 This is a John Kelly Girls Technology College in Neeson, North London. They're looking to save money whilst improving their ICT provision. Can it be done? The girls' school is one of three buildings on site. Alongside it sits the boys' school and the sixth form college. All three are to combine to become an academy next year. Shame then that the school boasts three different networks, none of which talk to each other. They serve a so old, it's almost an antique. To help the school break into the 21st century and save money along the way, I'm joined by DCSF procurement expert Claire Dix. Assistant principal of the school is Ross McGill, who has been in the job for less than a year. His ICT budget is around £24,000 per year, but there is also a pot of money put aside for the Academy start-up, totaling £80,000. The school's 50 years old, so what we've set up is very good, but in terms of today in the 21st century, it's very poor. The condition of our server is appalling. In the last two or three months, it's gone down six times at least. When it comes to bandwidth and traffic exchange, email exchange, it considerably slows down. And your finance deal, is it a rental or a lease? The server's a lease, but that's going to expire in November 2009. So we're currently looking at various other options. Desktops, we're looking to replace between 25 to 50%, because most of them are out of warranty, some of them are seven, eight years old, and they can't cope. By leasing his ICT equipment, Ross can incorporate renewals and replacements into the deal, but this can also tie him to a single supplier which might not always offer the best options. Having got the basics from Ross, it's time for a tour of the school. John Kelly's has 400 desktops, 100 laptops, and three dedicated ICT classrooms. It looks quite cramped in here. They're quite close together, aren't they? Yes, it's very cramped. We've got a lot of desktop space wasted with the CPUs. At the moment, we've only got about seven or eight students in here, but if lunchtime is you might have 30 on the computer and one or two sitting next to each other and helping, so it can get very cramped and congested and it's not ideal. Space isn't the only issue. Pupils can spend almost a whole lesson trying to log on to the server. And with limited roaming profiles, independent learning is difficult, as well as that not all computer applications are available on every terminal. Pupils and staff get round some of these problems by using USB memory sticks, and this brings with it data protection issues. Beyond that, classroom printers are very slow, so teachers like Mrs. Stoianova have developed their own strategies for printing. We encourage students to go to the library where they can print their work. Oh, so they have to go away? Yes, they have to go away from the lesson, go and print their work, and then they come back. And it's a bit time consuming, a lesson distracting, because what I need to do is write them a note saying that I allowed them to go and print in the library. There's a lot of traffic that goes to the library and this is just a small example of the whole school doing the same. The library is where almost all of the school printing ends up, leading to a steady stream of children. The biggest problem is that students and staff print from all over the school to here. This creates a huge volume of printing, which all gets muddled up, particularly if staff send the students down to collect the work. And when they come down, is anything going on here? Yeah, well, we have lessons in here all of the time, and we have about 150 children throughout lunchtime. So it's disruptive and it's inconvenient, but also you said that teachers and pupils print to the same area. How do you manage to separate confidential printing with just random printing? Well, we don't really. It depends on us grabbing it when we can find it. There's quite a lot of paper over there. Do you find that there's a lot of wastage? Yes, quite a lot. We usually end up with about a pot spin at the end of the day. Because of the nature of the ICT system at John Kelly Girls, a relatively large number of support staff is needed, which all adds to Ross' ICT bill. Despite the problems, Claire's confident there are ways to save money. So there's a lot to do here, isn't there? There is, and I think they're going to have to spend quite a bit of money to do some updating. But we can help them and advise them on the best way to do that. It seems like the server really is the main problem, really, doesn't it? It does, and it's going to solve a lot of problems if we can invest in a really good system. And the printing needs to be looked at as well, because there's a lot of time and effort and people involved in managing, monitoring the whole process. So I think if we can do something clever in that area, we can save a lot of time, effort and money. I'm sure. There's a lot here to digest and plenty of research for Claire and I to start on. The new academy is on the horizon and Ross is keen to patch up the system until then. But with the server lease expiring in a matter of months, it could be the ideal time to renew it totally. The question is, what to? And how much will it cost? To give Ross an idea of what's possible, we're sending him to Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, where he meets with the director of innovation and development, Steve Warburton. Hello, Ross McGill from John Kelly Girls Technology College. The school has won numerous awards for its ICT setup. It has 2,200 students and 1,200 computing devices, the vast majority of which are thin client devices. This means all the computing power is in the server, not on the student's desk. So this is a technology ICT showcase classroom. This is your thin client device. It sits on the back of a monitor. All it is, there's a dumb terminal that connects everything back to the server. So all the processing is actually done on the server system. You notice small profile, so you've not got the issues of space. That device is on, so it's not kicking out the heat. It's very cold. So you've not got to manage the heat of 30 devices in the classroom, so there's the issue of no air conditioning required. You've