Doing Something Useful

[eek]

So the people on this thread offering to get involved are doing so at no charge?

I would assume so. While schools do have some money (the budget for a single form intact primary is £750,000 or so) its largely spent on staff costs and maintenance. The actual amount of money available for other items is far far less (between £20,000-£50,000 and that is usually allocated early on).

I have some people developing a product for schools to enhance the data available to governors. The marketing plan assumes selling via local authorities to begin with as pricing at affordable levels destroys the ability to sell individually to schools. Long term we can increase prices to sensible levels but the initial prices (while we build critical mass) don't contain any profit (or even enough income to cover phone support).

[Ticktock]

Ah, I see.

I misunderstood. I didn't realise people were just giving Dominic money - I thought the point was that there was a need identified and Dominic was putting together a proposal to meet the need. Whilst non-profit, I thought everyone was intending to get paid for their time, not just Dominic.

[TheFaQQer]

I have some people developing a product for schools to enhance the data available to governors. The marketing plan assumes selling via local authorities to begin with as pricing at affordable levels destroys the ability to sell individually to schools. Long term we can increase prices to sensible levels but the initial prices (while we build critical mass) don't contain any profit (or even enough income to cover phone support).

I'd have a look at what information you already get through the governors portal and through OFSTED (available to everyone).

I'd class myself as pretty diligent about my responsibilities as a governor, but I rarely have chance to read all the data available, it must be said.

[Dominic Connor]

No one gets paid

Just to clarify, no one is going to get paid for volunteering to help school IT, including me.

As for BAs, my view is that if someone is paying you to do some part of IT, then its of value to schools, not least in careers advice because teenagers often have rather random and blurred ideas about what any given job involves and I suspect that few teenagers have even heard the term "Business Analyst".

They've also got a very wrong idea about security and the pay prospects for different sorts of work, we can fix that.

[CoolCat]

the state education sector gets more than enough money to teach the kids properly, including teaching them computer science properly. the fact that they dont is not going to be fixed by a few well meaning people sticking a few hours in here and there for free.

the whole debate about what is a good ICT or computer science sylabus is nowhere near anything I would support either, and we are let down by the poor quality of folk in the BCS and so on who should be influencing much better than they do.

you would be better off leaving the schools out of it and just setting up a computer hobby club for kids in your local town. at least then you wont have to answer to some head teacher with questionable ability.

[aussielong]

Get a bunch of bitter old cash grabbing mercenaries in, to push the next generation into an industry that is being offshored?

Advise them to master maths and physics and leave the programming alone.

[cojak]

Even BA's have skills which can be used in the real world (tea making, room booking, getting a projector etc. )

Yep, one of these days I'll get found out...

In the meantime I'd happily see if they know how (and where) to get help when they need it and help them to discover what the Head needs when he/she looks for IT support.

[cojak]

Get a bunch of bitter old cash grabbing mercenaries in, to push the next generation into an industry that is being offshored?

Advise them to master maths and physics and leave the programming alone.

The grunt work is being off-shored. There is still a place for innovation.

[DodgyAgent]

Just to clarify, no one is going to get paid for volunteering to help school IT, including me.

As for BAs, my view is that if someone is paying you to do some part of IT, then its of value to schools, not least in careers advice because teenagers often have rather random and blurred ideas about what any given job involves and I suspect that few teenagers have even heard the term "Business Analyst".

They've also got a very wrong idea about security and the pay prospects for different sorts of work, we can fix that.

Would you like me to come along and teach them to become agents? After all a contractor is virtually useless without one of us to help him/her along

[aussielong]

The grunt work is being off-shored. There is still a place for innovation.

Yeah, California.