Primary sole tech/secondary support tech - which to choose?

[znova]

I can see that most posts favour Primaries!

Personally I'd rather do a job I enjoy - another Primary part-time job's come up! - than a mundane one.

You know what, I think I am going to be a rebel and tell the uni placement team to stuff it! I will speak to my headmistress tomorrow about feeder schools and please please since she doesn't want me to go will she be my line manager. Although we do have an ICT coordinator so he might get landed with it.

yeah, I guess I wouldn't mind going somewhere where they will actually let you do something usefull but checking equipment registers and setting up stuff is not exactly my dream job. Funnily enough, the new job is a Primary right next door to the boring secondary above, you get to run the network and get paid almost double (in proportion to the hours).

Anyway, some of my uni mates have gone on to set up their own business, so who's going be their line manager then? I feel a fight coming on!!!

They'll probably think - not her again!!! I once got excluded from a lecture for being slightly late - they had a dogsbody on a door. I played merry hell and told the head of computing exactly what I thought of their support for mature students who have to arrange childcare etc. etc. He actually appologized - usual phrases "students first but on this occasion we failed..blah blah". The had reps from industry doing a presentation so wanted to create a good impression, stuff the students!!!

Anyway, thanks for your comments and wish me luck!!!

[somabc]

TBH he sounds like a stuck up d*ck, a d*ck that did well but a d*ck all the same

That sounds a bit harsh, they may just be quite young and have a lot of erm ambition, it may not be a terminal case of d*ckness.

This is quite good though - "different to the normal bread of Helpdesk personnel"

If you are going to say you are better than somebody do not make a mistake when you say it, rather lessens the effect. What he has achieved in a year is very good but not exceptional. Many of us if we were list our achievements and responsibilities could point to a similar or better story and I still believe passing certificates is more a matter of time and money. Although you could make the point that people who would seek out a community such as edugeek/certforums are already likely to be fairly committed to IT and have the drive and resources to push up the ladder so there is some self selection bias. The fundamental point of the story is that hard work and determination DO pay off and for that he should be congratulated.

All helpdesk personnel just surf the web all day ?!?

Yes they do, or would do if given the chance. However many people can surf the web and do their job which is fine by me. We should measure by results not how long someone spends staring at a helpdesk system waiting for another ticket to come through.

[contink]

One thing that you could think about doing is perhaps finding a secondary that is willing to take you on to provide support for their feeder Primaries. That way you would get the best of both worlds.. Support from a team, time in Primaries and an opportunity to lean on either side as required.

If you want just Primaries you could potentially look at a cluster and see if a small group of schools would band together to provide the necessary support and funding to provide the necessary hours.

Word of warning though... Every single one of my Primary schools are cutting back on finances as the budget just is not the same at all, on any fronts. Redundancies and more are being considered so don't put all your eggs in one basket and hope it'll work... Have a couple of plan B's just in case.

Good luck with it

[chrbb]

I think elsiegee and witch have said everything I could have said, (great minds think alike etc etc...)
I now only work in one primary and like most primary techs 'do a bit of everything', I've got a local company that have done work for us that I can call if desperate but edugeek, google and not rushing in too quickly to change things seem to be the best plan!
I think we may be in the same area, are you with county or city?

[apoth0r]

You can learn a lot from being in a team in a secondary, things you can take into the primaries if/when you decide to slot into that field. Nothing like talking with others about the subject areas you are passionate about