Massive tech-for-British-schoolkids cash pot up for grabs as UK education buyers prep £140m agreement

Pheonix Software, Deloitte and Computeam are among the 17 winners sticking their snouts into a £100m pork barrel framework for outsourcing in the UK’s education sector. The outsourcing deal was organised by the Crescent Purchasing Consortium and other public sector buyers including Education Authority Northern Ireland and …

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Lesson #1 - number crunching

Education v Foreign trips/floating gin-palace for politicians.

The house is always tipped for the politicians

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/06/01/uk_new_flagship/

[0laf]

Oh you can't read very well, can't understand how to phrase or answer basic questions, think grammar is an old woman who lives a few streets away? Never mind, here is an iPad that'll make it all better. With the added benefit that your ill equipped teachers don't need to bother teaching or even talking to you any more.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

None of this is going anywhere near kids.

It let's them spec a £££££ enterprise class router for each classroom and then charge ££££££ for supporting it while charging ££££££££ delivering a PowerPoint showing how they are dynamically enabling dynamics.

All for 10x the cost of a school employing some local bofh

It's funny how a Tory government all about market efficiency seems to always want some all encompassing national plan worthy of Stalinist tractor production. You would almost think that there was some ulterior motive to hand out govt cash

[macjules]

“where a solution is yet to be defined.”

Deloitte-speak for "further charges apply"

[Cynic_999]

Cynic?

This will surely be as successful as our home-spun world-beating test & trace system. "Success" being based upon the actual goal rather than the stated goal. Which is to make loadsamoney for a few selected people with powerful friends (who will no doubt get their secret cut).

[Management Order]

Framework samework

There is no £140m here, it is a framework contract that has an estimated value of £140m based on past send on the type of equipment and services covered by the framework. Frameworks are not contract awards, they are tools to simplify buying. The actual contracts will be where the money is, all the framework has done has made it easier to buy from the suppliers on the framework. If you want to you can still go and buy from anyone else so long as the value of the contract is below approx £170k over 4 years, or you can run your own public sector tender if the value if over £170k.

Given that there is precious little money in UK schools and FE, no one is going to be buying any high end solutions from consultancy companies anytime soon.

[f-den]

Re: Framework samework

That's a very good explanation of framework agreements. Thank you.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Framework samework

So this is one of those deals where you can buy from anyone that has "built relationships with government" to be listed on the Framework. ie. Crapita

But you can't just get the same kit cheap from Amazon because they aren't in the Framework

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Framework samework

No, it means $consortium has laid out what it might like to buy over the next few years, with some detailed and some woolly specifications. Those sellers who have successfully become part of the framework promise to provide the specified kit at the specified prices. The individual buyers now have an easily accessible menu of suppliers and kit they can buy from. It's the buyers choice who to buy from, whether a framework supplier or not. But odds are, the prices negotiated by the consortium, with a large amount of proxy buying power, have got cheaper prices than each institution working alone could get. But if any institution can find a better price elsewhere, they are free to go elsewhere. But if they do, they will have to go through the whole palaver of finding that supplier and negotiating all the other benefits that the framework likely brings, such as 5 year on-site hardware warranties, specified response times to faults and issues etc

[Dave 15]

Yet more

Yet more UK tax payers money sent abroad to foreign big boy companies employing eastern European or Bangalore workers. No investment in skills for Brits by the British government so wait for the comments about there being a lack of skilled workers. If you don't sow any seed you will have no crop to reap. Jobs in UK IT pay less well than cleaning the toilets in McDonald's so why are commentators surprised when no one trains? The are paid so badly because one giant customer - the UK public sector - ignores any company that's not huge foreign and providing fat piles of shares

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yet more

I agree, I worked for an IT Service Provider in the Education sector for over 10 years and at the end of my tenure most of the support was outsourced to India and the onsite technicians were pretty much print cartridge replacers or just had to be proficient in customer service.