MAT IT Team

[CK29184]

Hi all

I was wondering if anyone might be willing to share how their IT team is set up within their MAT? I'm specifically wondering if you've centralised, how the roles are split, what training you provide and how much you depend on outside contractors/support services?

I'd also be interested in whether you've kept your systems fairly separate or have centralised IT systems (or plan to) using MPLS or something similar.

For info we have 2 high schools, 2 primaries and are looking to take on another primary soon.

Thanks

[knightrider]

Sent a PM

[djm968]

PM Sent

[Ditto]

At a previous MAT, which has grown from a secondary and to treble that in 5 years, the IT largely run separately. About a a year ago, they embarked on starting to centralise some of the services. They've just started to employ 'Field engineers' to allow resources to be moved between sites. This meant they looked for F/T 52 weeks a year people. Pay was poor and it meant it was not an option for those wanting to work and juggle child care. It's early days, but they have unified to a ISP and have implemented a common helpdesk system. I believe they are looking at some common networking between the schools, but I don't believe that is the place to start. One of the consequences has been the dropping of network managers in each school, and having that role sit at trust level. The senior technicians in each school end up covering much of a NM role, but don'y achieve NM salary.

 

Personally, I'm unconvinced the use case has been though through. Firstly, the parent trust and each of the schools need to have a vision of what they are trying to achieve. Do they want to have trust level reporting for finance, academic attainment/progress, shared facilities services, email systems, and so on. Then look at the options to achieve the goals.

 

Prior to this, in a trust of solely primary/infant schools, they were starting on a similar approach. Firstly, IT technicians were being recruited to expect to be mobile. This tended to also mean only F/T and 52 weeks per year. Realistically, there wasn't much of a common approach to IT support but they did have the ability to move staff (and expertise) to different sites as needed.

 

As a governor at a school in a small primary trust, after two years there has been no sign of any centralisation. All that has been visible is that the schools local IT person has offered their expertise to the other schools.

 

To conclude, whilst there is a perception there are benefits of centralising IT services, in practice I'm not convinced many trusts quite know how to achieve benefits. In all three cases mentioned, the need for onsite support was permanent - be it showing an educator how to turn on the projector or resolving sound issues, or replacing toner, or replacing a broken monitor or the list goes on. The main gain has being able to utilise expertise in one school across the others. Missed benefits would include centralised buying power.

 

I'd be very interested to also hear from others, in particular if any large trusts have a clear demonstration of success as a result of centralisation and whether any have gone for a significant amount of out-sourced solutions.

[CK29184]

Thanks for your thoughts Ditto, and thanks to those who PMed me

 

Yes, I totally agree that at least one permanent on-site technician, certainly for secondaries, is a must. Shared expertise is something we've been trying to encourage over the past few months and are starting to try and make use of centralised buying power, although I think the savings are limited for smaller MATs.

[SVM]

We are moving to a technician at each secondary and they then also support local primary, we have standardised our Windows image to make it easier for technicians to go into any site to help support.

 

Internet services, we use a mix of VPLS and local SD WAN, depends which is more cost effective, having a VPLS setup is not a priority and not needed

 

I would not look at centralising first, more standardising, you do not need servers and phones etc running from a central position as its normally more cost effective to have them on site unless you can get cheap p2p lines put in but as a large MAT the distance between schools makes it too expensive.

[localzuk]

We centralised as much as possible here.

 

Our network finished its merge earlier this year - all our schools are on a single domain. We have a WAN made up of EAD point to point leased lines (less than £3k a year for each for us) - so all schools connect back to our central site by them, then have internet breakout at that central site. We have a central cluster of servers, and none of the schools have servers any more.

 

Staffing-wise, our setup is supposed to be IT Manager (me), Senior IT Tech (vacant) and Technician (just filled). Our schools are geographically grouped - 3 in one town, 3 in another small area. So, I am based in the town, and the senior tech should be based at the largest of the other 3 schools.

 

School-wise, we are 6 schools - 2 middle schools, 4 first schools (and 4 nurseries).

[ctstone]

I worked in the IT Team for a MAT school a few years ago, which has as much of its services as centralized as possible and I ABSOLUTELY HATED IT !!!

For me, I felt it took a large amount of the job's fun bits out. Such as dealing with staff and students more advanced requests, or being able to change things to suit there needs.

I enjoy server work at the same time, and being able to do a bit of everything. But this is not possible when you are a technician for a MAT school.

