We teach children to share- schools should too.

The cost of purchasing rises every year and budgets get smaller every year. A new breed of services are cropping up which could help schools do more with less.

In the UK 80% of the items that people own are used less than once a month. You may use a power drill  between six and thirteen minutes in it’s entire lifetime and yet half of households have their own power drill. There  are power drills all across the nation just gathering dust and taking up space. There is the same situation in  the school environment.

The unused potential of all of these drills is called the idling capacity. Ownership of a product you use just once or twice a year makes no rational sense.

There are many opportunities for schools to share physical resources which have idling capacity. Usually a school will require the resources when one school doesn't and vice versa.

For example, in the school environment each school has equipment it only uses a few times a year or a term- lab and sports equipment, IT equipment the list is endless.

How can we use this idling capacity of equipment, resources and items to redistribute it elsewhere?

Social networks make it easy to match supply and demand through nearly instantaneous mass synchronisation of wants and needs in a way which both sides gain.

 

“I have set up a social network which makes it easy for schools to give, share and loan equipment to each other.” Says Daniel O’Connor- developer of www.warp-it.co.uk

Schools can legally and safely loan equipment to each other when it is not being used. In the short term this reduces the cost of purchasing new for the claiming school, but also frees up space for the contributing school.

“Take for example the skeleton model in biology which are usually purchased and kept by high schools. The skeleton model can now be passed temporarily to schools which do not have one or even to primary schools for use in lessons, before being passed back to the original school.”

“A teacher in Sunderland has put an Egyptology resource pack on the system. This means instead of each school buying an Egyptology resource pack, one can be shared amongst many. Saving money for all”

This is just two examples- I am sure teachers can think of many more ways to share resources, but in the long run we may have to adjust inters school time tables to share physical resources!”

In the long run schools can get to understand their needs and can go into a joint purchasing agreement and share resources or equipment. This reduces costs and gets maximum use out of the equipment.

There are obvious liability and maintenance issues but these are managed using the system.

Schools can also link up with other educational institutions- for example Universities often only use exam desks twice a year- and the rest of the year they have to store them. WARP-IT now provides the mechanism for universities to share exam desks with schools- saving everyone money

Daniel says “The big financial saving is we don’t have to buy new stuff and we don’t have to pay for stuff to be thrown away. Because we don’t have to buy new stuff we reduce waste and carbon emissions."