Most schools can tell you exactly what they spent on technology last year. Far fewer can tell you what they got back. The invoice is precise; the return is a feeling.
That’s not a criticism, it’s how technology spending usually works. The value shows up as things that don’t happen: the ticket nobody raised, the lesson that didn’t get derailed, the hour a teacher didn’t lose. None of it lands on a report.
It’s still worth measuring, because the gap between what schools spend and what they actually get is mostly a skills gap, and skills gaps are fixable.
The size of the gap
Electric.ai research found staff can reclaim an average of 140 hours a year by clearing common tech hurdles. Costed against average Australian wage data, that’s worth roughly AU$5,600 per staff member, or around AU$560,000 a year for a school with 100 staff.
Treat that as an order of magnitude rather than a forecast. The real figure moves depending on your staff mix and how much friction you’re carrying. The useful part is the scale. For most schools this is a six-figure question rather than a rounding error, and it sits inside budgets that have already been approved.
So how are you measuring it now?
Before reaching for a number, it’s worth answering five questions honestly. Most schools find the answers more revealing than any calculation.
- 1. Can staff use the core tools confidently, or do they use a fraction of what’s available?
- 2. Are IT tickets dominated by simple things: password resets, lost files, a display that won’t connect?
- 3. Does your school offer regular, structured digital skills support, or a PD day and an induction?
- 4. Can staff pick up a new tool without waiting on IT?
- 5. Have digital skills gaps visibly affected workload, wellbeing, or IT capacity?
If several of those answers are uncomfortable, you’ve found your return. Nothing has been wasted. The value is tied up in habits nobody has had time to change.
What that looks like in a school
Friction in a school has a particular shape. It’s a teacher rebuilding a resource because they couldn’t find the one they made last term. It’s an enrolments officer moving data between systems by hand because nobody showed them the faster way. It’s the same three staff members fielding questions from everyone else, because they’re the ones who worked it out.
And it’s an IT team whose week is consumed by small things, which means the projects that would actually reduce next year’s tickets keep sliding to next term.
None of that is a technology failure. Every one of those tools works exactly as sold.
The digital-first school
The alternative is worth picturing clearly. Staff resolve small issues themselves without raising a ticket. They use the tools they’ve been given properly, not just the corner they learned first. They meet a new system with curiosity rather than dread.
That isn’t reserved for schools with bigger budgets. It comes down to whether digital confidence is something the school actively builds, or something staff are quietly expected to arrive with.
Getting more from what you’ve already bought
Schools that close the gap tend to do the same four things.
- Find out where staff actually are. Assumptions about who’s confident are usually wrong, and usually generous.
- Make it role-relevant. What a Year 3 teacher needs isn’t what your finance officer needs. Training that ignores this is the most common reason training doesn’t stick.
- Make it small and continuous. Around 15 minutes a week does more than a full day once a year, because tools keep changing and skills fade between terms.
- Measure the same things over time. Ticket volumes, time lost to tech issues, and staff confidence. Set a baseline first, or you’ll be guessing again next year.
None of this requires new hardware or a bigger budget. It requires treating the people using the technology as part of the investment, rather than as an assumption built into it.
Not sure where your school sits? Book a 1-hour Digital Skills Workshop and we’ll help you work out where the gap actually is, and what closing it would be worth.
FIND OUT WHERE YOUR GAPS ARE
book a workshop
