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No doubt, but the huge variation in costs, standards, accountability and quality of the current organic approaches needs to be addressed and will ensure predictable costs, standards, accountability and quality.

This is not neccesarily a good or logical thing. Let's not forget that, like it or not, private sector involvement in ICT is more dynamic and reliable due to the presures of competition and stringent SLAs and transfering or halting the addition of onsite ICT staff onto the public sector payroll helps to take pressure off the public sector pension schemes and payroll. Meanwhile, the bit that traditional PFI does, i.e. building a shiny new school is the expensive bit and arguably the bit of BSF which is most ripe for dropping given the questionable returns. For the above reasons I think the new government would be wise to look to widely increase the level of private sector involvement in things like school ICT design and managed services whilst opting for refurbishments as opposed to shiny new buildings.

I know this will be controversial but one way to save a load of money could be to take the 'ICT-only' part of BSF (i.e. where there are no new buildings just new ICT with a managed service) and apply it to those schools not yet affected by BSF, even if BSF itself slows or stops after the election. This would create economies of scale for LAs and allow the schoos to reduce their workforce costs whilst also creating a big-picture based solution which allows for seemless interoperability across school sites, something which will benefit the 14-19 agenda and the idea of a single system which follows a student from Foundation Stage all the way through to Sixth Form. I think the leading providers such as Capita-Ramesys and RM could really do such a thing justice.

To an extent ITIL does need to be adopted at management level to make a real difference, that said I think it would benefit anyone involved in providing services because it helps you to work efficiently and logically and to review the way you work, it would also allow you to feed back to your managers who if they are any good should be open to sugestions about improving services.

Hi Stuart, as an ex Wirral school based employee not a million miles from you I've already implemented both and would say on balance that Live@Edu is better because it is basically like Exchange for free (controlled using Exchange Live) and you get more control than Google Apps. I though Live@Edu was MS hosted and therefore not requiring your own hardware.

Another vote for Sharepoint here.

We need to replace about 70-80 headphones. Most important is that they are fairly robust, so the really cheapo little ones with foam covers are out. We have had quite a few Sony sets such as MDR-V150 which have lasted well. So something like that (with microphones if possible but not essential) would be great. Any prices would be welcomed.

I agree with that, in fact I don't think anyone who has driven less than perhaps 100,000 post test miles and at least ten years experience can be considered to be an experienced driver.

Changing down through the gears is useful for 'engine braking', i.e. slowing the car down with the engine instead of the brakes, reducing the wear on your brakes. You are also less likely to stall and more able to move off quickly if circumstances ahead change.

Probably not. Thomson are the best in the business though.

I agree. The "latest posts" box needs to return in the same summary form as before.

You might also like to consider ITIL qualifications if your involved in IT Support and looking to go down a management route.

Who plans ICT Provision on a 1 year budget though? I disagree that it is a 'random spike' and if by 'spreading the cost' you mean essentially leasing the right to use the software but at a higher total cost of 'ownership' then you may be more accurate. Finally, as you say, schools aren't really allowed to roll budgets on and equally they cannot neccessarily always project their future budgets, especially when rising manpower and fuel costs are taken into consideration. For that reason, and the fact that it is mathematically almost always cheaper to go Select I prefer the certainty that we own the right to have OS's Office etc. until we want/can afford to replace them instead of being trapped in a never ending leasing cycle.

The issue I have with the so called 'Additional Benefits' of Schools Agreement over Select which is rolled out every time a salesman wants you to sign up to Schools Agreement is that they are often a mix of the intangible (such as always having the newest shiniest version) or are arguably outside the remit of the school (such as allowing teachers to use it free at home / very cheap home licencing). If your aim is to be licence compliant for the lifetime of an MS software title for the least amount of money then I can't see Schools being more cost effective than Select in all but a very few situations. The rest is little more than a smokescreen.

Based on those figures you would have to expect to replace every Select licence every 2.5 years or more frequently to make Schools agreeement cheaper. In other words, If you buy Select licences now then unless you plan to upgrade EVERYTHING again before Autumn 2012 then Schools agreement is more expensive for you. If you then factor in that most new PCs you will buy will come with OEM OS licences, which won't need upgrading in 2.5 years time then under Select it is far cheaper.