A Truly Flexible, Trust-Wide Eco Printing Solution

We all agree that the more that Multi-Academy Trusts are able to share resources, the better they could perform, or at least that’s what the theory says!

I can’t profess to know the ins and outs of how different Academy chains operate, but what I can tell you about is how advances in print technology mean there’s a win-win situation for both Trust and School stakeholders when it comes to printers for schools. 

The blocker in sharing resources

While every school and trust will no doubt agree that sharing resources is good and that they want to do more of it, the problem always comes back to how do you fairly allocate resources - staff, support, technology, etc. 

Allocating your Trust resources based on which of the schools need them most would be a sensible way to approach this, but the age-old problem of how to ‘split the bill’ throws a spanner in the works here. 

We’ve all experienced this at a dinner sometime - some people will go for a starter, have a few extra drinks, and may go for a more expensive main. The bill comes and some people are happy to split it equally while other people want to contribute their actual share. 

Thankfully, the ease of card payments and restaurant till systems has made those awkward end of dinner 'negotiations’ a thing of the past.

However, in the Multi-Academy Trust setup, it’s not so simple to split resources so equally. If we imagine a Trust of 5 schools hires a new learning coordinator who we’ll call Mrs Boden. Mrs Boden’s job is to support each school, spending 1 day a week with them. On paper, this all works out nicely as each school covers 20% of Mrs Boden’s salary (paid via the Trust), and receives 20% of Mrs Boden’s time. 

However, of those 5 schools, 1 is doing very well (who we’ll call St Mary’s), while 2 are really struggling. To complicate things further, one of the struggling schools has a key senior leader off on long-term sick, stretching the remaining senior leadership team that little further. 

Focused on educational outcomes, the decision is taken that Mrs Boden should spend more of her time supporting the schools that need her most, reducing her time at St Mary’s. While it’s the right educational decision for the Trust, St Mary’s feel a gripe, because they’re still covering 20% of Mrs Boden’s salary but now only receive 5% of her time.

With education budgets stretched so thin, St Mary’s have already made cutbacks and have to be very selective on what they spend money on. It creates a tension in the Trust and it’s common that these tensions grow over time.

What does this have to do with Printers?

Unlike the scenario above, it’s much easier to split technological resources like printers as you can sign each school up to an individual agreement and limit their printing. 

This approach is common, because it’s an extension of the old model of how individual schools would lease their printers. 

In the hunt for cost savings, many Trusts have begun to explore centralised print contracts, meeting with suppliers, selecting a partner, and implementing it into all of their schools. However, this approach is not always popular at the schools who might want choice. 

The other downside is that it makes it impossible for schools to share their printing resources with one another because every school is on an itemised contract and printing all too often gets expensive for schools. 

If a printer breaks in one school, which is sadly not that unusual, the traditional school print model means that this school will have to do without printing until their’s is repaired. Sometimes the company sends someone out quickly, and the printer is up and running in no time. But sometimes (and more likely), there’s a wait for both the repair person to come to the school and for any parts to be ordered in.

Here at EcoPrinters, there are many traditions that we keep, but schools being locked into substandard printing contracts is one we’re happy to blow up. The EcoPrinter model changes everything for Multi-Academy Trusts for 2 reasons: 

1. Every school is on an unlimited, fixed price agreement 

This means that in your Multi-Academy Trust, if one school has a printer that goes down, they can go to another school in the group and print resources because there’s no pay-per-page cost. They can even borrow a printer (as EcoPrinters are compact and portable) and take it back to their own school meaning teachers and school leaders don’t go without. 

Many schools rightly worry that increasing their printing will contribute to their carbon footprint, however Eco Printers are incredibly environmentally friendly. Our heat-free print technology means we use 87% less energy than traditional school printers and can take more than 400kg of CO2 out of the environment for every 50,000 pages printed. 

2. Compact, portable printers

Things take time to change in education, and a key one is the type of printers that are in use today. You know the ones I mean, the huge hulking all-in-one printer copier that took 4 people just to get into the office. Well, it’s in the office now so it’s certainly not going anywhere! 

For a school, this is huge overkill in terms of what is actually needed. When was the last time you used the correlator function or had it batch the print outs and auto staple them? These things are certainly nice to have (maybe one day you’ll learn how to use that auto stapler), but they add a huge cost on to your annual contract. We’re talking thousands of pounds per year here.

We focus on what the school will most benefit from, which is smaller, more portable printers. Rather than having one hulking print copier in the office or reprographics room, meaning teachers have to form the daily morning queue to print their resources, we give schools multiple printers, placing them strategically around the school to minimise wait times! 

More printers gives you more convenience, and we give you that at a lower cost than what you’re paying today.

Next Steps

If you’re interested in our Multi-Academy Trust print solution, and would like to have more printers available across your school estate AND save money, get in touch on enquiries@ecoprinters.net or use the Chatbot in the bottom right hand corner. A team member will arrange a call and we can even come out and give you a demonstration of the printers in person.