Summer shutdown: Three tips for auditing school equipment

At the end of another busy year, what better time than summer to take stock of your school equipment and plan for any changes before the hordes of kids return after the holidays? In this article, we present some useful tips for auditing school equipment.(Don’t worry, it’s not as daunting as you might think!)

What does auditing school equipment involve?

Your school could decide to carry out a technology or equipment audit for a number of reasons. For example, you might:

• Recognise that your current stock of equipment is old and not as fit for purpose as it once was
• Want to find out whether your technology or equipment investments have given you value for money
• Want to improve learning outcomes for students or make their learning experience better
• Need to assess what equipment should be urgently replaced 
• Want to generate data to use to apply for a technology grant  

What school equipment should I audit?

When auditing school equipment, there are certain key pieces you should be looking at, including:

• Desktops and other IT equipment
• Laptops like MacBooks and Chromebooks
• Interactive whiteboards and projectors

How should I audit school equipment?

The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition (or SAMR) model allows schools to assess the impact of their technology on the learning input and outcome for students. It also allows you to see how additional or improved technology could be integrated into your classrooms to improve existing tasks.

The main basis of the SAMR model is examining how technology/equipment is used against these four categories:

1. Substitution: Technology allows the same task to be performed (either all or part of it) instead of it being done manually.
2. Augmentation: Technology enables a task to be performed more efficiently or effectively.
3. Modification: The use of technology means that the task or output can change.
4. Redefinition: The use of technology enables completely new tasks to be performed, which would be impossible without it.

Tips for auditing school equipment

Here are our top three tips for auditing your school equipment:

1. Complete an audit every three to four years. This will help you ensure you’re getting good value for money and assess whether you’re providing the best possible equipment for your students.. 
2. Set aside one full day for the audit and make sure that all staff know when this is so they can bring in any equipment they’ve taken home!
3. To get the most out of your audit, we also recommend that you put together an asset register so that you can record your findings (using the SAMR model above). You can then use this to make any recommendations for actions to take and future improvements.

At Utility Rentals, our priority is providing schools with the best, most up-to-date equipment. Our flexible leasing agreements – designed especially with schools in mind –  can also help your school’s budget go further. 

Not only does leasing school equipment mean there’s no need to pay upfront, you’ll gain access to equipment of a higher standard too. A win-win situation, we think! 

To find out more about how we can work with you to supply your school equipment, contact our team.

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