Staff Laptops at home and onsite

[dmj]

Just be careful you can’t legally ask for the laptop back with the reason she’s going on maternity.

 

It's a tool, not a benefit of the job.

If staff are using it as a benefit and for personal use they need to be charged tax for it.

[psydii]

It's a tool, not a benefit of the job.

If staff are using it as a benefit and for personal use they need to be charged tax for it.

We expect (but because we didn't want to get a ping on the union reps radar about this) don't require (generally) staff to take their laptops home (because its part of the Business Continuity Plan*). From where I am sitting, a person on any sort of leave has "gone home". Thus we need to have a device available if they don't come in the next day... which is bugeted for much like a pot to pay supply staff.

 

 

*and this is the justification we used when we changed tack and told them to take them home every day early in 2020.

[E_G_R2]

Just be careful you can’t legally ask for the laptop back with the reason she’s going on maternity.

 

Yes we've got a 'crop' of staff off on maternity and have had to buy in spares as they deemed it wrong to ask for them back.

 

You just have to accept that you will need spares of everything, especially chargers and batteries. for those with docking stations then those as well.

[TwistedHelixis]

Just be careful you can’t legally ask for the laptop back with the reason she’s going on maternity.

My understanding, If a teacher is on Maternity leave, it is illegal for the school to ask them to do any work while they are off, and asking for the schools work equipment was in fact a requirement. (I am not employed by a school, so could be wrong)

 

As for the extra laptops / just in case a teacher forgets theirs. We have a few extra laptops in case one gets a fault, we have extra laptops in case someone wants to run a course, we have extra laptops in case someone wants one in the hall for a session. The extra laptops are always in use, but we still end up with far less devices being purchased, than if we had desktops fixed in all of those locations. Obviously, if you only have desktops, they are stuck in one place, even if they aren't being used, which seems a waste of money to me. Laptops can be used just like a desktop, but have the flexibility of also being portable.

Edited March 12, 2024 by TwistedHelixis

[TwistedHelixis]

Just read this on a legal forum

 

The removal of a laptop, which is company property, during your maternity period, during which you will not be doing any work anyway is unlikely to gain much sympathy from a tribunal should you take it that far. If there are no other laptops that could be used in the circumstances and your employer would be required to buy a new one instead of using yours then they would be able to justify their decision. However, if after you come back from maternity leave they refuse to supply you with a laptop, then you may have a stronger case.

[HarryMonkey]

At one of my previous schools we installed a PC in every classroom, that way the teacher only had to log in rather than switch on their laptop, connect it to the projector, send a pupil to us for a HDMI adaptor because the previous one had been nicked etc etc. We had roughly 75% of the staff hand back their laptops as they no longer had a use for them (which left us with plenty of spares) and every staff member said that they preferred the desktop in the classroom to a laptop. Even if they forgot their laptop, or their charger, they would still have a computer to teach with.

[TwistedHelixis]

they would still have a computer to teach with

Perhaps this is the difference between secondary and primary. I look after different primary schools only. The teacher only stays in their one class, there is no messing with power adapters or HDMI adapters, they don't move around, except for PPA or planning, and they like to plan on their laptop, which they can choose to do at home.

[3s-gtech]

It's an interesting point on maternity - we ask for the laptops back. We don't expect the staff to work during their leave, so they don't need to have a school issued laptop. This fitted in with union advice.

[psydii]

At one of my previous schools we installed a PC in every classroom, that way the teacher only had to log in rather than switch on their laptop, connect it to the projector, send a pupil to us for a HDMI adaptor because the previous one had been nicked etc etc. We had roughly 75% of the staff hand back their laptops as they no longer had a use for them (which left us with plenty of spares) and every staff member said that they preferred the desktop in the classroom to a laptop. Even if they forgot their laptop, or their charger, they would still have a computer to teach with.

 

In my experience*, teachers who turn up, stand at the front of the classroom, and then leave at the end of the day (without doing any other work) are in the minority.

 

There are a a whole heap of tasks expected of teachers at almost all levels that are more efficiently executed using IT. Many of these tasks are undertaken out side of the classroom. The seamless transition between working outside the classroom and working inside the classroom that a well thought out and supported set of 1:1 laptops, reliable wireless, reliable classroom av/interfaces has been praised by all staff here. If we had nay-sayers on SLT or the Head was against it, I'm sure this narrative would be different.

 

Once when (thanks to external forces) we were inflicted with a technology stack that was not designed around the principle of 1:1 mobile first, the attempt to meet teachers' expectations of working in a "1:1 mobile first failed"-way with dramatic effect, and everybody declared wired desktop to be the best. It took a long time to move the chess pieces around to get back to the correct way of working.

 

Done right, it is the best solution. Done badly it is terrible, or expensive and mediocre. Build modern, get the basics/fundamentals right and don't have any truck with those who criticize/bad mouth/want it to fail it and it will work well.

[PotNoodleTech]

I still think the best way is to have both, not one or the other.

 

In my case ultra-reliable classroom pcs in each classroom ready to teach and learn just a 60 second logon needed. There's zero business case for fitting laptops in the scenario of "we want out teachers to enter any room in the school log on to a teacher pc and teach without fiddling with any plugs or having to call IT support"

 

A mobile device for the teacher to use to as you say help with the myriad of tasks most of them need to attend to whilst not in their classrooms is a separate business case. Here it's 1:1 chromebooks and a staff ipad if required too.

[thimon]

I’m looking to purchase PDQ Connect in September, will help hugely with managing laptops when they’re offsite, we’re getting more and more staff that periodically WFH. From using the trial, it just works.

[TwistedHelixis]

Action1 is also very very good, and free for 100 devices.

[ITGuyNW]

FWIW, being able to auto configure proxies and have different settings per network has been built into major browsers for the last 35 years. You don't need any extra software to do this if you have a DHCP server and a browser

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Auto-Discovery_Protocol

 

Yeah I know about WPAD thanks