My own personal best buys stand out clearly in the memory. A Hohner 12-hole chromatic mouth organ in 1950. A copy of Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft, that cost me four guineas in 1953 and is a collector’s item now. A Volkswagen Beetle, Pounds 495 new in 1967. A telephone with a headset which I bought this year, so I can talk to people and make notes on my computer at the same time. What makes them stand out is that, in each case, this was exactly the right thing to get: no regrets, no second thoughts. I had the same feeling from the schools which nominated their best buys of the year.

The highest approval was for items which had given pleasure to pupils. Thus, at Portland Primary on the Wirral, it was “shrieks of delight” from the reception class which confirmed Douglas Fallows, the head, in his view that Sherston Software’s Animated Alphabet (Pounds 24.95) was just the right thing for them. “The lettering is clear and lower case. The children gain keyboard skills simply and clearly, and when they find their way through the map route to the letters, they love it when they see their success.”

Confirmation that the fun factor is important came from Pat Ellis, head of Almond Hill Junior in Stevenage. “The best things we’ve bought this year, ” she told me, are planks of wood, four inches across and two inches deep.”

You drill holes in the planks and put rope loops through them. You then put the planks side by side, stand on them, hang on to the loops and walk the planks forward. You can have up to four children in line, walking one pair of planks along - an activity that promotes co-ordination, co-operation and is just a lot of fun. This is surely just about as basic a piece of kit as you can get.

“One of the parents sawed the planks up and drilled the holes, and I tied the ropes,” explained Mrs Ellis. “We’ve made 18 sets, and the whole lot cost us about Pounds 30.”

For two years Harry Galley, at Bond First School in the London borough of Merton, has promoted skipping ropes - to such good effect that the school’s skipping display team, The Bond Bouncers, has toured in Europe as well as across the UK.

This year, as well as continuing to encourage individual skipping, he has been pointing the children towards massed long-rope skipping. “We bought a number of 10-metre ropes and trained up our midday supervisors on long-rope games. Often now, as well as all the individuals, you’ll see two or three long ropes on the go, with 10 to 15 children on each.”

Harry Galley buys skipping ropes from NORtech, a firm in Dorset that strongly supports the various sponsored skipping projects run by the British Heart Foundation (Pounds 1.70 to Pounds 2.30 each).

The hi-tech equivalent of the skipping rope and the two short planks is, of course, the electronic exercise station, which allows you to jog, cycle, row or climb the Great Pyramid of Cheops, while remaining in one place and trying to avoid your own gaze in the mirrored wall. Taunton School, a large independent boarding and day school in Somerset, went to Powersport International of Bridgend, to improve their gym facilities. Their buy of the year was described to me by bursar Tony Main as “a 19-machine cardio-vascular suite for the sports hall - all the latest kit”.

The cost is about Pounds 1,000 per machine, and the alterations to the room, including the fitting of new carpets, brings the total up to Pounds 23, 000, but Mr Main clearly sees the new gym as a marketable asset.

Powersport was chosen because “they cover the full package - layout of the room, provision of power, carpets and decor. They give advice on use, potential dangers and so on.”

Sound advice from a trusted supplier, indeed, can be the deciding factor in whether or not a product is regarded as a good buy - as Neil Hawkes, head of West Kidlington Primary School in Oxfordshire, found when he decided to look for display boards for the entrance hall. “We wanted them for the PTA so they could display community information, examples of school uniform and so on.”

He put his order in to Northamptonshire County Supplies who are taking advantage of local management to spread their wings beyond the home area. “They took the trouble to tell us that they could get what we wanted more cheaply. Instead of Pounds 286 they cost us Pounds 198.”

Jo Prazak at NCS pointed out that display boards are particularly difficult to order from a catalogue. “You can’t really tell. Some you can hardly lift. Some are so flimsy they blow over. Then it’s what do you want them for - a mobile exhibition or static artwork for example? You have to be sure you have the right board for the job.”

Some of the things that schools have are so dependent on the expertise of the supplier that buying and using them becomes a partnership. The video-conferencing equipment being used at Monkseaton Community High School in Whitley Bay links pupils, via video, voice and computer, directly to counterparts in classrooms in Germany, Spain and France as part of a very ambitious government and industry-backed “Students across Europe” project.

According to headteacher Paul Kelley, “the aim is to create an effective system of language learning that maximises the benefits of new technologies - and develops independent, life-long learning habits.” The possibilities for schools are obvious, and RM is ready with equipment, advice and support. At the moment a video-conferencing package from RM - computer, camera, software - costs about Pounds 3,500.