 

I much prefer having a local network or even better, the school remaining as a SAT. MAT's are all about money

[SVM]

What happens in the event of a fire at your central school which makes the site unsafe or burns through the server room, instead of one school down you now have multiple schools down until insurance company gets thing back to normal.

 

We had one recently and we were not allowed to do anything, everything had to go via insurance companies which took weeks for them to organise the recabling an important cabinet, if we were centralised at this site we would have lost access to 7000 users instead of the 800 at the local site (I would also be concerned if insurance would pay for redirection of all the EADs to another site ?)

 

 

 

We centralised as much as possible here.

 

Our network finished its merge earlier this year - all our schools are on a single domain. We have a WAN made up of EAD point to point leased lines (less than £3k a year for each for us) - so all schools connect back to our central site by them, then have internet breakout at that central site. We have a central cluster of servers, and none of the schools have servers any more.

 

Staffing-wise, our setup is supposed to be IT Manager (me), Senior IT Tech (vacant) and Technician (just filled). Our schools are geographically grouped - 3 in one town, 3 in another small area. So, I am based in the town, and the senior tech should be based at the largest of the other 3 schools.

 

School-wise, we are 6 schools - 2 middle schools, 4 first schools (and 4 nurseries).

[localzuk]

What happens in the event of a fire at your central school which makes the site unsafe or burns through the server room, instead of one school down you now have multiple schools down until insurance company gets thing back to normal.

We had one recently and we were not allowed to do anything, everything had to go via insurance companies which took weeks for them to organise the recabling an important cabinet, if we were centralised at this site we would have lost access to 7000 users instead of the 800 at the local site (I would also be concerned if insurance would pay for redirection of all the EADs to another site ?)

Same as with any business - we have a disaster recovery plan in place. We can spin the whole lot up in the cloud if we need to, so all we're reliant on is getting connectivity up. An insurance company does not dictate the emergency needs of a school. Remember, disaster recovery goes through multiple stages. First stage is just getting the critical systems up and accessible. Longer term, you're looking to return to normal. I wouldn't expect our recovery to be instant, but we would be able to get all schools operating again within 48 hours.

 

You should not be designing your entire operational infrastructure based on an insurance company dragging its feet. You build it based on operational needs, available funds, sustainability etc... You then build a DR plan that provides for recovery, and is something management is happy with (in terms of timescales).

 

Anyhow, our 2 year goal is elimination of the central servers anyway - as most of our IT use is now in "the cloud". So, DR at that point will be "get internet".

[localzuk]

I would not look at centralising first, more standardising, you do not need servers and phones etc running from a central position as its normally more cost effective to have them on site unless you can get cheap p2p lines put in but as a large MAT the distance between schools makes it too expensive.

Just to point something out - P2P lines are not based on distance between sites. They are based on distance each site is from their local exchange. So, if site A is 1 mile from the exchange, and site B is 2 miles, then you're paying a fee based on those 3 miles. The sites could be 200 miles from each other.

[SVM]

Thanks was curious if you had a DR plan that might include 4g as we are looking at this for some schools now for their backup line rather than traditional cabled backup.

 

Insurance should be part of the DR plan, they should have estimates of when they get services back online, electric, heating, porta cabins, new servers etc - broadband normally never gets an estimate unfortunately

 

 

Same as with any business - we have a disaster recovery plan in place. We can spin the whole lot up in the cloud if we need to, so all we're reliant on is getting connectivity up. An insurance company does not dictate the emergency needs of a school. Remember, disaster recovery goes through multiple stages. First stage is just getting the critical systems up and accessible. Longer term, you're looking to return to normal. I wouldn't expect our recovery to be instant, but we would be able to get all schools operating again within 48 hours.

 

You should not be designing your entire operational infrastructure based on an insurance company dragging its feet. You build it based on operational needs, available funds, sustainability etc... You then build a DR plan that provides for recovery, and is something management is happy with (in terms of timescales).

 

Anyhow, our 2 year goal is elimination of the central servers anyway - as most of our IT use is now in "the cloud". So, DR at that point will be "get internet".

[SVM]

P2P/EAD are based on distance at some point, for example one school is 57704 metres away from each other according to their calculator, BT will not quote on that distance as its out of range for EAD products, maybe once it goes through x amount of exchanges they do not quote for some reason.

 

But yes it is mainly based on how many exchanges you run through for pricing

 

Just to point something out - P2P lines are not based on distance between sites. They are based on distance each site is from their local exchange. So, if site A is 1 mile from the exchange, and site B is 2 miles, then you're paying a fee based on those 3 miles. The sites could be 200 miles from each other.

