TerryTibbs

First - I am neither an IT technologist/developer nor am I a teacher, I'm a governor - so many apologies in advance for my lack of (ehem) education, understanding and my personal surfeit of laziness, but this is always such a helpful and knowledgeable forum I thought I'd try to ask some dumb questions about Fronter and more generally identity management. The secondary school I'm a governor at had Fronter forced on it years ago by the London Grid for Learning. Afaik it's never been used by the school in any sustained or even trivial way, quite possibly because it's the ugliest, clumsiest, least standards compliant piece of software still making its authors a living. Anyhow, in the absence of anything else (including cash and skills) there are moves to use Fronter. What I'd like to know is whether Fronter IDs can used outside of Fronter - (eg non-anonymous surveys) and whether they conform to any sort of open standard. If they can't and don't, how have other schools approached identity management - especially when trying to create identities for the wider school community (parents/carers/governors etc)? Thanks in advance,

Thanks very much for the OCR and Computing at School tips - both really useful.

I'm really sorry, I know this isn't the right forum, but Edugeeks have been so helpful before I thought I'd give it a go.... I'm not a geek I'm a school governor. ICT at our school is pathetic - it based on the OCR board and it's dull, the course materials are laughable and there's more or less no opportunity to learn to code. It turns many more students off computing than interests. I feel that it should not be even leading edge to teach code at KS3 & 4 but the ICT staff are utterly resistant. Does anyone know where coding is being well taught in secondary school? What examination boards are used? Thanks for any pointers.

I heard that LBHF have contracted with a supplier under BSF to deliver all school IT services using thin client tech and schools have agreed to pay (presumably index linked) £300 per head per year for the privelege. Does anyone know anything about this?

No what you tried to do was 'issue a rebuttal' while deliberately glossing over an interesting connection. You were helpful in explaining the ownership of VT ES and distinguishing it from VT Four S. A reasonable assumption is that you work for VT or perhaps for their PR company. May be you would like to be even more helpful and explain away how Ramesys were chosen, why Northgate dropped out and what happened to Azzurri, touching on VT PLC's part in such a large-scale screw-up which has meant that nothing has yet been built.

Here is Tessa Blackstone having absolutely nothing to do with VT and thereby no connection to the Greenwich BSF programme

It would be worth making some Freedom of Information Requests to find out just how much has been spent on project managers, consultants. lawyers etc in the process of doing nothing for Greenwich under the auspices of BSF

Although it seemed that Vosper Thornycroft Education and Skills (VT ES) won Greenwich the picture is actually much murkier, weird and possibly holed beneath the water line. VT ES did not in fact win Greenwich - although VT PLC is now running the bid in Greenwich since a tripartite Lewisham/Greenwich/Deptford(?) LEP collapsed. VT PLC is not VT ES (who I think turnout to be a management buy-out of Surrey Education Services which was purchased by VT PLC.) VT PLC have now chosen Ramesys to run IT services in the borough since Northgate dropped out (citing chaos) and the other one (some company called Azzurri ) stalled because their offer was predicated on thin client and the network (which they did not control or manage) would not supply the bandwidth they needed. Ramesys has meanwhile gone very close to administration and the whole project has been mired by contractual wrangling. It has meant that what was initially supposed to cover 7 schools now covers 2 and no others will be considered for inclusion. Greenwich was a pathfinder, but still nothing has been built which has made Balfour Beatty unhappy and litigious because the timescales are way off and the responsibilities/liabilities are not clear. The process to date has taken 3 years to get no where. As an aside, it's interesting to note that the current Vice Chancellor of Greenwich University is Labour life peer Baroness Tessa Blackstone or more properly Baroness Tessa Vosper Blackstone former Labour Minister for Education from 1997 to 2001. Baroness Tessa Vosper Blackstone sits on the board of Vosper Thornycroft PLC

It is not the case that BSF ICT Managed services are mandatory - they just appear that way. I believe Hammersmith and Fulham may have successfully opted out and other authorities are negotiating exits. The other hope for schools faced with managed services they don't want is large scale screw-up like the pathfinding car-crash that is Greenwich.

The BSF process is already being used to cloak further privatisation outside education. One of the most interesting/alarming aspects of the OJEU tender that went out from my LA was that it invited responses for services outside education if cost savings could be demonstrated. It is nothing other than a process of privatisation of the local state. I suppose it's worth mentioning also that the two consortia to have responded (Bouygues and BAM) are not based in the UK - effectively ensuring that local education and possibly other local state services are run for profit by foreign multi-nationals.

