What Becta's closure means for IT in British schools

"Following Becta’s demise - and general IT spending cuts from the Government – the scheme looks unlikely to be repeated, meaning the next generation of impoverished children will not receive the helping-hand grants."

Rather than expensive grants and the even more expensive red-tape that surrounds them I feel more should be made of PC recycling schemes. These would be cheaper and greener and I am sure there are mountains of old, perfectly-working PCs that are thrown on the rubbish dump each year.

Unfortunately, when I tried this route I was told that my PC (an Athlon 2500) was not sufficiently modern to be recycled, despite the fact that it could handle almost anything (office, internet, video) but for the latest games.

My first PC was a 286 (swapped for an old TV when I was 11). It was way behind the times (Windows 95 and Pentium MMXs were the latest and greatest then), yet I still loved it and managed to gain invaluable experience that has formed the foundation of my career path to date. Surely better for those dis-advantaged to have a slightly older PC than no PC at all?

By atomz on 25 May 2010

Personally the quicker schools are allowed to get away from RM the better.

An equivalent PC from Dell costs close to 3/4 of the price and will have a better warranty. Smartboards, bought off book cost £5999 a piece compared to retail prices of £4000-4500. Their markup is utterly absurd and perpetuated by employing a senior civil servant/minister to their board every time they want the contract renewed!

By bubbles16 on 28 May 2010

There are plenty of companies out there that will recycle old computers, largely for free. IT Schools for Afica is a charity that will recycle computers from schools.

Also, there is no way a SMARTboard should be costing £4000-4500, unless I've misunderstood what you mean by a Smartboard, they should be around £200 including installation.

By Jamesicc on 31 May 2010

Smartboard

Yes, you have - you're thinking of a Whiteboard, something that you simply write on with dry marker pens.
A Smartboard, or Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB) is connected to a computer & has the desktop projected onto it. See http://smarttech.com/us/Solutions/All+Products

By greemble on 14 Jun 2010

@ bubbles16

What? Stop making figures up! EVen buying them from RM, a standard SmartBoard (68 inches) is around £1300. Even going for the integrated kit with short-throw projector and speakers costs well under £2500, even with professional installation (which you really don't need for Smartboards, as they're so bloomin' light, unlike Prometheans...)

So I have no idea where you're pulling these figures from, but I get the feeling it rhymes with 'sparse'.

Which is not to say that RM are perfect - far from it - but purchasing their network hardware and software enabled us to leap ahead in terms of usability and gave us a lot more time to resolve genuine issues. And we repaid them by buying our own cheaper computers in and using those instead - a fully supported option under RM, known as smartclienting.

By bioreit on 15 Jul 2010

Of more impact was the axing of the harnessing technology grant to fund free schools

story here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukschools/archive/2010/07/
07/harnessing-technology-grant-kicking-a-grant-whi
le-it-s-down.aspx

By pauljmiller on 6 Jun 2011