Network Managers in private schools

[GoldenWonder]

I'm a Network manager in a secondary school and I'm curious to know if there are any NMs who work in Private schools or colleges?

 

I've never seen private school NM jobs advertised in my area and I'm suspecting private schools/colleges/universities will be the only places for me to find a job when BSK kicks in.

 

If anyone does work as an NM in a private school, can you tell me what the job description is like/payscales etc? I know of several private schools in my area and will be approaching them shortly.

[strawberry]

In my experience privates schools treat networks as a business system and so spend money on a managed solution rather than trying to do it inhouse.

[Oops_my_bad]

In my experience privates schools treat networks as a business system and so spend money on a managed solution rather than trying to do it inhouse.

And what about those who work in house treating it as a business system? If anything, experience shows managed services suck

[klawd]

Keep the faith...depending on where you are BSF is a LOOOOOONG way off in reality.

 

The last meeting I had with the LEA regarding BSF told me that they were looking to implement in 2011 at the earliest, with funding not being available till probably 5 years after that.

 

Personally after seeing the numbers quoted locally for just a rebuild of some schools, and refurb of others, I am highly skeptical that the money will be available in a few years time to carry on implementing.

[Rozzer]

We have BSF kicking at some of our schools in bristol. We are just gonna sit on the side line to see how "successful" it will be.

[strawberry]

In my experience privates schools treat networks as a business system and so spend money on a managed solution rather than trying to do it inhouse.

And what about those who work in house treating it as a business system? If anything, experience shows managed services suck

 

I would possibly suggest that in a smaller private school where the provision for network support is limited to one person that a managed service is benefical. Also a managed service gives you guaranted uptime as there are more resources available when you really need them and penalty clauses to ensure that the work is completed as soon as possible.

[Grommit]

In my experience privates schools treat networks as a business system and so spend money on a managed solution rather than trying to do it inhouse.

 

Thats not quite true.. there are two big private schools near me and they both have in house support with Network Managers

[Abaddon]

Here, at least, we have no managed services (excluding the e-mail filtering and internet filtering solutions from LGfL at least). I have two techies who work for me, and we cover most everything in-house, only going outside for major projects, such as the recent Citrix overhaul we had earlier this break.

[tom_newton]

I know a bunch of private school NMs, and they don't seem all that different to most of you guys. I am still trying to bother some of em into posting on here... particularly the NM at Malvern College, who is a legend in his own time

[dhicks]

> I'm a Network manager in a secondary school and I'm curious to know

> if there are any NMs who work in Private schools or colleges?

 

Yes, me.

 

> I've never seen private school NM jobs advertised in my area

 

I found this job on the job posting board here at EduGeek!

 

> can you tell me what the job description is like/payscales etc?

 

I get paid £20,000 a year. Job description is a vauge anything-to-do-with-computers sort of thing. So far this has included building machines, installing operating systems and software, drilling holes in walls and poking wires through them, setting up Xen virtual machines, creating a custom Linux distribution, dealing with SIMS, sorting out thin clients and making Flash games.

 

--

David Hicks

[russdev]

Knowing where David works it was job if I had been down that way I would have applied for myself.

 

Russell

[GoldenWonder]

So, in other words - the job and the money is about the same, but the way the schools do it varies as much as it does in the public sector.

 

Theres a few private schools around here that I would guess are large enough for their own NM.

 

I like my job here - but BSF is too much of a threat to ignore. In County Durham (where I live, not where I actually work), a lot of NMs are being tupe'd or simply not being told their future yet.

 

Our area is scheduled for 2009 - but we are a voluntary aided Catholic school which might slow things down a little (hopefully!)

 

I'm considering my options - jump now to somewhere 'safer', or wait for the inevitable and then work in Tesco when the chop arrives!

 

I've worked in the private,commercial,industrial and educational sectors - ICT has always been the boom and bust job. As soon as the demand and salaries have peaked, then the sector looks to outsource (or PFI) en masse!

[russdev]

Think the biggest difference with private schools is money can sometimes be higher. More than anything if can prove yourself you get a higher wage by going through the review process.

 

Biggest issue with private schools can be lot more politics involved...

 

Russell

[john]

Don't start me on the politics, its very political and you have to fit in or else you just feel weird, they are an unusual place with there own ways of working and ideas.

[dave.81]

Well here i am posting from a private school and i'm the NM

 

Started 4 years ago as the IT provision was growing past the 1 it suite and they needed support more than the once a month they used to pay me before then. To begin with it was twice a week then within 3 months 3 times a week, then 4 started full time at xmas last year.

 

As the hours increased so did the job description, now it's anything that remotely electrical i get asked to help with. Although over the past few months i'm being pushed a lot more into paperwork and am not getting the time to do the day to day running of the system that i like to do. Maybe they'll have to get a part-time tech in to help out if they keep increasing my range of duties.

 

Pay can't complain all i'll say is it's above 22K thats for full time with 6 weeks holiday, and we are not a large school with around 360 kids aged 3-18 years.

 

I know there are a lot of schools in the same group as us that have NM and at least 1/2 techs employeed full time.

[enjay]

I'm NM in a private school, too. I've not worked for state schools at all, so can't offer much in the way of direct comparison, but will say this based on what I've seen on this and other forums:

1) pay seems to be higher (mine certainly is, but I'm not going in to numbers)

2) but budgets are smaller

3) greater autonomy due to being outside of LEA control

4) I don't know if this is independent vs state or just this school vs other schools, but we get much less vandalism and abusive students than I hear about in other schools.

 

I found this job advertised in the local press.

[Marvintpa]

Yeah I am noob ....

 

 

but what is BSF ?

[greenfieldsupport]

BSF Is Building schools for the future. Its a government idea that will put alot of us out of a job

 

http://www.bsf.gov.uk/