I see that Vosper Thorneycroft brought their nuclear submarine fabrication expertise to bear in providing IT for 'wave 0' authorities Greenwich and Lewisham, but appear to have done nothing since under the BSF programme. Does anyone have any experience of or insight into how VT run school IT in these boroughs? Does anyone know why they appear not to have won other contracts - did they not bid, did they bid and lose etc. Any information about life under VT would be helpful. Thanks

Politely, the charge per pupil of £200 comes out of the consultants' arse. Since no bidder has yet been foramlly contacted, nor any service specified, it really is a grotesque form of wasting time and money. It is part of the BSF process to go through an extensive, sapping 'Output Specification' phase - which 'specifies' 'outputs' - ie nebulous competing lists of vague desires none of which are designed to be quoted against. Afaik its real role is to let potential bidders know there are rich pickings at our/any authority. (Apparently we're in a beauty contest - we need to assuage the fears of bidders who may have been burnt by wrongly guessing how much it costs to run schools - notably Morse, whoever 'won' Sheffield amongst others.) My problem with the 'affordability model' that underlies the arse-conjured figure is that it is entirely abstract. It does not make even broad technical assumptions and is therefore dramatically worthless. Essentially it's more confusing guff to bamboozle the ill-prepared Heads and collected other staff called upon to endure the process. Jonathan - I didn't mean to indicate that we had been presented with a choice. Imo, no matter how flawed, that would be a step up from the abstraction we currently struggle with. The giveaway about 'Total Cost of Ownership' is in the title - it's the total cost but these costs should be concrete and comparable - what we are presented with is a single cost for something entirely unspecified. Tbh my assumption is that this is a deliberate strategy to exhaust participants and cloud costs so that no one can make value for money judgements. The august National Audit Office agrees that 'bench-marking' is sadly lacking from BSF procurement. (The Building Schools for the Future Programme: Renewing the secondary school estate) How did this ever happen? Bench-marking is a cornerstone of normal procurement. Thanks for your replies - it's very helpful to discuss these things.

I should declare that I am strictly speaking neither edu nor geek - I am a school governor - apologies. I have been tangentially involved in the elaborate and expensive distraction that is the BSF Output Specification process. One thing that is puzzling me is the 'cost model' produced by the LEP's insanely expensive consultants. How can (at least) two radically different approaches to delivering managed services be usefully represented by a single chart? Surely thin client/Open source approach has a different cost model to thick client/Microsoft based solution? Not only would I expect the total costs to be different, but I would also expect the proportion of costs to be different. The models could be compared, but not usefully merged. It also seems maddeningly abstract to talk of Total Cost of Ownership when fundamental technological choices have not been made. Maybe someone on this forum can explain... My other sceptical thought is that assuming that this cost modelling was done in good faith for all authorities in the phases subsequent to ours how come they have previously got it so wrong? Our LEP is demanding schools sign-up to at least £200 per student (for a term yet to be decided but at least 5 years) when a neighbouring authority pays £60 a head and others range between £120-150. Simply put the cost model is useless in so many ways - it's use is to give a semblance of control where there is none.

Publishing a successful bid document would be dynamite. They'll almost certainly be covered by confidentiality agreements but any leaked successful proposal would terrify P4S. It would expose their selection process and show a route forward to building successful counter-bids.

Throughout the BSF threads there are many references to the apparent lack of alternative business case proposals in the face of BSF managed services. The more fair-minded/knowledgeable posts recognise that this is mainly due to leverage, not to say blackmail, from the LA/LEP/P4S to force compliance with the programme. The most routine pressure is to claim that opt-out jeopardises the entire BSF programme. Another common mechanic is simply to compress the time available to develop an alternative proposal, which in any case is a truly Herculean task for any school, as they generally don't have many years of experience building comprehensive business cases, (unlike the pre-qualified bidders who not only do it for a living, but have a connected history of bids to draw on.) So when a school does make a bid what happens? Villiers School in Ealing did exactly that and it was summarily rejected without substantial reasons. You can judge for yourselves the quality of the bid because the outraged school has posted it at http://www.villiers.ealing.sch.uk/apbc At the very least it disproves the idea that no one is bothered or capable of mounting a serious counter-proposal. Sadly it also demonstrates the treatment P4S metes out to those who do not believe in the nirvana of long-term managed services monopolies financed by the usury that is PFI.

Can anyone say whether Morse have withdrawn from BSF? - Andy Davies (who was apparently BSF Technical Director at Morse) seems to indicate that they have... see Andy Davies BSF Wiki / The Scoreboard