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To keep it brief, I work across two schools in the UK where ICT budgets have been extremely limited in recent years—virtually non-existent at times. There’s little to no funding available for new equipment or to modernise the way our networks are managed. Both schools are still running on-premises Windows servers, with clients locked down via Group Policy.

I’m curious—how common is this situation? Are others in the Spiceworks community facing similar challenges?

10 Spice ups
2

This is typical, however, many are being absorbed by academies, where they then control the budgets and kit.

Cloud services may be in use by schools, such as SPO, OneDrive and email, but on-prem AD and small networks are still common.

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I’d argue that on prem AD is still the majority anywhere.

At least there is hybrid implementation.

Many schools have also the problem that they are not optimized in the slightest and leave a lot of opportunities on the table because of the lack of professional consulting.

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It is sad what we won’t spend money on.I see
some schools here sharing IT consulting / managment services, which
at least brings a little expertise into the mix.

On the other hand it has been only a week since I saw a school with a hacked network…sigh

That was my simple 10 minute monday project, until we discovered no one could log into anything, not even the AD. Good news, we now know why weird things were happening..bad news..well..yeah

6 Spice ups
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Maybe I’m starting to get old, but on-prem servers and GPO lock down… is that not still the majority of the enterprise environment?

I’m also in the k12 area of work but education and healthcare both seem to be behind the curve most of the time.

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There’s often tech-grants for schools to modernize, and many companies will offer school-related discounts (like Microsoft licensing…sometimes). You might need to find someone who really understands and has a talent for grant writing (my mom was a pro at this!!) to really get the full benefits.

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Local schools have decent IT budgets.. thanks to our high taxes so fortunately we don’t have that problem here. I feel for you though.

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I used to work at a school district here in the US and believe me limited budgets are sadly common place. I had 2 physical servers acting as DC’s with a few VM’s spread across both handling other tasks like print server, Spiceworks HelpDesk, DHCP services and such (can’t remember exactly since it’s been over 5 years). The only cloud based service we used was Google For Education since it was free (suspect it still is) so any lockdown settings came from GP or what the state filters from the state level Dept of Ed had in place.

4 Spice ups
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If only it was the same here.

Unfortunately in the UK you’re taxed on everything and instead of investing, you get budget cuts, then taxed again.

Not to mention, for every budget cut, you’ve given more tasks to do with less staff, time and money, but tighter deadlines.

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I’m not in the UK, or in education, but I can sure relate to this. It sounds like every layoff I have ever been through in “Corporate America.”

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I should clarify, I don’t work in or for education/schools either, but I work with them.

The budget/taxing issue is UK wide.

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Buy Chromebooks have the condenser expression to think differently but you can live and we go on cloud environment for free because you’re still a school. And the machines themselves will cost $200 $200 each

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But to properly manage the chromebooks you need to buy the google licensing for them (which is at least a one-time-per-device expense and not a subscription).

Technically Google still offers a Free version of Google for Education, but more and more services are being moved behind subscription-based versions of Google for Education they now offer.

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14

Unfortunately, it’s not just the cost of the devices themselves; there’s also the significant expense of upgrading the network infrastructure to meet the latest standards, including new network switches and Wi-Fi 6 and 7 equipment.

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Not to mention cabling to meet Cat6A.

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Chromebooks are a good solution for students but i’m also concerned with the costs involved with upgrading entire network infrusturcture to meet the lastest Goverment Digital Standards.

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Google workspace is a good cost effective solution and is used at both schools.

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18

Unless it’s for compliance, latest standards are nice to have.

Network switches may need updating to accommodate more devices, newer features etc, but Wi-Fi 6 and 7 are again, nice to have.

It would be nice to have these features, but not having them is unlikely to cause any concerns, most schools don’t have fast enough internet to make full use of either anyway. It may be more important to have higher density APs over faster

FWIW my business doesn’t have Wi-Fi 6 or 7 either, if it’s a enhancement over a security risk, it’s not priority unless it’s failing or causing technical issues.

Cabling can be done any time, you can be prepared for next years budget and it’s one of the cheaper parts of an upgrade, backwards compatible too.

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Unless government overreach demands these upgrades, they are unnecessary for cash strapped schools. No more than a nicety.

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I used to support a school like that. Little budget for needed switch upgrades. Half of the students were on windows and GPOs, the other half had migrated over to Chromebooks, and all the teachers had macbook pros. Very hard to admin.

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