Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: Schools etc. [was:RE: accu-general: Where to setup web site]

[Paul]

Hi,

> > Yours is a private company working in the education sector. One of the
> > ideas floated by the current Govt is to have the likes of McDonalds or
> > even MS working in schools - that is, companies who don't know the first
> > thing about how education works (much like the Government!)
> 
> i think its healthy to have private sector input provided that the
> education professionals prevent things like overt marketing, product
> brainwashing etc. When I was at Kingshurst CTC back in the late 80s we
> had a range of industry people helping in the college from time to time.
> Mostly they were terrified of the kids ;-) None of this is particularly
> new.

I totally agree with you here Ian - on both points. Industry tends to be
scared of the people they proport to be supplying. I think it has
something to do with the guilt factor. M$ never see the people they
fleece and extort money from. If they did, I'm sure they'd soon realise
the damage they're causing. Hold on, that's the beer talking. M$
probably still wouldn't give a shit!

> > There are always companies (like yours) who will be in that position,
> > hense why I stated that having a company like Sony (as an example)
> > working with education would not be a bad thing as long as it was
> > established how far their influence went.
> 
> Agreed.

Good ;-)

> >  I'm sure you would agree that
> > the best people to run a school would be a school and that they should
> > be the ones who buy in services at a competative rate.
> 
> Oh yest, I would get rid of LEAs as they are now tomorrow. Cluster small
> families of schools so  local is local but there is sufficient economy
> of scale. The main snage with GM was small schools do not have the
> economy of scale. Get bigger than a couple of secondary and say 10
> primaries and you get impersonal bureaucracy.

That may be so, but they still have the power to do as they need to do.
Sure the economy of scale for repairs, school meals, cleaning and the
such are great, but they would still be able to get teachers in and
provide adequate resources without waiting for the LEA to come down from
their clouds and grant that the school may employ someone (but only
after they have completed 3 marathons, jumped through 5 or 6 blazing
hoops and created at least 4 trees worth of business cases, costings,
reasons, objectives and all the rest of the BS they currently go
through.

I remember when I first moved into working in education (1989) - the
school was being trialed as a GM. They decided they wanted someone,
costed it out, see if it could be afforded and got someone in. It took
about 3 days from start to advert going out.

When I moved from a school to college (prior to them going over to
Charitable status in 1992ish), it took about 3 weeks of paperwork and
general grovelling to get the advert out. After that, it came down to 4
days. Universities are the same. They take a bit longer, but it's still
quite quick. Common thread - without the LEA, things move quickly.

> > If that gives them the freedom to do what they need to do to employ
> > enough staff, have small enough groups and be able to negotiate their
> > own prices for services, then yes.
> 
> Not easy with small schools where one person represents 10% of the
> entire school budget and they need replacing and the only option is
> someone say older and higher up the pay scale and therefore
> unaffordable. Possible though with larger clusters.

I know. In the case of my sister's kids school, next years intake is a
massive 3. That takes the total school population to about 22 (excluding
staff). There is absolutely no way that the school could *now* function
by itself. Some form of local grouping would be needed and
rationanisation of buildings considered). Easy for an inner city, very
difficult for the back end of Garstang.

> > I used Sony for two reasons. First is that in education, Sony is willing
> > to give away hardware for teaching purposes for nothing
> 
> Hm, business that give things away do it for a reason. If MS gave
> Schools Windows (they have in some cases) would you be as keen?

No. I'm not that keen about Sony giving away kit for nothing either. MS
give nothing away for free, they just make it look like free by using
the slush fund (as seen in Germany recently and India shortly before
that)

> >  and secondly as
> > they are probably the best company for marketting in the world. It was
> > once said that if the next product Sony made was a cardboard box with a
> > hole in the bottom, that a month after the launch, everyone would be
> > using them!
> 
> Probably many would also say that of MS. Sony are are monopolistic
> company too you know.

MS are probably the worst marketing company I have every seen. But then,
they don't need to advertise as their dodgy licence deals and
intimidatory business practises with hardware companies means that just
about all machines sold have Windoze on it in some form or another. What
better advert can you have than to say that most machines come with
their product on it? They have no need of marketing - others do it for
them :-(
 
> > Yes, I could be. However, it helps when the sister is also a governor
> > and so gets to see the budget details...
> 
> Well I doubt that is the entire story either. Education management is as
> much about relationships between people as it is about budgets.

Yup. But as you're also aware, if you have a budget deficit and you have
to make a cut, relationships between people count for squat when it's
someones backside on the line or (say) a new roof for the hall.

> Schools still have most of their budgets delegated under LMS but some is
> held back for central admin - though that varies from LEA to LEA.

We are quite lucky in St. Helens like this. The council give the schools
all of the money and then it's up to the schools if they want to buy in
the services of the council. It is advisable in some cases (such as
security and cleaning), but others, like school meals, they are free to
use who they like (in my son's school, they use the local housing
association's meals on wheel service and get far better value for it as
well!)

> > Having worked for a large pharmaceuticals company at one stage (Ely
> > Lilly), the way it works is that if there is little or no profit, they
> > don't do it. Remember, from first inception to market the average drug
> > takes between 8 and 10 years and then another 6 years to break even
> > (some take more, some less)
> 
> So its risk management. The difference between making 2% profit and 2%
> loss is a very thin line. 

Well, not that thin in the case of Ely Lilly, but I understand what you
mean.

> >  and RISC OS in quite
> > a few others...
> 
> Marginal apps in Pace set top boxes? I think free software is likely to
> take over this especially as hardware capacity increases.

As Ralph said this morning, RISC OS was good as it had a very small
footprint and was pretty versatile. However, I also know that towards
the end of Cambridge, Pace were spending a lot of time using open source
software for embedded devices.

> > That's a problem. If schools want to be able to do the best for their
> > students, the blanket has to go.
> 
> If its your child in a school that is under-confident and you take away
> the security and so in the short term it descends into serious
> weaknesses/special measures would you still do it?

Probably not all at once. I would give schools an optional 3 year phase
out of LEA control. Basically, 33% per year reduction in support.

> Like IT support, weaning the customer of dependency is not
> in the interest of the supplier so its difficult to make it happen - but
> not impossible. 

This is how M$ have places by the short and curlies. They don't want
people to go, so they spread as much FUD about other OSes as they can -
even when it backfires (such as the TCO comparisons which have been
discredited almost as much as the dodgy docier!), they persist. M$ can
never tell us anything other than the truth. We all know unix/linux is
unfriendly don't we. It's all CLI. Must be, uncle Bill says it is.

Sad really. Folks believe this BS without checking out the facts.

TTFN

Paul

-- 
The world is throwing away oppressive regimes
Which don't allow people to choose.
Wars are fought to topple these people.
Yet the folks who do this, still use Windows.
Double standards or not understanding why they did it?