[localzuk]

Thanks was curious if you had a DR plan that might include 4g as we are looking at this for some schools now for their backup line rather than traditional cabled backup.

 

4g is actually our "getting SIMS data immediately" step - getting SIMS spun up and accessible can be done anywhere, and 4G can be used to access the data. One of our nurseries is connected back via FTTC (a nursery with 2 PCs doesn't really need EAD we reckon), and a Sophos RED device. The BT router it uses has "4G Assure" for failover too.

Insurance should be part of the DR plan, they should have estimates of when they get services back online, electric, heating, porta cabins, new servers etc - broadband normally never gets an estimate unfortunately

Indeed. There are estimates of recovery times in there. With different services clustered depending on importance. Eg. Getting a DC/DHCP/DNS server up and running, and SIMS servers is top of the list, other data next down the list, everything else "as and when possible".

[SVM]

4g is actually our "getting SIMS data immediately" step - getting SIMS spun up and accessible can be done anywhere, and 4G can be used to access the data. One of our nurseries is connected back via FTTC (a nursery with 2 PCs doesn't really need EAD we reckon), and a Sophos RED device. The BT router it uses has "4G Assure" for failover too.

Insurance should be part of the DR plan, they should have estimates of when they get services back online, electric, heating, porta cabins, new servers etc - broadband normally never gets an estimate unfortunately

Indeed. There are estimates of recovery times in there. With different services clustered depending on importance. Eg. Getting a DC/DHCP/DNS server up and running, and SIMS servers is top of the list, other data next down the list, everything else "as and when possible".

 

How do you find the 4g assure ? we are opening a new school and are putting in FTTP with 4g assure, curious how the 4g assure works, BT said its automatic etc but I have doubts, I was wondering if you pull the FTTC/FTTP cable out does it flick over to 4g straight away ?

[localzuk]

We went with 4g assure, as the nursery needed a new line - so 4g allowed us to get them up and running the moment the router arrived. It works is all I can say - our main problem is that they use EE infrastructure (of course), and this nursery is in a poor coverage spot. It is completely automatic. One thing to note though, you cannot set the BT router to "bridge" mode if you want to use it, so you are stuck using their router to handle stuff.

 

It does flick over straight away, yeah.

[Mr.Ben]

I'm building our services and strategy at the moment (30 schools in a rapidly formed MAT). We are going 'cloud' first as a strategy - no MPLS either, just SD-WAN as the reasons for backhauling traffic don't make sense when the bulk of provision is going to the Internet.

[keyboards]

How are trusts going towards cloud?

 

Use this or else?

How you supporting/training staff - I don't think training should be an IT issue thing anyway, I'm not a trainer

How you dealing with the inveitable, I don't like this, I prefer the old email system, it's also confusing, basically blockers

[Ditto]

How are trusts going towards cloud?

Use this or else?

Unlikely to be a strategy that wins favour across a number of schools.

How are trusts going towards cloud?

How you supporting/training staff - I don't think training should be an IT issue thing anyway, I'm not a trainer

If you have a partnership working with you, they should be help, failing that, there's probably no one better within the trust than those within IT.

How are trusts going towards cloud?

How you dealing with the inveitable, I don't like this, I prefer the old email system, it's also confusing, basically blockers

As you would with any other implementation - training, on-going support and persuasion of the overall benefits. If there aren't overall benefits, then you have to question why the trust is moving this way.

 

For a sizeable MAT, I think it makes sense to start small and grow the project. Find a school where the SLT buy-in to the project, identify key staff and train them to be able to train others. Expect to hit issues and build in support for those issues. Be patient, be determined and be in it for the long run.

[jackhunt]

We took the view of moving away from Active Directory and moved to Azure and Intune; meaning we did not have the cost of connecting the schools together with a WAN, while still enabling any user to logon to any academy device. Our ISP has provided us with a site VPN solution so we can still access each other local networks for RDP etc while keeping costs down.

 

Our IT team is slowly growing, we have 6 primaries + 1 secondary. 3 IT tech + 1 MAT IT lead at secondary + 5 IT Tech (3 permanent + 2 Apprentices) covering the primaries. We tend to spend a lot of time at each others sites as we all have different areas of expertise.

