Schools face swingeing cuts to their ICT budgets this year, according to research by The Stone Group.
More than 80% of schools surveyed by The Stone Group said they were facing ICT budget cuts in 2010, at a time when ICT was becoming increasingly central to curriculum.
“Up to a few years ago, IT was a separate subject, but over the last couple of years IT has become more embedded into the curriculum and there’s a need for more advanced systems in schools,” said Richard Stockdale, group technical services director at The Stone Group.
Each secondary school decides individually how much budget will be allocated towards IT, but with budget cuts expected to be as high as 20-30%, it was inevitable that ICT expenditure would suffer.
Security was the second biggest worry identified in the survey, yet only 6% of respondents had a dedicated security budget. Given this figure, it was hardly surprising that 40% said they were struggling to meet complex Government guidelines for secure online access and network security to protect pupils and data.
Most schools manage their IT internally: at least 90% of schools said they took care of network management, desktop management and application support internally. Just shy of half the schools (49%) used external providers for any services.
Schools have been put off using external suppliers because, in the past, service provision had been rigid and expensive. Stockdale argued schools should rethink this outmoded attitude and follow other sections of the public sector and outsource where possible to ease pressure on costs and increase flexibility.
“Schools felt they were not getting value for money, but now taking budget cuts and the need to refresh hardware, I think from a senior leadership point of view, they will be looking at ways they can reduce levels of expenditure,” said Stockdale.
Two hundred IT decision makers in the education sector were surveyed by Redshift Research in December on behalf of The Stone Group.
