Yes Minister: Well sort of. Lord Agnew is right. Photocopying costs are crippling school budgets but his solution is wrong says Classoos.

Lord Agnew, the minister for academies told school business leaders that cutting down on “staggering” copying bills is “one small example” of how schools can save money. And he is right.

Speaking recently at the ASCL conference for business leaders in Nottingham, Agnew, the founder and former chair of the Inspiration Trust, told the conference that last year his chain spent £245,000 on photocopying. Lord Agnew went on to explain that by simply removing the colour copying option on the photocopiers that his chain saved tens of thousands of pounds.

However, as Tim Clark, UK director of Classoos said, “Photocopying in schools is expensive and when you are in a chain of schools - that adds up to a very big cost indeed. However, by switching to digital textbooks you can eliminate the need for photocopying altogether. So not only are you making savings and helping the environment – you are still able to provide students with text and images in colour – especially graphs, maps and science diagrams – where colour can help understanding”.

“It will be no surprise to anyone running a school that a typical secondary school is likely to be spending in excess of £60,000 per year on photocopying and printing, and that some schools are spending as much as £100,000 every year. Over and above the fiscal costs, the environmental costs are staggering too. For a school of 1500 staff and pupils we calculate that they are consuming 1.5 million sheets of paper every year”.

Classoos has been working with Lady Eleanor Holles School in London on their transition from print to digital. Matt Britland LEH’s Director of Digital Strategy explains that they wanted to find a way of reducing printing costs that also provided an easy way to distribute resources. By working with Classoos and integrating it in to their existing Firefly platform, they achieved this. Matt explains it here.

So it is a’ Yes Minister’ to Lord Agnew’s battle cry to reduce the shockingly expensive photocopying costs in schools – just maybe with a more radical solution.