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News, views and opinion from RM Education (a bit about this blog)

Whether you're looking for the latest news and views on ICT, seeking money saving advice or looking for ideas on how technology can help your school achieve its strategic objectives, this blog's for you. We'll bring you real world stories from schools making great progress with technology in these areas, and we're looking forward to your comments and opinions too.

The links above take you to to just the relevant posts on the blog (i.e. relevant for that particular audience, by being "tagged" as such). Enjoy

A world of learning @ BETT 2011

BETT is round the corner and, as ever, we're working like crazy to ensure we bring some joy to January. Our new year's resolution is to inspire engaging learning, and across the globe we're planning some fantastic events for you at BETT:

Our solutions showcase

A showcase of the very latest RM products and solutions to help you deliver engaging learning and futureproof your classrooms for the challenges yet to come.

RM Learning Emporium
Immerse yourself in our repurposed conference space away from the hustle and bustle of the main BETT Show. The space will be transformed by practical and affordable building blocks to create an inspiring and thought provoking learning environment; brought to life by teachers and learners.

Find out more

BETT: Get savings advice at the 'Achieve More with Less' BETT breakfast

On January 14 at 9.30 am we'll be running an hour long 'Achieve More with Less' breakfast in Olympia 2 at BETT. Enjoy breakfast on us, and discuss your budget and supplier challenges with peers, colleagues and RM's very own money-saving expert, David Everett, Commercial Manager. Book now and email us your top 3 (anonymous!) budget challenges for discussion on the day. Places on a first come first served basis, so don't miss out. Book now »

DFE: Taking the fun out of funding? Let's demystify it.

The Education sector's never been so busy assessing the impact of government announcements... Just as soon as we get to grips with the Comprehensive Spending Review, out comes the Schools White Paper, and now the announcements setting out the £430 Pupil Premium. Our Market Insight team spend their days and evenings making sense of such information, and we're very happy to share this with you.

Get our white paper on School Funding in England 2011-15. It summarises the current state of knowledge and by booking a consultation with one of our experts, we'll help you understand what it means for your school. Get our white paper

Using your learning platform to minimise costs

Continuing our series of money saving tips for schools, today we'll share efficiencies schools are realising through their learning platforms.

• Governor engagement: Foley Infant school in Staffordshire estimate saving £500 per annum "since setting up the Governors space on the Learning Platform the resource saving in terms of time and paper has been immense"
• Parental engagement: through the creation of an online parent newsletter, Sandford Primary school reduced administration, photocopying and printing costs, saving two weeks of admin time that was then put to great use by adding content and resources on the learning platform
• What's the cost of all those hours of lost learning when the school gates close due to bad weather?
• Try using web conferencing tools for lessons or meetings to save on travel costs. Eureka Primary School stay in touch with each other and their global partners: “Some of my children were really lucky to be able to speak to me whilst out of school at a presentation I was doing for Becta – they were impressed. Just about to use it with Australia and America!"
• Many schools are now using forms and lists in their learning platform to manage bookings for resources such as the minibus and ICT equipment. Simple to set up, they're saving administrators time and effort by having all the requests online in a single place, meaning no more double bookings

Chris Drage, former teacher and now consultant and journalist covering learning with ICT says, "as funding gets ever tighter, a prudent school would be wise to look more closely at how to effectively implement its learning platform before spending more of the budget on extra resources. The government pressure might be off but economic pressures don't look like going away any time soon..." find out more.

School Business Managers: are you a member of ASCL? If not, why not?

Only 2% of delegates at today's extremely timely* ASCL information conference in Huntingdon were school business managers (SBMs). John Fairhurst, ASCL President, who conducted the poll live**, urged members to encourage SBMs to apply for ASCL membership. Given the announcements due over the coming months, I find these events incredibly valuable in keeping up with the pace of change, and the role of SBMs will only increase as the national funding formula takes shape. Find out more by emailing jointheleaders@ascl.org.uk.

*Brian Lightman, General Secretary, painted the picture of ministers burning the midnight oil in preparing the Education White Paper due tomorrow. Be sure to follow our Education Policy & Research blog for comment and reflection.

**Incidentally, our friends at ASCL made excellent use of the TurningPoint voting system throughout the day, collating member feedback instantaneously, identifying key themes and lobbying DfE on behalf of members' key concerns.

Flexible finance schemes for uncertain times: RM Rentals

At today's NASBM Conference, I heard Stephen Kingdom, Deputy Director in charge of school funding policy at the DfE, remind us all of the financial pressures that lie ahead for schools, the uncertainty that still remains in terms of funding levels, and the growing importance of the role of school business managers in balancing the books.

Earlier this month, I introduced RM's ambition to develop the products, services and advice we offer our customers to help them through this age of austerity. Given the following backdrop to Stephen's speech, I thought it timely to announce the truly flexible finance schemes we're introducing:

• Real terms growth in education revenue funding of 0.1%
• 60% reduction in capital over the four year term
• Schools with uncommitted excess surplus balances (that could be clawed back by the LA)
• Pupil premium indicator and methodology yet to be confirmed

A truly flexible finance scheme will enable you to procure services by choosing how you want to pay, when you want to pay, and the amount you want to pay, over what period.

