Zero - I am not allowed any training by my employers
£0 - £200
£200 - £500
£500 - £800
£800 - £1000
£1000+
I guess, reading some of the posts, I should count myself lucky! I have no set training budget per say, but the Business Manager has been actively persuing me to arrange training for my techs!
I cobbled together details of a couple of courses costing in the region of £800 each and details of various self study certs (CompTia and M$). The reply was "Training course or we'll pay for books/exam, but not both". He's running it past the Deputy Head in charge of staff training before I ask the techs which they'd prefer!
I've decided (if I can get away with it) to buy the £100 M$ MSCE books out of next years 'ICT Misc' budget. Sod my techs, It's time I got myself M$ certified
Whats this strange 'training' word you all seem to be using...
Lets see my job 2 places ago, I was promised the moon on a stick near enough and got nothing appart from my statuary Health and Safety stuff that I had to have such as manual handling, fire awareness and Ladders and Scaffolding, I didn't even the mouldy cheese at the back of the fridge. Last place I wasn't there long enough, but I am very sure they would have been good and supportive (I know the NM is on a good course at present from them so I'm sure they would have been supportive for myself as well), and the current place, I've had a day at BETT, some Serco courses book and I am sure as and when others come up that I need they will be supportive, I know that funds are tight at present, but I am sure that they will support me the best they can.
@John - LUCKY
I have to provide 2/3 of ANY course fees that I want to go on, and the school provides the rest. Therefore they are paying 1/3 of my degree. I am not going to complain, but the max they will pay is £500, the least is £200, so I dont mind. at the end of the day, getting ANYTHING is a bonus, because I have been here 2 years and it took me that long to argue the point in getting some funds to help me.
I get my first aid course every three years!
We don't have an IT training budget as such, but there is money available for support staff training in general. Its not huge, but my NM is doing his MS and Cisco exams and the school have contributed either the course or exam fees for each module up to this term. Money has now run out for this year but they have let him have one afternoon a week to go to college instead of doing the evening class as an alternative to paying the fees. We get some training from the LA free and the school are not restrictive about lettting us go to meetings and events and always pay travel costs etc - so we both went to BETT. I think overall we do pretty well.
I'm a staff governor and understand the budget limitations we have, so this seems like a reasonable compromise. The teaching staff have a devolved INSET budget for each dept but its not much, only gives them about 1 day a year of a full price course, and its not as easy for them to get the day off.
Last edited by Linfit; 4th February 2009 at 12:50 AM.
I self study as the school will never pay for boot camps for courses and to be honest, i don't feel they are the best way to learn something. They just help you cram knowledge in for an exam and then you forget it.
I have so far got my school to pay for some of the exams and some study materials but i can't push it too far as i know how stingy they are.
Now if i was a teacher......
This, there even having to think about weather to give me the time off for a Open University Degree I will be funding myself..... despite them agreeing to fund the thing allready (only got agreement verbally), when I agreed not to move down south with my now ex-girlfriend.Originally Posted by dalsoth
Also I volunteer at the Red Cross as a FESS volunteer and they spent more on training me in the first week than the school has since I got there....
Last edited by mossj; 4th February 2009 at 01:59 AM.
I guess it is limited. I've put £1000+ as if you can justify it as a benefit to the school, and the school does gain from it, there should be a relaxed limit.
I have been here 3 1/2 years and haven't been on one training course. Have asked about MCSE and Comptia N+ but was told there wasn't any money!
I've been here for over 4 years now and never had any formal training relating to my day to day job. I have made numerous requests time and time again for MS training on AD, Exchange etc. Everytime the reply has been... "Your request is duly noted" and it ends there.
Every year we get told to attend a team building day at some activity centre where we climb walls, high ropes and build towers our of barrels and then go for lunch to a pub. Hello? Halaal catering anyone?
Recently, we have had some external engineers and contractors come in. I have been asked to shadow them as they fixed some of our issues and apparently this was labelled as training and all of a sudden I was labelled the "<insert issue here> expert" until I protested otherwise, telling everyone that 2 days shadowing not really knowing what was going on didn't substitute for a formal training session and in no way made me an expert.
On inset days it seems teachers get all sorts of fancy training and then all of a sudden someone remembers "Oh, what do we do about the support staff?" and the reply probably goes along the lines of "stuff them in the large drama studio and give them some tasks about what makes a successful school"
Last training day I spent sat in the hall playing R-Type on my phone whilst the speaker blabbered on about how to engage students during lessons. Erm... did no one tell her none of us were teachers? A few support staff (at least 5 that I counted) actually fell asleep!
BETT is labelled as training. Which is not really correct in my opinion, but oh well. I sometimes go to the freebie Technet events, which can be invaluable, when I can get time off but not always able to go. Again, freebies... proper IT training does cost a damn lot of money!
Fronter training... Well, we won't even go there. It didn't work anyway, dreadfully slow, looked like an unfinished product and he spent all day telling us to read the manual. He might as well have said "Google is your friend" whilst he was at it!
When I hurt my back, I was told it was wrong I had never had any manual handling training and that would be sorted ASAP (July 2006) - Still waiting!
Still, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I will be an RM employee in 2 months time (Yes, the TUPE has finally been dated!) and I have been promised lots of training, probably because RM will be in trouble if I can't do my job because the school will be paying them a fee to ensure that I do!
I just find it terrible that IT Support is a field where even despite all the constant and rapid changes in the field, you are expected to know everything and have it working on demand. Teachers won't even switch the AC on because they haven't been "trained" on how to use it. Yet, we need Exchange 2007 implemented, working and backed up ASAP and if it goes wrong, we need it fixed ASAP and implement strategy so that it doesn't go wrong again. Just that doing the tasks in that last sentence requires multiple forms of training!
Sorry for the rant... it seems training (or lack of!) is an issue that hits a nerve with me!
I get books and to go to BETT.
Erm, hang on, let me just think
Oh yeah thats right - None.
And if you ask
I don't think we have a training budget but last week I asked to attend a Cisco Expo for two days and it was approved.
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