I am an IT manager in the education sector and have recently been involved with Building Schools for the Future (BSF).

The concept is that IT suppliers will support networks used in schools and will improve the technology and be cheaper (All education IT is to be outsourced, letters.computing.co.uk).

The price was originally £60 per pupil, but has been increased to more than £150 per pupil, meaning a school of 2000 students would have to pay £300,000 per year.

This is about three times more expensive, for a far inferior service. For example, password changes can take up to 15 minutes; new user accounts can take up to a day and new software needs to be approved and can take six months.

In addition, the secondary school that I support was told to remove certain equipment because it was too advanced and would not  be supported. Equipment needed to be replaced, at  the cost of £850,000.

While money has been given to schools in the short term, at £300,000 per year this will soon be used -
without the commitment  of any future funding.

All equipment needs to be purchased via the BSF  catalogue. These prices are on average 30 per cent more than anyone else, because they include the support costs, even though if the item is a replacement, the support has been paid for already.

A concerned education worker and taxpayer