back to article £575m school IT bonanza showers Capita, RM, 16 others

A Department for Education (DfE) framework agreement worth £575m has been awarded to 18 suppliers. Schools, colleges and other education services will be able to use the framework to obtain information management services, according to the Official Journal of the European Union. Learning services, including ICT service- …

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  1. Elmer Phud
    WTF?

    Only money?

    So that's about £200m actually reaching the eduction part of it then?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice

    On the same day Crapita announce yet more field support redundancies.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nice

      Perhaps they're intending to take a leaf out of RM's book - picking up the existing LEA techies when major contracts are awarded, then paying them less, spreading them thinner and charging them out higher.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RM

    Great to source some cheap gear from, but on no account purchase any "managed services" from them. From experience, they're IT teams (at least the ones in the schools I worked in) were essentially clueless when it came to anything beyond level 1 support.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: RM

      Their* not they're...Doh

    2. rhydian

      Re: RM

      RM weren't even that cheap for kit when i was a school tech.

  4. Emj

    Doomed

    Crapita again? What is it with those guys? They always seem to get the contracts despite the overprice crap they always seem to come out with. Got to hand to their sales guys - they could sell poo to a toilet...

    1. Ru
      Facepalm

      Re: Doomed

      There was an interesting observation in a recent Private Eye regarding the awarding of governmental contracts.

      Essentially, purchasers are not allowed to take pisspoor past performance into account when evaluating a bid from a company as this is apparently unfair and biased. This neatly sidesteps the whole 'free market' thing where companies that cannot produce work that even aspires to mediocrity die a much deserved death; instead we get the old public sector issues where there's no pressure for anyone to succeed, combined with the private sector desire for ever higher profits.

      This is one of many reasons why this country is in a bit of a state.

      1. Displacement Activity

        Re: Doomed

        I couldn't believe this, so I looked it up. And here it is, complete with more on Crapita:

        http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=hp_sauce&issue=1309

        I smell a fish, though. Only a moron would interpret “fairness and equal, objective treatment” as a requirement to exclude past performance data.

  5. Steve 138

    Leeches and backhanders

    Great, so closing down the Quango Becta to allow fair competition hasn’t actually happened. The Government has created another Quango, ooops I mean framework.

    How does this help the UK education system? Creating a closed market introduces price protection and huge margins for the greedy 18 selected. I just wonder how many back handers were handed out, in order to become one the leeches.

    The Government should be ashamed of themselves.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Leeches and backhanders

      >The Government should be ashamed of themselves.

      Well it might happen I suppose - wouldn't make any difference were it another Labour term though. The same companies are/were as much in bed with Labour - eg Lord Adonis and Mike Tomlinson (Labour education beau) are both non-executive directors of RM.

  6. smsman99
    Unhappy

    Oh Dear, so soon!

    So, our political masters have a much publicised bonfire of the quangos to appeal to their Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph heartland, then after the orgy of self congratulation has finished, replace it with a bureaucratic "framework".

    This is then imposed on hapless head teachers, principals and associated support staff who can only purchase from the recommended list of trough feeders, but without the advice and guidance that the now abolished quango was there to provide.

    The next step will be a round of useless managed services being imposed on schools and colleges, followed by a very public meltdown of the same, then ministers being interviewed on the Toady Programme to explain why it all went so wrong (and blaming everyone except themselves)

    As someone much more intelligent than me once said: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  7. MrT

    Funny that....

    ... RM installations of MS Office don't have the word 'nepotism' in the spelling checker.

    Allegedly.

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