7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control
- 1. Developing an ICT strategy which empowers teachers and learners, creates tangible improvements and fuels innovation both in and out of the classroom needn’t cost the earth. Here are some top tips for getting the most value from your school’s ICT budget... 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control
- 2. “We had considered recruiting an in-house network manager, but this was not a cost-effective solution, so we opted instead for a technician two days a week, complemented by RM Flex remote support with experts on call when needed. The Flex service provides us with considerable cost savings compared to directly employing a full-time network manager.” Owain Johns Principal, UTC Oxfordshire Together we designed a service solution that helped us to realise immediate savings.
- 3. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control So how many of these steps are in place in your school? As a strategic partner, RM Education has 40 years of experience in delivering all these areas to a high standard. We are trusted to deliver complete ICT support for over 700 schools and are part of the ICT support picture for thousands more. If you are developing an ICT strategy for your school and would like to discuss your plans with a partner who really understands ICT in education, is completely technology and device agnostic, and can offer advice and experience on what may (or may not) work best for you. To book your free, no obligation ICT Support Consultancy to help you plan the future of ICT investment for your school in more detail, call us on 0808 172 9534 or visit www.rm.com/flex. 3.
- 4. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control The easiest way to overspend on your ICT is to buy unnecessary solutions to problems you don’t have, so start with looking at the big picture. What is your strategic ICT plan and how does it support the priorities identified in your school development plan? If you don’t have a strategic ICT plan yet, or you think it needs fine-tuning, start by asking yourself these questions: What educational challenges do you have? • What do you want to deliver? • What can you deliver now? • What can you make better use of? Let’s take a look at these questions in more detail… See the bigger picture1
- 5. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control 5. i. What educational challenges do you have? This could be an in-house assessment of your needs, or as a result of an Ofsted or independent assessment and could include items such as: • Ensuring your teachers and learners and school reputation are safe online • Building teacher confidence in new technologies • Empowering students to become more independent in their learning ii. What do you want to deliver? This comes from your strategic plan and could include things like providing more dynamic media-rich lessons, or providing access to ICT to all learners. iii. What can you deliver now? This question helps you to understand what you can achieve with your current ICT provision, so list out all the resources at your disposal and you’ll start to build a picture of where you are now. iv. What can you make better use of? Take your list of resources and identify any that are underutilised. Can you use these assets differently to help deliver solutions to your current challenges? Also take a look at the resources that you are currently keeping running, but that you don’t actually need (like an old server). Can you save time and money by using free online (cloud-based) services instead? By understanding your current situation, knowing your goals and reallocating resources more effectively you can easily increase your ICT provision without any additional spend.
- 6. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control Before you embark on an exciting new ICT project, consider whether another school has already done something similar before you. Can you identify and liaise with this school and ask them how it went? Benchmarking is a great (and free) way to see how your project might work; what were the lessons learnt by other schools? What worked? What didn’t and why? What would they change if they had the chance to start over? You can use other local and national schools to help guide your plans, but don’t be limited to your existing contacts. RM Education, as an example of a strategic partner, will share their experiences learned from hundreds of other schools with you too. Make the most of their expertise at events and seminars they host as well as through relationships you build with them. Some partners will also offer online forums where you can share scenarios and swap ideas with like-minded peers such as www.rm.com/community Don’t underestimate the power of social media to help here too… There are numerous LinkedIn groups on the topic of ICT strategy in schools and many experienced professionals to get in touch with on Twitter. You could also use team working tools like RM Collaborate to share insights and drive school improvement in your local area, or leverage the knowledge within a federation or multi-academy trust group you may be involved in. Learn from others 6. 2 Use the full extent of your network of contacts to learn as much as you can from the successes and failures seen at other schools before you make any decisions that might cost you in the long run.
- 7. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control 7. Before you spend any of your precious budget on software, take a moment to look at the thousands of free web-hosted resources that are available. Use web-based Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps for Education for free email, contacts, calendars, word-processing and spreadsheets. These tools help you and your students to create quality content. They also help to promote independent study, and your students are learning the standard tools needed for their future careers too. With some basic internet searches you can also find a host of free guides, white papers and practical ideas like the ones around the new computing curriculum at www.rm.com/computing Use free online resources3 As well as your curriculum apps, make good use of any free/cheap applications that can help improve communication, productivity and collaboration in the classroom.
