Your Technology dept.'s printing

[fafster]

I was simply wondering how much printing is done by your schools' technology department. Is printing kept to a minimum to save cost, or do the kids print out everything they do?

 

We're having to make some decisions here based on how much the department prints (costing us a small fortune), so I was wondering what other schools do.

[riffleman]

Our technology department are very restrictive about what they print, even to the point where teachers are the only ones allowed to print to their departmental printers! I have tried for years to put in place a printing quota to cover whole school, but I keep getting told that we can't disadvantage students who cannot afford to pay for more printing credits.

[plexer]

It's not really about making them pay real hard cash for credits but about making them think about what they print.

 

Ben

[pete]

There's a requirement that the school provide sufficient printing to cover necessary work (i.e if doing GCSE Textiles and printed coursework is needed, the school needs to cover the cost). If (say) the average GCSE kid can fulfill their class, course and homework requirements with a quota of $foo and you can back that up, there's no reason not to impose a quota since printing above and beyond that isn't school-related.

 

We do get quite a lot of volume at coursework time, but it's pre-agreed at the start of the year and isn't a surprise. Depts with high printing requirements (Engineering, Food Tech, Textiles, certain ICT modules) pre-agree extra quota for kids taking their subjects. It's up to the teacher to ensure we know Johnny Briggs is doing Food Tech and will need extra credit to cover his sausage cake project.

 

Some teachers batch the printing and do it themselves, others let the kids print once it's been approved.

 

edit: Yeah - the quota is a brake on daft printing.

[riffleman]

It's not really about making them pay real hard cash for credits but about making them think about what they print.

 

Ben

 

I know that and you know that, but the SLT don't seem to take that onboard.

[Trapper]

My advice is just do it.

 

When I started here I threw up the idea of monitoring printing and quotas. The SLT did not take to it - all staff are too used to being able to print unlimited colour, and our students need to be able to print bright colourful work.

 

I set up a trial of Print Manager Plus and set it to monitor all network printer jobs and put some very soft limits on staff (no more than 10 copies and 50 pages) and a bit harder on kids.

 

At the end of month I told SLT that I'd just been monitoring the situation and that we'd effectively spent £800 that month on printing alone. Students were randomly bashing out 20 pages at a go and then binning them, and that staff were being very wasteful and printing a lot of personal stuff and not paying for it as they should.

 

I was then told to buy the software immeadiatly and report back to the Head each month. The software paid for it's self within weeks and I've knocked 75% of our consumables bill.

 

Whether it was just the fact that they didn't realise how much was being wasted and the stats shocked them, or it just timed well with the budget being released I don't know. But it works. One of the deputy heads a few weeks ago actually came to me and requested, without any prompting, that I should cap her account at 5 copies as she kept making mistakes.

Edited June 22, 2011 by Trapper

[maniac]

I knocked our toner bill down from around £15k a year to around £5k a year in the first year of having papercut.

 

Students have a personal quota, staff print to a department shared account except admin staff who have unlimited printing for obvious reasons. No more than 3 copies, no duplicate documents within 2 minutes, student printing requires staff authorisation using a release queue. Same policy runs school wide, except in the art department who fund their own printer and chose for it not to be restricted. Colour print costs 2 credits per page, except our nice solid ink xerox printer which is 3 credits as it costs slightly more to run. B/W print is 1 credit per page with a 25% discount for using duplex mode. Students get initial allocation of 100 credits a term, plus 20 credits per week upto a maximum of 200 credits. Departments get 500 credits per term per member of FT teaching staff. Simples!

 

Mike.

[riffleman]

I set up a trial of Print Manager Plus and set it to monitor all network printer jobs and put some very soft limits on staff (no more than 10 copies and 50 pages) and a bit harder on kids.

 

Even with PMP, our SLT still dont see it. They see it as puting an uneccessary restriction on the poorer students. PMP is used to restrict the waste issue, preventing documents larger than 10 pages etc, we're just not allowed to implement quotas.

