How much support do you have and need?

[Sonic3]

Since becoming IT Manager of the school just under a year ago I have been fighting (and unfortunately failing) a case for me to have more IT support in terms of staffing (ideally) and external contracts. I'd like to get a good idea of what support you guys have and what you think you need (if different).

 

It is my thinking that, especially considering the heavy focus on IT right now with the new curriculum and the DCF, I should be receiving more support here, but I am aware that it varies between schools (and considering the number of PCs, switches, staff, pupils etc. plays a part).

 

In my case, I have an assistant who works with me 13 hours a week who (and this is not a dig at him) is not qualified or experienced in IT and is not seeking a career in IT. He spends 13 hours a week with me (he is shared between departments).

The school has 640+ pupils, 90+ staff, 250+ PCs, 80+ laptops, 40+ tablets, 35+ switches, and 50+ wireless APs. On top of this, we are in charge of the CCTV and telephone systems. I also have a contract with an external company who can give basic IT support and CCTV and telephones maintenance, 16 hours a month.

 

So I'm just wondering: What is your situation in comparison? Do you think you have enough support?

[steveg]

We have around 400 client devices (roughly half windows desktops / laptops and half ipads) plus all the usual infrastructure, 500 pupils and 75 staff, primary school. IT is just me, full time, but I also line manage the caretaker and cleaners, overall responsibility for the site, and am project manager for all projects, not just IT. My time is roughly split an average of 3 days a week on IT 2 days a week on other tasks.

 

Obviously all sites vary with user need, age of equipment etc but the hours you have seem around right to me.

[hardtailstar]

Team of two with 1100 students, 160 staff and around 500 devices.

 

We keep asking for a third body to help.

[CHiLL]

You are of a very similar size to use in terms of pupil numbers and equipment. We are a team of two; the network manager and myself, the technician. We are both on full time, 36.5 hour contracts and sometimes I feel that we just about cover it. I'd love another person as it would free us up more to research and implement newer solutions, whereas at the moment it takes a long time to do any of that whilst keeping the site up and running due to constant interruptions.

[localzuk]

When we were a single school, I had similar to you (same in terms of size, kit etc...) and there was just me.

 

Now, we're a Trust of 6 schools and 2 nurseries (and 2 pre-schools that are part of their schools), 1600 children, 300+ staff, 1000+ client devices, and there is me (IT Manager), senior technician and technician - all full time. We manage quite well now, as we rebuilt everything from scratch, so its all running well.

[paulkerton]

Since becoming IT Manager of the school just under a year ago I have been fighting (and unfortunately failing) a case for me to have more IT support in terms of staffing (ideally) and external contracts. I'd like to get a good idea of what support you guys have and what you think you need (if different).

 

It is my thinking that, especially considering the heavy focus on IT right now with the new curriculum and the DCF, I should be receiving more support here, but I am aware that it varies between schools (and considering the number of PCs, switches, staff, pupils etc. plays a part).

 

In my case, I have an assistant who works with me 13 hours a week who (and this is not a dig at him) is not qualified or experienced in IT and is not seeking a career in IT. He spends 13 hours a week with me (he is shared between departments).

The school has 640+ pupils, 90+ staff, 250+ PCs, 80+ laptops, 40+ tablets, 35+ switches, and 50+ wireless APs. On top of this, we are in charge of the CCTV and telephone systems. I also have a contract with an external company who can give basic IT support and CCTV and telephones maintenance, 16 hours a month.

 

So I'm just wondering: What is your situation in comparison? Do you think you have enough support?

 

Yeah you need support. Maybe your own guy for 13 hours a week. I left a school that was very similar numbers and equipment wise to yours as well as doing in-class support (and basically developing their curriculum as the IT coordinator at the time decided it was sensible to just try and map what they already did to the 2014 curriculum, rather than redeveloping it)

 

It was originally just me, term-time. Then with the increase in kit and expectations we got a full-time support that was shared 50/50 between myself and site. It was more like 3.5 days for site and 1.5 days for me. They let him go, and brought in a full-time guy for the site manager. Then due to budget cuts they let him go, and brought in an apprentice for the site manager whilst cutting my hours by 20% (you can see where it was going with the apprentice - a new one every year and constant complaining from senior management that he was shadowing the site manager!! )

 

So I'd gone from 55.5 hours of IT support man-time to 30 in just over 2 years.

Then on top of that they were messaging and calling me on my cut day (which luckily I'd found some freelance work during) and on evenings and weekends for help. So eventually I got out.

Edited March 10, 2020 by paulkerton

[hallb15]

I'm at a similar size school (735 pupils, 86 staff) and there is just me, the ICT Manager, on a 37hr week, term time plus 20 days so almost full time. I find that I manage OK with the systems I have built up since I started here, but I rarely have time for developing new things.

[ticktock]

Small secondary school, 650 pupils, 80 staff. Approx 400 PCs and associated infrastructure. Just me (used to be 2 until redundancies a couple of years ago), run off my feet most days. Staff still expect the same level of support as if we still had 2 staff. Promised an apprentice but didn't materialise.

[KevinB]

Four of us full time managing 1200 students, 650-ish devices, 150-ish staff (teaching and support) plus we manage IT for seven primaries, three of which are large.

[forkies]

I managed to get a TTO IT tech a couple years ago to add to the a full time IT tech and myself as NM full time. We have 1200 ish students, 120 ish staff. 400 ish desktops, 100 ish staff laptops, 4 physical servers 18 ish virtuals, 40 ish switches, 60 wifi points, 50 cctv (a lot of cctv requests daily), phone system, Sims support and administrative data requests such as specialist attendance tracking spreadsheets. We assists site team and do project management, installs and services for shared site users.

 

No external support (excluding copier contracts and services), no 3rd line support, and the budget to match a school half the size. Ideally I would employ a deputy nm someone with more expertise to take some load off me so I can focus on dev and projects.

 

I used to work 70 hour weeks before I got my tto tech. Recently lost my full time tech but employed a replacement, during the couple months where I was down a tech I did a bit of extra work but didn’t put myself over the limit and it was manageable for essential support but a long backlog of 3rd line/development is what piled up and am working my way through. If they hadn’t replaced the tech it was clear it wouldn’t have been manageable.

 

As you and others have said it is different by school. I know other schools who manage the same kit as us and have double the man power but struggle because their end users require more of their time and more demanding. Another school with more staff and equipment and same staffing levels managing same as us as their staff are less demanding and more technically skilled.

[Griff]

We are 60+ staff, 640 kids, maybe around 300+ devices mostly Windows. Full time IT Manager me then term time we have support from third party technicians two days a week term time although this has been reduced to two half-days. Since moving away from Citrix in the summer and rebuilding our server infrastructure things have settled down a lot.