Monday had been a day of rest and relaxation on the Yorkshire coast, and then as I came back into range of a phone mast my iPhone started pinging. All of my incoming emails and tweets were ‘Have you heard about Becta? What do you think will happen next?’ Yesterday was spent working with new colleagues from Ramesys (it was good to get together – I think we’ll have a fruitful relationship) so I’ve just managed to catch up with the news, blogs and tweets.
I started with a read of the Becta website which gave an understandably negative view of the closure. I can’t help but feel sad – I’ve worked very closely with a number of the people at Becta over the years and, on the whole, have enjoyed the relationships I’ve had with them. They were committed, dedicated, and responsible and understood the needs of both the education community and the suppliers that support it. Because of the thrust of my work over the years, most of my contact has been with the safeguarding and technical teams. These teams have been unstinting in their advice and support. OK – so we’ve not always been in total agreement but the relationship wouldn’t have been as productive if we had been.
The Guardian had a well balanced article with more of a hint that the savings may not be real unless some of its functions are picked up elsewhere – for example, the savings accrued by organisations utilising Becta’s contracts exceeded the cost of the organisation, according to Graham Badman, Chairman and Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta and echoed on the thinq website.
Looking at the tweets (and the responses to the BBC article Becta: Does it deserve to die?) there appear to be many who think that Becta was doing a good job. In a number of cases, those that thought killing off Becta is a good thing disagreed with the advice that Becta gave – typically suggesting that Becta has not supported Open Source and seeming to have missed just how pro-active they have been on this front. On balance I thought that there were more who will miss Becta than there were celebrators of its demise.
There are many of the functions that Becta provides that should be found alternative homes and I’ve only listed a few . Will the re-christened Department for Education pick up the safeguarding responsibility? Will the ISP accreditation move to the British Standards Institute as it’s already well aligned with PAS:74 2008? Will the procurement responsibilities pass to the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) alongside other procurement frameworks or will they go to PfS? Where will their curriculum advice and guidance go at a time when other natural homes also appear to be under threat? What will happen to their Emerging Technologies and TechNews service? The FITS (Framework for ICT Technical Support) initiative may have a life of its own but will need a home – perhaps with ITIL? The ICT Mark started life with NAACE – perhaps it reverts? What will happen to the many opportunities Becta has created for celebrating the brilliant work of schools, teachers and students? These and many other questions will need to be answered over the coming months otherwise we run the risk of chaos filling the vacuum created by the loss of Becta.
What’s your view, good, bad or unsure?
Which functions do we need to continue?
For further comment:
Naace, thinq, OpenSourceSchools, Steve Wheeler, computing: for and against closure.
Patrick Kirk
Interesting points.
I agree the majority of people who are pleased at the closure of Becta are most likely so because they disagreed in some way or another with their leanings on various issues. These people can safely be ignored, along with those who decry “waste of taxpayer’s money!”
That said, Becta is really no different from any other government quango in the sense that you can argue for and against with the following centralised decision-making can bring efficiencies, savings, continuity to the education system vs. centralised efficiencies prohibit independent thought, local buying, and prevent the school from making its own decisions about systems.
I fall into the latter camp: as an independent, self-employed provider of IT services to schools I believe that schools are simply better-off governed on their own.
Yes, there’s a dearth of IT management talent in schools, and I’m already hearing people saying that many local authorities and schools simply don’t have the know-how to hire talent, manage their procurement, advise on strategy, and otherwise fill that vacuum.
But I am making one prediction: we are soon to realise that there was only ever one reason for this dearth of IT talent in schools in the past: Becta.
When you centralise, you may be benefiting those schools who already lack this talent – especially those schools in special measures, underperforming schools, and smaller schools – but you are opening another door: the door that allows local business to get involved. The door that allows schools to make mistakes, learn from them, and develop their own corporate character in the long term. The door that doesn’t imposes the national interests on a school that might not be ready for it, but one that allows the top schools to really fly, form partnerships with local business, share best practice themselves rather than send their staff on a course. I could go on…
The one thing I won’t be glad to see the back of is this pervasive view that dealing with local businesses can be a bit dodgy.
Quangos: like them or not, I believe they prohibit independent thought.
Comment by Mr Mat — May 26, 2010 @ 3:57 pm
Crumbs.
In my previous post, I meant to write “CLOSING the door”!
That somewhat ruins my paragraph of political rhetoric
Comment by Mr Mat — May 26, 2010 @ 4:34 pm