 

We are slowly removing servers from each school. By Xmas, all primaries will move from 1 admin + 1 curriculum server to just 1 school server, with a view to removing the last servers ASAP when we can switch to cloud services such as Printex rather than Papercut.

[localzuk]

How many children across those 7 schools @jackhunt, if you don't mind me asking?

[jackhunt]

I am not sure about the Secondary (I know it is 5 or 6 form entry though) + Sixth form.

 

Primaries

 

Approx 1500 - They are a mix of 1 form and 2 form schools

[localzuk]

Thanks. I keep coming back to the conclusion that we are understaffed. 6 schools (2 middle, 4 first), and 4 nurseries. 1700 children. 3 staff covering it all.

[sidney1]

Hello,

 

We are a Mat of 5 schools and there’s only 3 of us to work between sites which might seem a bit understaff but since it is all working it’s alright so far.

 

We have implemented current system 2 years ago as we had to move away from window 7 to 10. There were quite a few different ideas to go about it but we focused on centralizing the IT across all sites.

 

Just before we had to do what we did, we had a main person overseeing IT leave and this is where it could have all gone horribly wrong. The new person that was appointed is a massive Google fanboy, I’ve never seen anyone else getting so much excited for it in my life. Now it’s not a problem of being a fan of it but it is when the ideas this person had were mental. So his proposed idea and what he was aiming for before it was stopped was to go full on cloud solution, getting rid of any server equipment and putting it all away into the magic cloud, great right ? And the icing on the cake was to remove all desktop machines and give every member of staff a Chromebook to replace their equipment with. Yes, every single member of staff, teacher, admin, support and rest. How would you use it like that every day, you might think? A Docking station, yes this ridiculous idea of going back in time where you would plug your computer into a docking station to use external monitor, mice and keyboard. Every classroom, office and literally any room would have a dock to use. We had to argue the case with the CEO to stop it as the head was brainwashed by some Google person who came to visit before.

 

So what do we have now, well it’s actually a pretty good and solid solution that just works. We have all 5 schools connected together with a dark fibre LAN on the same domain and main site has internet pipe with Internet and firewall filtering solution. We use Microsoft remote desktop for people who want to work offsite or on a mobile device. We do have Chromebooks but as a work device for staff and 1to1 with students. Each classroom still has a desktop machine that had RAM and SSD upgrade. Single account for each person that works on each site, all printers are centralized as well and work on all sites no matter where you are.

 

We also had to put extra support into teaching people how to use the Chromebooks as the person who wanted these in the first place had different agenda of just selling these and making profit. Ohh how do we know that? Well that was a quick Google search to find that his friend owns a business that buys grey stock devices and sells it cheaper than anyone else could. The problem with this is that those devices are basically crap, break easily and randomly, also warranty is only a year. So we did training sessions and that fixed the outrage of staff absolutely hating these devices. By the way the person in charge of Chromebooks is also a teaching and learning consultant but apart from selling these to the school, didn’t want to do anything else with it. I suppose we’ll have to wait for this person to leave after few years and maybe get someone who likes Microsoft route. We don’t mind Google, the Classroom is pretty good for teachers but anything else is just a load of rubbish. People want to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint not Google version of this that can’t do anything that’s not a basic feature.

 

And this is why you need to sometimes stand your ground and tell a fanboy with their own agenda to stick it. At the moment we have the best infrastructure we ever had that just works. We also been nominated recently for an award.

 

Have a nice day.

 

Thanks

[localzuk]

I don't really understand your attack on the concept given by that new person. There is nothing stopping an organisation doing exactly what they pursued - it just requires a lot of work to get there. I say that as we are embarking upon a similar journey. Started this year with Chromebooks for one of our academic years, and will continue being rolled out until all children have them. Teachers are currently being given one of those same Chromebooks as well as their existing Windows device. Further down the line, those Windows devices will be removed - once we are sure everyone can do everything they need to via Chromebooks.

 

The thing for us is making sure we don't jump to anything before replacements can do everything we need. The vast majority of our computing is done "online" already to be honest. The number of legacy programmes has shrunk year by year.

 

We are doing this after having done what you did - merged our network onto a single domain, with schools connected by leased line PTP lines. Only the main site has servers any more. Classrooms don't generally have desktops in them, with teachers having laptops instead.

 

I would suggest that your post comes across as incredibly unprofessional, accusing other professionals of being fan boys for pursuing a newer technology. People wanting to use something is not a reason to continue to do it. If we did, we'd still be on XP and Office 2003 - as people didn't like the change...