (supernet) that they can divide up as they see fit if required. Give the schools several external IPs that are routed right through so that they can use them if required without a week long begging job to get their providers to actually open ports. That and importantly allow the swiching off of services that the school does not want.

 

From dealing with managed providers here and business providers I would choose the business ones instantly as they do what you ask them to rather than argue that they know best about how to run your schools network.

Edited March 13, 2011 by SYNACK

[oxide54]

 

From dealing with managed providers here and business providers I would choose the business ones instantly as they do what you ask them to rather than argue that they know best about how to run your schools network.

 

exactly my experience,

[tom_newton]

Tom, have smoothwall thought about being an ISP themselves so they can tie in all equipment together???

 

It would be cool, but we'd be back to a more "one size fits all" solution - and tbh there are 100s of specialised ISPs that could hand us our ass in a basket when it comes to providing connectivity, we'd just end up reselling their service at a less attractive cost. Stick to filtering thinks I.

[Tallwood_6]

From dealing with managed providers here and business providers I would choose the business ones instantly as they do what you ask them to rather than argue that they know best about how to run your schools network.

 

Is also my experience with the LEA here in kent, although i'm sure many will disagree. Connection and filtering is good and support is also good but are completely unwilling to move and have been very underhand and childish with how they are handling the current price hikes. I.e. no direct communication with network managers about pricing and policy, giving schools less than the required notice period to cancel there connection before releasing prices which locks them in for another year at the least.

Fortunately i saw this coming and shopped about so will be moving away from the LEA in the next couple of months where hopefully we will be getting better speeds for less money and will have the flexibility to do as we wish with the connectivity. The idea being now we will be paying thousands to feel like a customer rather than just a user on the LEA network which is how we feel treated now.

 

We are fortunate enough though to be in a reasonably urban area with the choice of both virgin and BT leased lines so appreciate the problems that more rural schools face.

[irsprint84]

 

---

 

 

With my tax-payers hat on and very little inbuilt socialist, the simplistic manner in which this topic keeps getting raised is irksome. In a perfect world the Gov[tm] would ensure all schools get connectivity (+preferably flexible web-filtering) same way they get electricity i.e. at pretty much the same unit price everywhere. In the imperfect real world I have no problem whatsoever with some schools effectively subsidising connections for others that would never be able to afford the real cost for a 1/2 decent rural connection. If enough Secondary, up-their-backsides Academies et al abandon their LA/RBCs/Whatever then I guess we'll see some smaller schools (Primaries etc. which might be feeders for a Secondary that went their own independent way) drop off the net, at least for usable teaching/learning purposes.

 

Don't know what it's like anywhere else, but I guess the main difficulty is that some LAs/RBCs/Whatever might be genuinely terrible, nothing at all like that 100% perfect service you provide your users, or have several features you might not want at all bundled into an all-or-nothing deal? So what's wrong with sorting that out collectively instead of this fragmented every-school-for-themselves idiocy?

 

Basically if this kind of issue does apply to your corner of the world (seems to me it could apply to lots) and no one is thinking about this specific aspect very hard, then you are not providing the 'value' I expect for my meagre share of the money paid for a public service.

 

 

PS:

 

 

 

Is Edugeek pretty much resigned to endorsing and being an explicit marketing tool for such companies (who will happily help bring about the above scenarios) then?

 

 

I found I could get 100MB with backup adsl, 2u server space in datacentre and penalty charges if internet down for 2k a year cheaper than the councils 30MB, no backup adsl, no datacentre space and no charges for internet down

 

Would you pay £100 a colour cartridge over a £60 one? its what is best, if the council came out even just slightly more expensive with the same stuff added on I wouldnt have stayed without a thought but thats 10kover5 years saved and alot extra

[GrumbleDook]

and I just hope that in the years to come when people wonder why we have schools struggling for money and having to make a choice between including filtering with their connection or not, when they are on a bare-bones connection with poor speeds (in comparison with same size schools 5 miles away) and it is affecting what the school can do ...

I don't understand this point. Can you explain what you mean?