[Trapper]

Even with PMP, our SLT still dont see it. They see it as puting an uneccessary restriction on the poorer students. PMP is used to restrict the waste issue, preventing documents larger than 10 pages etc, we're just not allowed to implement quotas.

 

Why are you charging students. AFAIK schools can't charge them for curriculum use - or are you private? The most I've ever done is bill departments for all their printing from their budgets, but for the kids as long as they aren't messing around the school takes the hit.

[teejay]

We charge back consumables to the departments, it's up to them if they want to waste all their budget on printing.

[plexer]

No-one has actually said they charge kids money for credits just that they implement credits to restrict printing.

 

Ben

[witch]

We bought print manager some time ago but after a while I was told to take the restrictions off as the staff didnt like them! I managed to keep the restrictions on repeat printing for students and printing web pages but that was all. We have recently set all the printers to default to black and white to try to restrict the toner useage

[MK-2]

we've just had a meeting about this with regards our new system for september. we will be giving kids a half termly quota and if they run out, they must write a letter explaining what they need more for, which will be kept for evidence should they run out again. we won't be charging them but as @plexer said, it's making them think about what they are printing....do i need 15 full colour copies or would one do?

 

staff will be monitored this year but should it be abused they will have unlimited prints but be set up in departmental groups so when they print it will ask which group to charge to. at the end of the year, those over x amount will have their budget docked the relevant amount. again its not to disrupt the day to day running, its to make them think more of what they are printing.

 

i think SMT and staff backing is important though. if the staff feel that restricting printing is hindering their lessons, they will kick up a fuss, and SMT will probably join them. If however you get SMT on your side it makes it easier.

how about setting up monitoring for the kids only, so they dont even get informed. that way at the end of the term you can say child x printed 10,000 pages where as child y printed 500. things like papercut also show the carbon cost and cost of the prints, so you could say child x has cost the school £400 in toner and £50 in electricity which should be cut down.

[broc]

We use the print quota as a throttling mechanism; when a students quota runs out, before we will give them any more they know we will examine their print history & discuss any 'anomolies'. The quota is reset every week, we will allow extra quota for certain subjects (Technology, Art) on request. The intention is never to stop them printing essential work. Staff printing costs are charged to deparmental budgets. Edited June 23, 2011 by broc

[Pete10141748]

We are in the middle of an 'experiment' here; we've just put 1 multi-function printer in every classroom, and with very few exceptions, only the class teacher is able to print to their printer.

 

The printers are owned by the school, but we took out a maintenance contract on them so we pay-per-print and get the toner cartridges for 'free'.

No limits on printing or photocopying.

 

At the end of the year, the Head wants to see how much each teacher has printed, and work out what each year group is costing the school in terms of printing.

After that, if the Head feels too much has been waste, caps will be put on and anything over that mark will be charged to their year group budget.

 

 

Personally, I wanted to take the opposite approach - set up limits now, and see who goes over them first and why.}

The current set up means that, in theory, the cost of printing at the end of the year could be enormous if everyone has gone over-the-top with printing!

[bossman]

@all:

 

We use RMs built-in printer credits which after consultation with the SLT implemented a strategy which had been drawn up by us which allowed only the students and ICT staff to print from the ICT-suites under controlled credits scheme.

 

The rest of the school subjects have their own printers which only the subject staff can print to and they maintain the toners from their budgets.

 

The main staff work area and the reprographics are the 2 places where the staff can print from in colour.

 

Technology and Art have a managed large print contract with United Carlton which they pay for out of their budgets at less than a penny a print for both A3 and A4

 

Credits are allocated thus:

 

All staff = 200 per week

SLT = 1000 per month

Students years 7,8 and 9 = 50 per week

students years 10 and 11 = 100 per week

 

The students can request more through the teachers who can then allocate the credits or through us if no teacher available.

 

Budget spent on toners for the IT suites this coming year = £2.5k down from last years £4k

 

This has been achievable through the use of various in house built apps which allow the staff to view and mark work within the students home directories which can be accessed remotely from home which stops the students having to print work off to give to the teachers to take home to mark.

