Hi all,
I'm looking for some ideas and suggestions following a discussion I had the other day with my 9yr old son, James.
I blogged about the conversation here http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/12/07/its-definitely-working/ but the gist is that James thinks I should visit his school (it's a church aided, state Junior School in Tilford, Surrey with ~500 kids) and talk about what we do.
We are a specialist FOSS consulting and services business and, to date, our work has been largely with private sector businesses.
- What are the key issues that will be playing on our Headmaster's mind?
- Will he really be that interested?
- Typically, is ICT something he has to budget for and make local decisions, or is it all largely "decided" for him?
- What areas are we likely to be able to help with and which will be off-limits and not really worth pursuing?
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As discussed elsewhere on this forum the increasingly likely scenario for the head is one in which the incoming government, whatever the hue, protects the school's headline revenue budget. That plays well with headteachers and governors, who are deemed by politicians to be key opinion (vote) formers. But we all now expect that that maintained and possibly increasing revenue budget will operate alongside reductions in specific grants and withdrawal of subsidy for other areas of expenditure such that the protected revenue budget has to cover substantial increases in revenue expenditure.
This is particularly apposite with regard to ICT expenditure. For example, the Harnessing Technology grant, used to fund broadband connections and learning platforms will end on 31st March 2011, assuming it lasts that long, and will probably have been committed much earlier. It is implausible that this funding will continue to be available thereafter. After that time the school will need to meet all its costs e.g. the full cost of its broadband connection and associated services like email, filtering, monitoring and firewall maintenance. Funding for ICT will be a problem.
So at the same time that the school is trying to reduce costs and open source become particularly attractive it will be losing the earmarked ICT funds which would support the costs of changing. From the Head's viewpoint it may look as if the school cannot afford the cost of implementing cost reduction measures. It is likely that the school will be tied in to some form of managed service, which may not support open source. So opportunities to take advantage of lower software and system costs may be limited.