 

Schools are going to struggle for cash. Even if you look at the presently possible commercial provision in some areas of the country you can find one school in an urban-ish areas getting a decent price for a connection from an education friendly ISP, who can also chuck in half-decent filtering and other services too. However, a few miles down the road, possible separated from the nearest decent exchange by a major motorway, cannot get a decent line in from the same education friendly ISP as it would be too costly and they make no money from it ... so the school has to go with the cheapest option, which runs at a slower speed, has less services as part of it, takes more management and might not even have any filtering included ... and this could be a school that isn't exactly small but is not big enough to employ IT support frequently enough to run their own filtering (they might not even have the hardware to run something on)

 

So you get 2 schools ... in the same area ... with vastly different connectivity and services.

 

Purely hypothetical of course ...

[Edu-IT]

Makes sense now!

 

It's a difficult situation to be in and as localzuk says and I somewhat agree with, we all have to look out for our own schools and do what is best for them but at the same time I don't think we can completely ignore our feeder schools too as that is where our kids will be coming from.

[GrumbleDook]

The problem is, as an individual school - it is not our responsibility to provide services to other schools. It is not our place to worry about the funding of other schools. If we did that, we'd never get anything done, as we'd spend half our budget subsidising other schools. At a school level, it is our responsibility to get best value for our pupils, for our community.

 

What happens when you realise that many of these primaries that are miles out in the middle of nowhere actually only have 12 pupils, yet get 5 times the funding per pupil as your school. Is that fair?

 

Collective thinking is only as good as the lowest common denominator - why should those who can get good deals be forced to lower the quality of their service?

 

However, schools thinking independently doesn't mean they won't help other schools. In our town, for example, I don't see why our school couldn't have leased lines installed to the first schools with us becoming their ISP. It all depends how our LEA goes though, and how many wish to become academies.

 

Because all the funding now goes to schools and is the responsibility of each school then it is almost a moot point ...

 

You will find that in a number of places it used to be that a main line was run into a large school and then links to others schools put in ... which was fine as long as no work had to be done out of hours ... and schools, for some reason, don't like to have things taken down during school hours. That is why so many RBC / MANs now operate core equipment in exchanges ... the main bone of contention is do people really want to run WANs / Regional grids now? It is not just the cost of running the lines connecting the grid together, but the support costs of it too.

 

If you think it is unfair for an LA supported school with few pupils to get a lot of money ... all pupils are entitled to the same level of education, and sometimes that means it will cost more in some areas, the same way it costs more to run some NHS services in some areas ...

 

Collective thinking should not mean the lowest common denominator either. It should cater for the need for all, where possible ... but sometimes folk have to be willing to compromise. With sufficient money all things are possible ... just as with sufficient thrust pigs will fly, but it might not be a good idea to be underneath as they go overhead, or be near them when they land.

 

If best value for your school saves you £10k ... but it results in another school having to pay out £12k more than if it was a collective process ... is that best value on the part of the Govt? If it then also reduces their options for provision of tools for learning (more complex or restrictive filtering, or less flexibility in managing it) then is that also a good thing? I'm not saying that the RBC is the only way, or even the best way ... just that some of the drive to make each school go their own way (which is the way NAHT and ASCL see it too) is going to cause problems further down the road.

[Edu-IT]

If best value for your school saves you £10k ... but it results in another school having to pay out £12k more than if it was a collective process ... is that best value on the part of the Govt? If it then also reduces their options for provision of tools for learning (more complex or restrictive filtering, or less flexibility in managing it) then is that also a good thing? I'm not saying that the RBC is the only way, or even the best way ... just that some of the drive to make each school go their own way (which is the way NAHT and ASCL see it too) is going to cause problems further down the road.

But on the flip side what if the school has no other choice but to go it alone because they cannot afford the collective price given by the RBC? The other school may still end up paying out more and may have their options reduced but really there's nothing that can be done. The school only has so much money and if they cannot afford the collective price then they have to do their own thing. Schools set their own budgets so only the school knows what they have to spend on this, that and the other. There's nothing to say that RBC's will be able to secure fantastic pricing which everyone can afford.

[irsprint84]

Because all the funding now goes to schools and is the responsibility of each school then it is almost a moot point ...

