Christian Nagele, Managing Director at CentraStage argues the demise of the Building Schools for the Future programme may present new opportunities in IT.
Regardless of the ‘rights or wrongs’ of cancelling the Building Schools for the Future program, it does present a great opportunity for Local Authorities to step up and provide relevant, cost-effective IT support services to schools. Why should this be good for schools? Unlike private companies, Local Authorities have no profit motive and should be able to leverage considerable buyer-power with suppliers; so if the IT support teams are well run and managed, admittedly quite a big ‘if’ in Public Sector, they should be able to provide more cost-effective IT services to schools than the private sector.
The demise of BSF means that the movement towards privatisation of IT support for schools has virtually ground to a halt. Whilst being targeted at secondary schools many in the industry felt that it was only a matter of time before BSF IT service providers turned their attention to the primary sector, traditionally the domain of IT support teams within the Local Authority. With the looming threat of BSF providers muscling in on the primary sector removed, those LA support teams who take a progressive approach to IT support and who have a good relationship with their schools are very well positioned to offer next generation IT support services to schools.
However in these cash-constrained times and with budgets being slashed, the challenge for Local Authorities will be to provide cost-effective IT support services that meet the increasing reliance on IT from schools. They need to look to technology; technology that is not only designed and built to deliver significant time and money savings, but that is sensibly priced and affordable from operating budgets and enables Local Authorities to match their costs to the revenues from their customers, the schools.