• if you have surplus balances you can kick start the plan and reduce repayments in later months
• or if money is really tight you can defer for a couple of months, a year or even longer
• or your repayments can be fixed for the duration so you can budget with ease
• and different repayments at different times can be achieved throughout the duration, maybe due to one-off funding or one-off costs to cover

Find out more

Truly flexible

Squeezing more out of your ICT spend: Primary Seminars Autumn 2010

With so much news surrounding budget squeezes and a new era of austerity in education, we've decided to take a refreshing approach to this year's Primary Seminars: by deciding to run a series of sessions looking at how you can squeeze more out of your ICT spend.

We'll focus on helping you 'achieve more with less', looking at ways we can get more out of your existing technologies, as well as looking at which new technologies can have a big impact, but not necessarily cost the earth. Register now for Exeter, Maidstone, Oxford, Stansted or London.

Trade in scheme for old PCs: saving you money + RM donation to charity

Trade in your old PCs and we'll donate £5 to charity as well as giving you a fantastic discount on the fabulous RM One. Here's how it works:

Use our handy ScrapIT Calculator tool to work out the savings you could make. Find out more.

Primary schools can save over £1,000 pa with web-based MIS

On Friday 29^th October, Becta released a report entitled ‘School Management Information Systems and Value for Money 2010’, which sets out a series of recommendations for schools and local authorities to deliver better value Management Information Systems (MIS). Further insight is available here.

The report suggests savings could be substantial, with forecasted school MIS costs of over £550m during the lifetime of this parliament. Against this cost, the report recommends that local authorities investigate the cost savings that flow from adopting a hosted (or cloud-based) MIS system. Our analysis suggests that a primary school moving to a cloud-based system can look to save around £1,500 per year.

Find out exactly how much your school can save with our Total Cost of Ownership Calculator

To help you estimate purchase and running costs of key ICT elements in your school, we've created an online cost of ownership calculator. As technology advances, there are some significant savings to be had by looking at how you organise your ICT, and the calculator will demonstrate just what can be achieved. www.rm.com/tco

Bargains Galore at the RM Clearance Store

Did you know that our online Clearance Store hosts bargains galore, from the likes of Apple, Tosh, HP, Asus, Philips and our own brand hardware and software. Quality products at rock bottom prices. Good luck with your bargain hunting!

Don't miss the latest deals, events, news and views

To offer you a more personalised experience and tailored recommendations, you can now set your own email preferences for the type, style and regularity of email updates you receive from RM. No more irrelevant emails, because you tell us what we should tell you. Set up your preferences now.

Enterprise Print saves school £21,000 per annum

Rodillian School, Leeds, is projecting annual savings of £21,000 on printing costs using an Enterprise Print solution. Additionally, environmental benefits include:

1. The school reduced from 33 to 9 the number of printer devices used, massively decreasing energy usage.
2. Each of these multifunction devices uses 50% less energy than a traditional printer.
3. The annual volume of print jobs reduced by 17% from 538,284 to 448,570 by deleting unwanted print jobs before they were printed.

Find out more and book a free, no obligation print audit now.

How to achieve more with less: RM Response to Comprehensive Spending Review

With capital funds declining by 60% over the next 4 years, it's clear that school budgets will come under intense pressure. In response to customer need, we're rapidly developing products and services to help you achieve your ambitions in the age of austerity.

We're developing flexible finance plans, a new range of affordable products, and some surprising services that will guarantee a reduction in your overall cost base. We're absolutely convinced that these solutions will enable you to achieve more with less. Find our more.

Raise funds for your school by joining the RM Affiliate Programme

The Basement is our student store, where we can provide heavily discounted software and hardware (through great deals from Microsoft and the like).

The RM Affiliate Programme allows you to use your school or college website to make money. All you have to do is put a text link or banner advert on your web site to the Basement and, for subsequent sales from students at your establishment, we will pay your school 5% commission. Some schools have generated £250 without even trying! Find out more.

What do school leaders feel about the Comprehensive Spending Review?

Preliminary results from a survey we conducted straight after the Spending Review showed that 53% of head teachers thought that yesterday’s Spending Review announcements were as they had expected; 41% said they were better than expected and just 6% thought they were worse. What do you think?

In the mean time, why not visit our Education Policy, Research and Commentary Blog where we'll share our findings of the CSR as we delve into the detail and shine some light on the key findings.

Today's Comprehensive Spending Review means...

... although schools have escaped the worst of the cuts, the picture is still far from clear.

The headline is that there will be a £3.6 billion increase in the schools budget in cash terms by the end of the 2014-15 financial year. But what counts as the 'schools' budget? Well, our Market Insight team are frantically analysing the detail and we'll be in a position to inform you tomorrow. Watch this space...

Today is Internet Watch Foundation Day

E-safety's extremely important to us and, of course, to our customers. As a member of the IWF, we're pleased to support and contribute to national awareness day. The virtual world opens up new opportunities for learning and creativity, but it also means thinking ahead of new risks. We've worked hard to develop resources, tools, and services that help schools to ensure that children and young people can use the internet safely and appropriately. Find out more.