- 8. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control A simple way to de-risk your purchases is to test their suitability for your school on a trial basis. Many schools we work with have set up small-scale pilot projects that enable you to explore the use of technology in practice, in the classroom with your teachers and students. A trial with some well-defined, SMART objectives, led by your school leadership team will help you determine the key technologies to test, the staff who should participate, the best fit with curriculum requirements and objectives and the CPD/support requirements and timescales. There is also potential for students to become ‘Digital Leaders’ by participating in these projects to help shape the future of technology in their school, and evaluate the effectiveness of proposed solutions. At the end of the trial you can then review the strengths and weaknesses of each solution, and consider how they support your strategic goals for sustainable development. If you decide to go ahead, you can then work out a timeline for investment decisions, considering any training requirements, affordability and value for money over time. Try before you buy 8. 4 A free or low-cost trial will enable you to develop effective pedagogies and to choose the most appropriate devices for your specific context without costly investments.
- 9. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control 9. Having trialled a range of traditional and transformational technologies you should now be in a strong position to purchase exactly the right ICT kit for your school, but there are still some minefields to negotiate. Do you… • Update your infrastructure and upgrade your current devices? If your infrastructure can support the traffic that your teachers and learners will generate with greater media-rich content in lessons, you could simply look to upgrade your existing devices. Can you upgrade the hard drive to a solid state drive? Can you add more RAM? Can you turn an old desktop into a thin-client device? • Update your infrastructure and replace your current devices? This is a like-for-like solution and is the most traditional route. It delivers less transformation and innovation in the classroom and could have a higher price tag. It is however the most well understood and safest of your options. • Update your infrastructure and introduce a mobile or BYOD (bring your own device) scheme? By enabling your staff and students to bring in a device they own to connect to your schools infrastructure you can dramatically reduce the cost of overhauling your ICT provision. You are likely to still need to purchase traditional ICT suites for specific tasks such as design. You’ll need to invest in CPD to support a transformation of pedagogy, solutions to standardise access regardless of device or platform, and look to migrate your software and storage to the cloud to make all vyour services accessible via a browser. Making informed purchases5 Regardless of the path you choose, be sure to request exactly the same quotations from your short-list of suppliers to allow you to make a direct comparison so ask for ‘school-wide wireless with 80 access points’, rather than letting the vendor decide on the quantity; these finite questions allow you to make direct comparisons to identify the best purchase price and ongoing support costs.
- 10. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control Making best use of your time 10. Does your School Business Manager spend a good proportion of their week managing the complex and time-consuming relationships with the 20 or more vendors that your school works with? You may find that working with a strategic partner who can manage these relationships for you would be a better use of time for an already stretched SLT team. How much focus are you able to give to your ICT strategy and plan, and how it provides a foundation for learning and excellence in your school? How much value do your existing multiple suppliers bring to the development of this ICT strategy? If you’re really honest with yourself, do you know enough about the future trends in ICT to be able to create an effective plan for the next 3 years? Should your ICT strategy be limited by your network managers own knowledge and what they think they can deliver for you? If ICT is really important to you, then consider working with a partner who has expertise in the development of school ICT to help you shape your strategy and aspirations. 6 Effective ICT management isn’t just about getting the best prices for your purchases, it also includes utilising the skills of your ICT team to best effect. If you want to expand your ICT horizons beyond the knowledge and experience in your school, then find a good partner who can do this with you and work with them to develop a great strategy and vision.
- 11. 7 steps to keep your ICT spend under control 11. Getting the most from your resources 7 CPD is a vital part of any ICT strategy, you could say it’s the most important part. You need to ensure that any devices, solutions or software you commit to will be used to their full extent in the classroom. Everyone should have the same expectations of what can be achieved with this technology: Senior leaders need to steer the use of the new solutions so that it’s clear where they add value in your toolkit for inspiring and engaging with your learners. Teachers need to be confident in their use of the new solutions so that they can deliver amazing lessons and provide the learners with opportunities for independent learning. Will they need any support or training in the use of the new technology to be confident in its use? Technicians in your ICT support team need to be able to provide an additional level of troubleshooting for the solution, and be able to support teaching staff both technically and in its effective use in the classroom. Can they provide training to your less confident teachers? Make sure you allocate time and budget to training your school team on any new technologies you implement. If you follow steps 1-6 and forget step 7 then you’ll end up with a host of shiny new devices that don’t deliver to their full potential or worse still sit unused in cupboard because no-one knows what to do with them.
- 12. com/flex Head office: 140 Eastern Avenue, Milton, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4SB T: 08450 700 300 F: 08450 700 400 T: 0808 172 9534 E: flex@rm.com