Two more stories of good service from suppliers come, respectively, from Sonning Common Primary in Oxfordshire and Stanway Five Ways Primary in Essex. Philip Marples is head of Sonning Common, where large classes and budgeting have been a particular challenge this year. He is pleased with a photocopier leasing deal, and with subsequent service, from local firm Reflex, which supplies office equipment within a 50-mile radius of Reading. Mr Marples proved, in effect, that if you negotiate hard you can do well. “I said ‘if you want to do business with us, you’ll have to give us a mean price,’ and they came up with two photocopiers instead of one.”

At Stanway, headteacher Pam Wells has been able to present this year’s school play on movable staging, bought for just under Pounds 2,000 from the proceeds of a sponsored walk. She purchased the staging from mail-order furniture contractors Budget Direct. “We had to have it at a particular time, and they were good on delivery.” Importantly, too, there was a chance to see the product. “They lend you a sample - they deliver one block free of charge, so staff can see how heavy it is.”

The concert organ in Sheffield City Hall used to be played by a man sporting a shiny jacket with his name on the back. This was what I thought Spinney Hill Primary School in Leicester had bought when they told me how pleased they were with their Organ Tunic from Active Designs.

However, the tunic turns out to be a garment, to be worn by an obliging child, upon which you can stick Velcro pictures of the organs of the body, thus giving a good indication of where they lurk in the gurgling actuality beneath (Pounds 69.95; a Skeleton Tunic at Pounds 59.95, comes with stick-on bones). Dave Rzeznik, Spinney Hill’s head, says that the tunics “have been well used in key stage 1 and 2 science work and featured in school assembly”.

Finally, a reminder from Hare Street Infants in Harlow that the most basic resource of all is still books. Headteacher Louisa Sliwa believes that the quality of books for the early years has improved. “It’s been absolutely staggering to me, the number of excellent children’s books that have come out in the past four years.”

She mentions particularly the non-fiction titles from Dorling Kindersley, and has just bought for the library Children Just Like Me, a magnificent celebration of worldwide childhood by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley, published in association with Unicef (Pounds 9.99), and Martin Waddell’s The Happy Hedgehog Band (Walker Books, Pounds 3.99), which provides inspiration for music activities. “He just hits the nail on the head.”

buybox OTHER BEST BUYS FOR 1995:

HCassette recorder with six headsets, Model 393, Pounds 99.95+VAT, Coomber Electronic Equipment, Croft Walk, Worcester WR1 3NZ, tel: 01905 25168 HRed Beads Kit for management training, Pounds 99, British Deming Association, The Old George Brewery, Rolleston Street, Salisbury SP1 1DX, tel: 01722 412138 HCompton’s Encyclopaedia on CD, Pounds 52, Silica Systems, Silica House, Hatherley Road, Sidcup, Kent DA14 4DX, tel: 0181 309 1111 HAdventure playground built by parents, Pounds 2,500, Harwell Primary School, Oxfordshire, tel: 01235 835337 HDigital copy printer, Duplo 3090, from Pounds 3,450, Infotec UK, Hoechst House, 50 Salisbury Road, Hounslow TW4 6JH, tel: 0181 577 5577 HFisher Price camera, particularly useful with special needs children, Pounds 15. 50 from Argos HEight IBM 486 computers and a BT fibre-optic network, installed at Broughton High School, Edinburgh, tel: 0131 332 7805 HCountess, 40-cup automatic coffee maker for the staff room, Pounds 100, GLS Fairway, 1 Mollison Avenue, Enfield EN3 7XQ, tel: 0181 344 4000 HBravur clock, with large black Arabic numerals, for learning to tell the time, Pounds 40, IKEA HFax machine for saving time on the telephone, Samsung Personal Facsimile SF1505, Pounds 259, Amron Copying, Birmingham 0121 559 7738 CONTACTS

* Active Designs, 85 Halse Road, Brackley, NN13 6EQ * Budget Direct, Freepost, West Wickham, Kent BR4 0NJ * NORtech Ltd. Unit 16, Riverside Park, Wimborne, Dorset BH21 1QU * Northamptonshire County Supplies, PO box 202, John Dryden House, Northampton NN4 7DB * Powersport International Ltd, Queens Road, Bridgend Industrial Estate, Bridgend, Mid-Glamorgan * Reflex, 5 Bennet Place,15 Bennet Road, Reading.RG2 0QX * Research Machines plc, New Mill House ,183 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4SE * Sherston Software, Angel House, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wiltshire SN16 0LH