got very few orifices for children to stuff things into. I think the strangest thing I ever took out of a PC was a tennis ball. So we don't get that sort of problem here at all. Every device connects into the server, so wherever I am in the building, my roaming profile gives me access to all the resources that my profile gives me permissions for. The thin client system means pupils and teachers can log on from any terminal in the school to access their files. This flexibility does away with the need for USB sticks. The roaming profiles also allow strict print management. The restrictions for students are software controlled, so students will have a limit, normally of about 40 prints per week that they're allowed to do in the system. They can request more, but they have to show they have the need for it. Right. I mean, obviously the students would print to this room. If I moved to another area of the school, the system recognizes where you are and directs you to the nearest printer. If you're a member of staff printing from a confidential office, it will only print to a printer in an office. A thin client system can be set up for around £500 a terminal. That pays for desktop kit, server elements and software. That's big upfront costs for Ross, but there are ongoing savings to be made. Your total cost of ownership should be a lot lower. For us, we reckon that we're going to save a quarter of a million pounds over five years. And there are three areas that are those cost savings coming. One is you need fewer technical staff to support them. Another issue is energy consumption. They consume approximately half the amount of energy that a normal PC might do. And then your other benefit on total cost of ownership is the last for at least six years. Yeah. So you save one refresh cycle. Ross is clearly impressed. You know, every student's getting on with their work, which is great. But will a system like this be suitable for his school? It's time to find out. Here at John Kelly Girls Technology College in Leesden, Claire's worked out some figures, and we're about to share the results with Assistant Principal Ross McGill and the Principal, Bev Bell, to see if they can improve on their ICT provision and still save money. Hi Ross, how lovely. Hello there. How are you? Good, good. I think we have some interesting things to discuss with you. Claire, should we start first with the server? Yes, we've had a good look around, as you know, and I know you've thought that it was a real concern of yours that the server just isn't up to dealing with the amount of PCs that you have in the school, and I think you're quite right. A new server is required, and I think you really do need to make that investment sooner rather than later. And it's all tied up with going down a thin client route. I think you'll find that quite sizable savings can be made if you can actually look into doing something of that nature. If you were to upgrade all your 400 terminals, then that is very simple to do if you went for the thin client. Now the total outlay would be about £210,000. This is more than Ross's budget of £80,000 for the new academy and £24,000 annual ICT spend. But if he can find the extra money, there are big savings to be made. In general terms, you're going to be saving money just on how much it costs to run, because, for example, each terminal only requires half the pair of a standard desktop, and it's the equivalent of something like a 15-watt bulb per terminal, which is relatively small. And that coupled with the support, refresh and service cost means there are big savings to be made long-term. If you want to install software, I believe thin client you'll be able to install from one area and disperse the entire network rather than individually one station. There's going to be a massive improvement in terms of time management. You'll totally change the situation. Are we saying that we will save on our network support because it's not going to break down as frequently? Yeah, and less disruption to class time as well because you're not having to take any of those pieces offline or you'll be able to actually manage that centrally. The next big bug there, printing, what have you got to tell us about that, Claire? I think you'll find that the client system in itself is easier to run, and there's all kinds of facilities there to actually help assist with print management, so it's all done automatically. So you can, for example, set each class that they can or can't print in colour. Each student can have an allocation of how many pages that you want them to print again so that you don't have to be checking yourself. And the printers themselves can print on demand, so it does actually manage the queuing system so you don't have the queue in the library that you've had to deal with up until this point. You've obviously been using the one herb in the library because you've had to manually manage that process. But because the system will manage that for you, you could have print herbs in a number of different areas throughout the school. So I think you'll just find there's general time savings. And our research has revealed the saving of around £10,000 per year that's what's been recorded in other schools. Fantastic. We could use that money to invest in neither more or other areas of technology. So that's £10,000 saving per annum on printing. What about installing thin client? Certainly, if you make the decision to go with a thin client, we've calculated that your saving could be around the £20,000 mark. Does that strike you as a good savings? Yes, it does. Fantastic. Excellent. So the savings on the thin client system and the whole printing system would combine to a figure of £30,000 a year. It's an amazing amount and it's a really worthwhile amount, don't you think? Yeah, no, it's huge. It's a new member of staff, an extra pair of hands, you know, around the school and another teacher in the classroom, and also the kids that can go into the hands of the students. So I think that sum of money is huge for one year, over three years. Well, £100,000 nearly and just think what we could do with that. Absolutely amazing. Absolutely fantastic. It's a great saving. Yes. So thank you very much. Thank you.