 

You will find that in a number of places it used to be that a main line was run into a large school and then links to others schools put in ... which was fine as long as no work had to be done out of hours ... and schools, for some reason, don't like to have things taken down during school hours. That is why so many RBC / MANs now operate core equipment in exchanges ... the main bone of contention is do people really want to run WANs / Regional grids now? It is not just the cost of running the lines connecting the grid together, but the support costs of it too.

 

If you think it is unfair for an LA supported school with few pupils to get a lot of money ... all pupils are entitled to the same level of education, and sometimes that means it will cost more in some areas, the same way it costs more to run some NHS services in some areas ...

 

Collective thinking should not mean the lowest common denominator either. It should cater for the need for all, where possible ... but sometimes folk have to be willing to compromise. With sufficient money all things are possible ... just as with sufficient thrust pigs will fly, but it might not be a good idea to be underneath as they go overhead, or be near them when they land.

 

If best value for your school saves you £10k ... but it results in another school having to pay out £12k more than if it was a collective process ... is that best value on the part of the Govt? If it then also reduces their options for provision of tools for learning (more complex or restrictive filtering, or less flexibility in managing it) then is that also a good thing? I'm not saying that the RBC is the only way, or even the best way ... just that some of the drive to make each school go their own way (which is the way NAHT and ASCL see it too) is going to cause problems further down the road.

 

But this is the governments problem and they should have thought this through I might as well walk to the next school and give them 2k a year from our budget! the government should give certain quantities of money to schools depending of situations. In thereoy I could give radio connections from my school to other primaries

[localzuk]

Because all the funding now goes to schools and is the responsibility of each school then it is almost a moot point ...

 

You will find that in a number of places it used to be that a main line was run into a large school and then links to others schools put in ... which was fine as long as no work had to be done out of hours ... and schools, for some reason, don't like to have things taken down during school hours. That is why so many RBC / MANs now operate core equipment in exchanges ... the main bone of contention is do people really want to run WANs / Regional grids now? It is not just the cost of running the lines connecting the grid together, but the support costs of it too.

 

Indeed, our connection is currently done via that model, but the LEA is currently rewiring to move to an exchange direct connection for every school instead. IMO, internet technology is moving faster than our LEAs and RBCs are capable of keeping up with. It is easier for a school to invest in their own connection, bringing it up to modern standards, than it is for an LEA or entire RBC to upgrade an entire WAN.

 

If you think it is unfair for an LA supported school with few pupils to get a lot of money ... all pupils are entitled to the same level of education, and sometimes that means it will cost more in some areas, the same way it costs more to run some NHS services in some areas ...

 

I do think it is unfair, but as you say, every child is entitled to the same level of education. But this is what buses were invented for. I used to travel for nearly an hour to get to school, and you can guarantee that that bus service cost a lot less than maintaining a tiny school.

 

Collective thinking should not mean the lowest common denominator either. It should cater for the need for all, where possible ... but sometimes folk have to be willing to compromise. With sufficient money all things are possible ... just as with sufficient thrust pigs will fly, but it might not be a good idea to be underneath as they go overhead, or be near them when they land.

 

It shouldn't mean the lowest common denominator, but as you can see from people's posts on these forums - it regularly does mean that.

 

If best value for your school saves you £10k ... but it results in another school having to pay out £12k more than if it was a collective process ... is that best value on the part of the Govt? If it then also reduces their options for provision of tools for learning (more complex or restrictive filtering, or less flexibility in managing it) then is that also a good thing? I'm not saying that the RBC is the only way, or even the best way ... just that some of the drive to make each school go their own way (which is the way NAHT and ASCL see it too) is going to cause problems further down the road.

 

What if that 10k saving also comes with increased options for that school? It isn't always about money - as you can see from some on here who actually chose to pay more than their LEA/RBC charged and go it alone, due to the advantages. Those decisions should be up to the schools, and shouldn't be up to the LEA/RBC.

[poltawski]

Don't want to get on the wrong side of the forum rules here, but couldn't pass by this thread without saying thanks for the kind words from you guys about LUNS on this thread - you've made our day

 

See you at the edugeek conference ;-)

 

Dan Poltawski

LUNS

[Edu-IT]

We shall hopefully have a company who is very, very good at school internet connectivity talking about this very subject at our conf in June. I won't name names yet until they're in the bag though

Looks like LUNS have let the cat out of the bag! ;-)