Schools are spending £60,000, or more on photocopying; How much are you spending?

You would need to consider the purchase cost or lease costs of each copier, the costs of paper, toner, staples, maintenance, energy as well as the staff time spent copying?

Would it surprise you that a typical secondary school is likely to be spending in excess of £60,000 per year on photocopying and printing and that some are spending as much as £100,000 every year..

Based on a black and white copy costing in total 4p per sheet (all costs included)

For a school of 1500 staff and pupils that would equate to

1.5 million sheets of paper or 3000 reams

1000 sheets per pupil - or two reams per pupil per year

Have you considered why your school is spending so much on photocopying?

Maybe you can’t afford textbooks forcing already very busy teachers to produce worksheets and other handouts? Is that really the best use of their non-teaching time?

Maybe the curriculum or exam syllabus you are following has changed and you still have old books that are no longer required?

Maybe there are insufficient textbooks of acceptable quality to provide to all your classes?

What could you do if you made some savings?

If your school could reduce photocopying by half what could you do with £30,000 per annum?

Assuming a school textbook costs £25 that would equate to 1200 books or 40 class sets (based on 30 in a class) of books per year.

If you were using digital textbooks you could expect to get as many as 3000 that is 100 class sets each year.

And what benefits might you see?

Could that improve learning in your school?

• Could that reduce teacher workload?
• Reduction in energy usage
• Improvement in administration staff  efficiency
• Reduction in the number of trees used for paper pulp
• Reduction in the weight of notes carried by students in schoolbags

Sources

parentpaperwork.com

Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth