Looked after children and responsibility for tech support on school provided laptops

[nikaso]

So I am having a 'debate' with one of our SLT regarding tech support for laptops provided to looked-after children using their PP funding. I am under the impression we supply the laptop but it is effectively their device from that point and there is no obligation to provide ongoing tech support for it. SLT responsible for looked-after children seems to think we should be providing tech support.

 

Who is right and what do other schools do? I should add I am happy to help with the initial setup etc. but I don't want to set a precedent for the future, i.e. 12 months time little johnny has fragged his laptop and we are expected to repair/replace.

[Steve21]

It depends what you call looked after I guess, but from what I've been told, if it's someone who gets a laptop from the LEA it's nothing to do with us as it's not our laptop.

 

However people who learn from home etc, it is our responsibility as we have the duty to provide and support their education, thus the kit.

 

"Personally" our home-student laptop agreement is as such that if there's an issue we blat it everytime. It's their responsibility to backup/store their own data.

 

Steve

[Joanne]

Was there terms signed when the laptop was handed over? If there wasn't maybe there should be? Then you can waive your responsibility.

[elsiegee40]

This is down to local policy. LAC students do receive additional attention, but precisely what depends on the child and the school .

 

If the school decides that some of its PP money should be spent on providing support to said child with in house support, be that for IT or any other need, that is up to the school. And from your point of view it probably falls into the category of "other tasks as directed by the Headteacher" so it is not your right to say no.

Edited January 19, 2016 by elsiegee40

[CyberNerd]

This is down to local policy. LAC students do receive additional attention, but precisely what depends on the child and the school .

 

If the school decides that some of its PP money should be spent on providing support to said child with in house support, be that for IT or any other need, that is up to the school. And from your point of view it probably falls into the category of "other tasks as directed by the Headteacher" so it is not your right to say no.

 

Basically what she said.

We do provide support for machines provided to looked after children, but then again we also provide support for all devices given to all of our children.

[Joanne]

If it were me, I'd have a standard home image and just slam that on there. So then at least fixes are quick. As long as the issue isn't physical!

[psydii]

Is this not an ideal case for chrome books?

[bobsmith]

so it is not your right to say no.

 

I'd moderate this statement with, it's your responsibility to discuss this with line management as the IT professional that you are. It's in the interest of the school, your team and the student themselves that the terms of support are clear and agreed.

 

When push comes to shove we do as directed by the Head, but we aren't doing our jobs properly if we don't provide genuine advice to inform their decision making.

 

In your situation I'd want to have a restore partition on the device to minimise valuable technician time getting the device back up and running if there's a fatal software issue. Hardware issues should be either covered by warranty, or if caused by the student, their recognizance. It was bad enough when we were part of the original ICT Testbed initiative and we had to support home hardware purchased for every member of staff. The horror stories!

[Rob_D]

I would argue that unless it's a "school device" it's not our responsibility to support (apart from where it hooks into our network - helping to set up RD and school wifi, etc). And if it is a "school device" then I want to lock it down like all the others.

 

When we've had stuff like this before we've run through the initial setup, configured it for wifi and RD, but once we hand it over it's their own device.

 

Our policy is to help setting up school things on home-owned devices where we can. But we make it clear that due to the wide verity of devices it may not always be possible.

 

 

One other thing to consider. If it's technically not a school device (as in bought for the student from an LEA grant or somesuch), then technically you shouldn't be using the school windows licence on it. Or office unless you have 365 for the kids.

[CyberNerd]

Is this not an ideal case for chrome books?

 

Yeah - when I said we do this for all our students that's what I was referring to.

If they screw it up, they re-image it themselves. Works for me.

[3s-gtech]

We had this, with funding provided by the LEA to purchase the laptops "so that they would work with the same software as in school". We purchased them, handed them over, and had no further involvement as it wasn't our money that bought them. Personally, it would take a huge shove (or risk of), before I agreed to handle a student's personal data by working on "their" laptop. No thank you. Knowing what they get up to, photos, chat etc I just couldn't place myself into that firing line.

[CyberNerd]

. Personally, it would take a huge shove (or risk of), before I agreed to handle a student's personal data by working on "their" laptop. No thank you. Knowing what they get up to, photos, chat etc I just couldn't place myself into that firing line.

 

Just refer anything that worries you to your designated CP officer, like you would if it is a school laptop. It's not a big problem.

[X-13]

And from your point of view it probably falls into the category of "other tasks as directed by the Headteacher" so it is not your right to say no.

 

Point of contention: You can only be given "reasonable" requests [which you can still refuse IIRC], and you are the person who decided if it's reasonable or not.

 

 

Being expected to look after someone's personal computer, for free, is not reasonable.

[elsiegee40]

It's not the school's job to buy bus passes or uniform for kids either. It's not their job to do all sorts of things, but the school's leadership decides to do it to give certain children a better chance at school than they would other wise have.

 

I stand by my statement that it's not our place to say no. I should have added that we should, of course, be discussing it with SLT to decide where the boundaries are.

[mthomas08]

Who is right and what do other schools do?

Who is right and what do other schools do?

 

To be honest, I don't think anyone is right.

 

We do a Scheme and any device not purchased through it is not our responsibility and we make that very clear to everyone. The idea is when you sign up to it, you get IT Support, Insurance, Warranty and Case.

 

For Parents who provide their own device we use the Liability as a no go, what if my guys break it or accidently erase data etc.

 

That IT Support is much broader and open than what most people realize:

• Malware issues

• Imaging (including improvements, updates in future)

• Students forgetting local passwords

• Software problems

• Wireless issues

• Documentation

• Office 365 Live + Setting up

• All Pre-configured devices to the individual

• General day to day assistance

 

We also do a lot of chasing in regards to any Warranty, Insurance or general company issues for the Scheme.

This is I have to say a mountain of work when you add it all up, even just for a single year of 210+ Students who signed up. I make it very clear to those above that this does have an impact of day to day Support, after all we still have 600 PCs, 100 projectors, 100 IWBs, Wireless/Networking/Servers, Biometric MFD Printers, up to a hundred packages of software – I could go on.

 

Things are much better now than the nightmare of day 1, we can get an average of 5-10 Students in the door with their devices instead of 40+ a day because of the Pre-Planning we have done.

 

It’s important to ask “How far will you AND the School be expected to go”.

• Are you going to be expected to Repair?

• Repairs = Cost to the School?

• Extended Warranty?

• Insurance? If so who will chase? Are you allowed to do it on behalf of the Student? School owned? What if it’s VOID (has happened)

• Solid case – I recommend buying a high protective one costing £35+

• Will you image? – I recommend sticking W7 Professional or 8.1 (w/e similar to your system)

• Will you be expected to install Future Software? What if a Staff member asks “I want this” which is Network Software or Windows Specific (We have a few that wont work on 8/10 – Yes I know W7 wont last forever.

• Are you going to be expected to give Day to Day Training? I can’t say how many times I’ve had to send large groups of Students away just to show them how to “Logon to email” due to the lack of ICT Lessons – which are now resolved after me going a little mad.

• What if it gets stolen, lost or the Student gets pushed by another Student and it breaks or that Student throws the case and it smashes it – is it still covered by the School/Insurance?

• Loans/Spares – The more the Students rely on them (And their Teachers) what happens when their one is not working?

• Are you/School LIABLE – this is key, what if your team accidently did something – Do Students save to a Network Drive (accidents can happen even from IT Support)

 

Once you start going down the route of “Providing” Students equipment that they take home etc, You ARE opening a door to the big wide world of “REALITY”.

 

The above is the type of thing I would discuss with that SLT member, on one side if we are to Support it then that means its NOT just IT Support that’s SCHOOL Support which opens the doors to costs.

 

Still personally it doesn’t bother me if we do support these BUT I will make sure those above are aware of everything not just “Shove it on to IT Support and they can deal with it”. I can’t stress the amount of times I’ve made comments about this “Attitude”. I love my job and I am willing to Support any IT but if it becomes too much, the School will either have to cut back or employ more Staff. What happens when a School is expected to take on another 200 Students, it expands classrooms, employs additional Teachers or their Teacher Union protest down the streets screaming at the Government for not giving two hoots about Teachers and their ever growing Students to deal with.

 

Excuse the large post

 

To be honest, I don't think anyone is right.

 

We do a Scheme and any device not purchased through it is not our responsibility and we make that very clear to everyone.

[elsiegee40]

To be clear, Looked After Children are children in the care of the Local Authority. They probably have no parental support wherever they call home

[psydii]

Also occasionally giving a bit of help to LAC above and beyond one's core duty is not that onerous, surely? How many hours a year would it be? TBH that is why I suggest chrome books, you can offload the support to google

[nikaso]

The looked after children here are indeed in Foster Care but the carers operate as parents and get paid for providing that care.

 

We don't have many at all, I'm just thinking ahead of setting a precedent of providing any/all support and possibly getting a nightmare carer who treats us as their personal helpdesk.

 

I'm certainly going to give Chromebooks another look for future candidates. The laptops themselves come with W7 CoA s and we provide Web app versions of office so that isn't an issue and they are completely standalone.

 

I'm going to have a conflab with the SLT member and explain the possible ramifications for IT support time and potential liabilities.

[LincolnE]

We don't tend to even touch these things, to be honest.

 

We get asked what's a reasonable laptop for XYZ money. We forward on a link and then give the boxes to the students. Doing anything other than that just causes more hassle than it's worth. Even then we have problems (someone reinstalled windows 7 home edition with a cracked CD key given to them by a dodgy back alley shop)

[StevieM]

We recently bought a @VeryPC Classmate 2-in-1 for a LAC to use at home and in school. It's not joined to the domain, but I've enabled Internet access via our proxy. While it is now his personal property, if he has an issue with it that affects his ability to use it at school, then I'm happy to look at it. If he's having problems installing Crafty Minebirds or whatever, then that's nothing to do with me. If there were to be a hardware fault, I'd be happy to contact tech support and return it on his behalf if necessary. If it turned out to be something not covered by warranty, we would advise his carers of any costs before agreeing to them and charge them accordingly.

 

This isn't something I would want to do if we started a scheme to offer personal equipment to all pupils, but for a few LACs - not an issue to me.

[GeekyPete]

If it's insured by the school it's school equipment. And there fore the school should manage the asset.

 

If it's a school asset then the Head Teacher is ultimately responsible for how it's used. Email the member of SLT pointing out that if the school are managing it, which could be implied from offering technical support then the school also has a duty of care regarding safeguarding. CC in the person responsible for safeguarding outlining your concerns listing any measures you can put in place.

 

Then be very clear that you will follow their instructions once they have made it clear by email.

[PotNoodleTech]

It's not the school's job to buy bus passes or uniform for kids either.

 

But that is just the purchase of inanimate equipment, which is quick and easy. What you're discussing now is permanent staffing arrangements outside of the initial purchase, so in you're example, buying the pupils bus passes, and then also just expecting you're staff to drive the minibus to pick them up in the morning and drop them off, every day, which becomes a totally different scenario?

[browolf]

The lac kids who got laptops last year, we set them up with antivirus and local filtering and sent them on their way. The deputy in charge of the project insisted we need to include some kind of filtering. We used k9.

Had to reinstall one of them and helped another on his a few times.

It seemed expected that whilst the students were still in our school, we would give them support. We didn't mind.

[Garacesh]

When we get a LAC laptop, I'll generally configure it and spend a little bit of time getting rid of the bloatware. Realistically I probably shouldn't, but for the sake of the kid getting it, if I can make it a little easier for them, I don't mind. We do hand them over with a "It's your problem now." policy but within reason I'll take a look as a low-priority job when things go wrong. Most of the time I end up just saying to them "Take copies of anything important, I'm going to reset the machine", do a factory restore, re-remove bloat and Bob's your uncle.

[clockend25]

Does anyone have an agreement they get students to sign in this scenario that I could have a look at?