 

Also a better use of the VLE has enabled homework to be done from anywhere and from any device capable of running a web browser.

 

I have been consulting with the SLT on a scheme to further enable the staff and students to access printing via MFDs situated around the school and eventually eradicating the need for laser-jet printers except for the admin staff.

 

Works incredibly well and so far only one senior member of staff has complained but they have been dealt with by the SLT.

[JonWPS]

Our students use print credits; years 7 to 9 get 50 per half term, year 10s get 400 for the year, and year 11s 450. For the younger kids it's not much of an issue if they go over and need more, as credits are then knocked off their next term's allocation, but it's trickier for years 10 and 11. We're not really too keen on charging students for extra credits, and funnily enough departments are willing to pay either.

 

For staff, they should really be printing only on the photocopiers which are controlled by account numbers and billed annually to departments. However they can and do print to the network printers, so they have a fixed set of credits. Any additional credits are then charged to relevant departments as well.

 

We're having a bit of a refresh of our copiers this summer and part of it may be some print management software coming in, so I'm hoping to be able to further refine this system both in terms of setup and effectiveness. As it stands we've printed as a school over 318,000 pages this school year. That doesn't include local office printers and of course photocopying. Scary really.

[Mako]

Why are you charging students. AFAIK schools can't charge them for curriculum use - or are you private?

 

Not sure where you've read this. We've been charging students for years. Our printing policy is clear, and has been agreed to for years. Our policies are verified by our LA when we're inspected, and each year we send them our policies if they're updated.

 

Here is our setup;

• We run Print Manager Plus, and have roughly 24 B&W printers, and 2 colour printers (not including the staff-only colour in the main office which is restricted to Admin only).
  
• All these printers are rented under contract, which covers all repairs and maintenance, and consumables. It's a good deal, we never have to pay for toner and it's same-day on-site engineer if one breaks.
  
• We charge 5p for black and white paper, and 10p for colour. If anyone prints duplex, they get a 20% discount from the total cost of the job.
  
• Staff have money credited directly to their account, and this is totalled over the year and debited from their department's capitation. They tell us when it runs out and how much they want to add.
  
• Students in years 7-11 receive £3 free credit each term. Sixth Form receive £5 free credit. If they wish for more or run out and need to top up, it's done by cash.
  
• The exception to this is when it comes to final coursework deadlines, the department pays for the printing of their coursework. Staff give us a list of a students, and how much they want adding to each of their accounts to cover the cost of the printing. Departments can, of course, do this at any time they see fit if they want to pay for student's printing of materials etc.
  
• Students have a restriction of 5 pages per job, to avoid the age-old mistake of 99 pages being printed because someone accidentally clicked the "number of copies" option and rolled the value forward. This restriction can be lifted at times for printing coursework.
  
• Staff have no job restriction. Funnily enough, they are usually the worst when it comes to accidental over-printing.
  

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention photocopiers. We have 3 large photocopiers in reprographics, for staff-only. Using these costs 2p per page and is charged directly to their department. It bypasses Print Manager Plus.

 

Out of roughly 1200 students, less than 20% (at a guess) ever top up with cash, and even then it's mostly towards summer when they're printing extra materials. This is because the system teaches them to think about what they're printing, because if they're careless and run out, they'll need to pay to continue. They learn to manage their balance and calculate how much they'll need to do the job, and whether or not it needs to be done in colour. It makes them think twice about printing the picture of the cute fluffy bunny (or a lolcat), in colour, just to carry around with them.

 

Parents and governors have always been supportive of the printing system we have in place here.

 

Think that's about it...

Edited June 23, 2011 by Mako

[fafster]

Cheers for the replies, all.

 

We're looking at going down the leasing route. For A3 multifunction, it will be .36p per black print, and 3.6p colour. Plus a £70 p/m charge.

 

Currently the technology dept. is going through £600 of toner and drum units every term, so we need to look at reducing those costs through various methods. We already have print software in place.

 

I'm going to see if we can cut out printing altogether for certain yeargroups, as year 7/8/9 don't really need to print out every piece of work.