Would school or Local Authority pay for this?

[Rnb]

Hi I'm developing a product which I think schools would benefit from (virtual activities). A subscription would be under £600 per year. Would a school have authority to purchase at this price or would they require permission from the LA? Would it be worth me approaching Local Authorities giving them the option to bulk buy for their schools? It all seems a bit of a minefield!

Many thanks

Why not approach an academy chain and give them a free subscription as early adopters, They could road-test it in several of their schools - given you feedback and be a good reference for wider marketing.

All schools are pretty much independent of the LA and entirely manage their own budgets. An LA might facilitate you to address a group of heads of the product is really amazing.

Schools would buy it, academies might want the option to buy across a chain or multi academy trust.

Have you tested your product in schools? School IT equipment tends to be pretty ropey so for £600 it had better work on crappy computers/rubbish Internet connection.

Thanks all, that is really helpful! Yes fortunately the activities can be run with basic equipment...

I think that you would have to produce something pretty specular to get £600 out of a school. What is your pricing model? There is a lot of high quality software out there. Schools certainly do have the authority to pay for subscriptions if they choose.

It's a high-end product which could be accessed by all year groups. Both entertaining and skill building. It would be £40-50 per month

Along the lines of Charanga (primary music) or EducationCity?

I agree that the price is very high, do you have any idea what the average buget for IT for a one or 2 form entry primary school is? That has to cover all the hardware and software for the year?
Have you researched at the prices for some of the whole school licenses for software, and how much is free (like Scratch, Sumdog) ?

Charanga is fantastic, but still under £200.

My head won't buy me any more pencils for my class this year-they have to use teeny stumps or I have to pay for them myself. The thought of her paying £600 for a computer program would cause her to spontaneously combust, I think!

Presumably you've checked that other schools have more cash than us though!

My SMT hate us using too many computer programs-eg Education City and Phonics Play-reckon they are just 'playing' and not teaching. It would have to be a program that would move all children in all year groups up a sub level per month with a full money-back guarantee if not to be worth them forking out £600 for!

I only looked at the primary subscription for Charanga. Education city seems to be much more expensive.
I hope the OP has a realistic picture of the market they are trying to sell to.
I am carrying around basic resources as so many schools have run out of pencils and glue sticks! As humanities co-ordinator, my budget for a school of 350 was around £350.

Maybe OP is aiming more at secondaries

I didn't think of that. Do secondary schools have lots more money knocking around in their budgets?

Which subjects is this aimed at, OP?

Just a few questions

Is it tested, debugged and ready to run? Or is the school going to run a package that will be debugged as you go along?
Does it require a program to be put on to the system to make it work or is it a web based system?
How long would it take to create a ghost for a virtual desktop? (remembering that the entire system would have to be re-ghosted for your program to work)
When are your upgrades available? If its in the school year, when?
Will it be limited to a set amount of seats per school?
Does it require space on a licencing server?
Is it available to download/view from home? Or is it a purely classroom based program?
Will it work with the full range of smart boards/HD interactive tvs and just a projector system?
What back ups are available if I am running a class on it and it goes down/crashes?
What are you offering in the way of a help service/training and back up to the school?

My secondary certainly does not have that kind of money. If it is secondary it maybe worth finding out how much Mymaths costs and comparing it to that. I don't teach maths or a subject which you can mark in a similar way but for something which marks homework and provides revision lessons and activities for a core subject schools maybe interested.

That's a lot of money for a school to pay - I know my school (primary)l would be unlikely to spend that much on a product.
I do think you will need to give it away to a few schools, to generate some interest / feedback.

It all depends on how much impact it has and how many PP pupils the school has.

So no way to a rural primary with 100 pupils on roll.

Totally possible to a large secondary with 1,000 PP pupils on roll.

Basically school budgets vary enormously and having one price for all schools probably won't work.

The infants school I am a governor at: has the authority to purchase something like that (and to make far greater spending decisions). They wouldn't have to ask LA permission. But I don't think they would consider a £600 subscription value for money - but they are a relatively small (2 form entry) infants, so the children are pretty young.

As a secondary HoD I had authority to purchase a £600 product. For that price, it would need to pay for itself by replacing resources we already used though.

We have the authority to buy our own programs. It would be me that would put in the order.
However.
How would it benefit our students and school.
Easy to install and ghost on our systems.
Web based if so will it run through lgfl etc.
How many licences would it actually buy
Can pupils have their own profiles
Is it accessible
Interactive white board compatible etc
Windows, iOS or both
How is it different from the thousands of programs that companies try and sell me on a weekly basis
Age aimed at
Able to track progress
Easy to use for the student
How much work will staff have to put in, do they require training is so how much and what
Can changes be made to suit the learners needs
What does it teach
Is there a trial
Which IDE,

Those are a few of the questions I was asked recently.. I wanted to buy something for around £20.