Since BETT 2010 Microsoft has been advising schools on ICT savings. Ray Fleming explains why
So the budget cuts have arrived – and it appears that, for the moment, the biggest cuts are in schools’ capital budgets. First we saw the Harnessing Technology Grant cut by £50 million, then the BSF programme was cancelled, and on the same day another £50m was cut from the Harnessing Technology Grant – the only dedicated ICT grant for schools.
There have been various doom-laden forecasts of the impact of these cuts, but although the government has cut the specific ring-fenced ICT spend by 50 per cent, schools have always decided how much of their own budgets they too will invest in ICT to support teaching and learning. Last year, the Harnessing Technology Grant accounted for around one quarter of all schools ICT spending – so the overwhelming majority of investment came from each school’s individual budget decisions, taken after they’d decided on the relative priority of investing in ICT compared to other resources, and their staffing budgets.
