Across the education sector, the challenge of doing more with less is all too familiar. Every school in the UK is feeling the pinch so, for school leaders tasked with financial responsibility, it’s crucial to find innovative ways to save money without compromising educational quality.

Fortunately, while spending on technology is necessary each year in schools, there are strategies that can help. Here are four ideas for schools to trim their technology budgets and make every pound count.

1. Refurbished Technology

When it comes to technology, staying current can be costly. However, schools can significantly cut costs without sacrificing quality by embracing and refurbished technology. It’s often at a fraction of the price of brand-new versions and, ensuring they have long warranties, these devices provide a cost-effective solution that stands the test of time. It’s a smart way to keep your technology up to date without breaking the bank.

2. Strategic Procurement: Partner for Savings

Schools can unlock significant savings by forming partnerships with trusted technology providers. For example, the Scomis school support team has created their own ScoStore which uses a network of partners who are committed to delivering the best value options, ensuring that schools receive the highest quality products at the best prices. Collaborating with these partners can lead to bulk purchase discounts and exclusive offers, driving down technology acquisition costs.

3. Software Licensing Optimisation: Pay for what you use

Schools often find themselves overpaying for software licenses they don’t fully utilise. Conduct a thorough audit of your software licenses to identify unused or redundant subscriptions. Take a look at all the solutions you do use and evaluate if there is a need for separate licences, or could they be rationalised and a single solution be used for everything instead? By optimising your software usage, you can reduce licensing costs, allowing you to allocate resources more efficiently.

4. Energy efficiency = lower operational costs

Embracing energy-efficient technology not only reduces your school’s environmental footprint but also trims operational expenses. Consider switching to energy-efficient LED lighting, upgrading to ENERGY STAR-rated appliances, and implementing automated heating and cooling systems. These changes can result in substantial savings on your energy bills over time.

In the face of tightening budgets, school leaders must be resourceful in managing technology spending. From refurbished technology and strategic procurement to software optimisation and energy efficiency, these strategies empower schools to reduce costs while focusing on delivering for learners. By adopting approaches such as these, you can ensure that every pound spent is going towards a brighter, more cost-efficient future for your school.

Our first fireside chat of 2022 is with business thought leader Jonathan Coyles, Director at EO Consulting.

Recorded towards the end of last year, we’ve been keen to speak with Jonathan as his company helps schools, academies and Trusts deal with something that is becoming more and more pressing each year: how do they become more energy-efficient, hit carbon targets, and save money at the same time?

EO Consulting has created a standard for collecting condition, energy and compliance data so that user-friendly business intelligence dashboards can be created that enable reporting and benchmarking to be done within and across MATs and allow data to be analysed by asset, element and priority to aid strategic estate investment planning. They count several of the larger Multi-Academy Trusts among their clients.

It’s a great fireside chat, and Jonathan provides insight into:

• His journey through the world of education services from working with PFI contracts to being involved in one of the earliest academies (Grace Academy), project managing IT and ultimately becoming the Operations Director.
• The creation of EO Consultancy and their goal of helping organisations become more efficient and more effective through the clever use of dashboards and analysis
• Why spending lots of time understanding the needs of MATs was crucial to them developing the service they offer today: what they do makes a difference.
• How dashboards and data are not the answer to everything but should provide the insight to help schools, academies and MATs save money.
• Hitting carbon targets early, and how this is completely possible if you’re armed with the right information.
• The project management and additional help Barker Associates provide once a plan has been identified.
• What drives EO Consulting as a business?
• Where energy is wasted: 40% of energy is spent when there is no one in the school building!
• The importance of the learning environment, and how being aware of how and when energy and resources are being used plays a part in that.
• Getting the whole education estate into a condition that’s conducive to learning, reduces the carbon footprint, and makes it more efficient and effective as a result.
• What Jonathan would like to see from the government in the coming years to support schools, academies and MATs, and the effect of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS)
• The top five quick wins schools can put in place right now to become more energy-efficient and save money.

We’ve split the interview into three shorter parts for you to watch and listen to – enjoy!

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P.S. We’re aware that some of the audio is a bit rough in places so we’re working on getting a transcript created to accompany this Q&A – we’ll add once completed 

“It saves you time.”

This is something that is often said about MIS, but what does it mean? More importantly, how effective do schools feel their MIS actually is at saving them time?

A recent survey¹ of 2,146 schools asked, amongst other things, how effective they felt their MIS is at saving them time. The overall results are outlined in the pie chart below:

As you can see, the majority of respondents (just over a third at 38.85%) went for the middle ground and said it was ‘Somewhat effective’. That said, a combined total of 43% did say they felt it was either Very or Extremely effective which is good news for suppliers as it indicates users must be feeling some time-saving benefits from their solutions.

We can also break this down further by MIS; the chart below shows survey results for the ‘Big 5’ (who, between them, they make up 96% of school market share²):

But what does the idea of ‘saving time’ actually mean when it comes to systems and users? There are a number of ways of defining it, here are just a few:

1. The MIS literally takes a basic, manual process and uses software to make it easier. A good example of this would be the school census; it has to be done in a certain timeframe, it’s very data-heavy, and the role of MIS in this is to make it as automated as possible, therefore saving time.

2. The MIS brings an automated element to improve a process and create a more complete view. A good example of this is the ability to record and manage behaviour within MIS; it’s something that all schools have (and use things such as paper report cards in secondary) but, once they start to utilise their MIS for this, the increased shared knowledge means teachers have the info at their fingertips and don’t need to waste time searching for it.

3. The MIS completely replaces the way something has always been done to make it easier and slicker. For example, communicating with parents used to be via letters and reports. MIS’ offer the ability to email, text and direct message via apps, plus parent portals. Another good example is the handling of money; everything from school dinner management to online trip payments can now be done online, completely replacing the original processes and saving time.

4. The MIS provides insight that would otherwise have been time-consuming to find out. A good example of this is analytics and dashboards which draw on data from a number of sources to help leaders ask questions, and also provide answers.

5. The MIS suggests courses of action based on data. This is something we have yet to see in use in a big way, but the idea is that your MIS can make some suggestions to you using machine learning based on a combination of what it has seen work in the past, plus your usual actions. Think about when you shop online at Amazon, the site makes suggestions for other products based on your purchases and what other customers go on to buy. A school-based example could be that various intervention suggestions are made when behaviour incidents are recorded, and these could be based on past actions combined with, say, the MATs own intervention policy. The time savings here could be enormous – as well as getting a strategy in place sooner to help the child.

So there are definitely ways MIS solutions can save time, it’s really a matter of understanding how.

As an MIS supplier, saying you “save schools time” isn’t a meaningful statement anymore that sets you apart from the competition. It’s a given that a solution will do that; your unique value proposition should focus on how it will do it, why it’s important, and what benefits the school will get as a result.

¹The data was collected by The Key from a survey that went out to all primary, secondary, special schools and pupil referral units in England, by email. It was not sent to independent schools. The survey was completed by Headteachers, Deputy and Assistant Heads, and School Business Managers / Leaders between 29 March and 27 April 2021.

As part of the survey, respondents were asked which MIS they use. The results are outlined below:

²Market share statistics are sourced from two excellent, independent blogs: Graham Reed’s Omega Pegasus and Josh Perry’s Bring More Data