As the network manager of a Norfolk high school, we have seen the building of eight new classrooms under the Building Schools for the Future programme (Education costs, letters.computing.co.uk).

We chose to manage and run the project ourselves, leaving our local authority to rubber stamp and pay for what the school designed and agreed. As part of that I took on the management of the IT provision and worked with the nominated contractor to agree products and implementation.

With that, plus a free reign for the hardware purchase, we have IT provision in every room, capable of 1Gbit/s to the desktop. We have top-level industrial-grade equipment at 20 to 50 per cent below commercial costs, and our design and implementation phases were careful, steady and efficient.

The ongoing cost is about £45,000 per year to keep this level of provision up-to-date. We outsource nothing. We buy into no maintenance.

It is not hard within the current market affluence of highly skilled persons to recruit and retain in-house skills to deal with all non-warranty and also some warranty issues.

These options are open to headteachers. They need to have sufficiently competent staff and the appropriate management skills to be confident to take this step. The soft options cost more in return for having someone else to blame.

Stuart Johnson