ICT staffing levels in a trust / MAT

[johnabbots]

Good morning all,

 

I’ve recently joined a Trust of around 30 schools (10 secondaries and 20 primaries)

 

I’m currently struggling with the amount of work at these schools and wondered what staffing levels others have in their Trusts please?

 

We currently have a network manager and one or two ICT technicians at each secondary depending on their size.

 

For the central ICT team we look after the 20 primaries, all of the central trust staff and satellite sites, central purchasing of software and dealing with high level problems at secondaries. We currently have an ICT Manager and 4 ICT technicians. We’re struggling as all of the primaries are recently taken over and all have different hardware and software. We’re in the process of trying to unify solutions but are coming up against constant firefighting.

 

I have said we need more staff and have documented tasks that we’re unable to carry out but keep getting told its not affordable to have more staff.

 

I’m just wondering what levels others have to try and help with my argument. In terms of work to be carried out at the primaries/central we’re responsible for all aspects of ICT from their servers, switching, AV, computers to their phone systems, CCTV and access control for example. Some of the primaries are small but a lot of them are two classes per year group or more.

 

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

[ThatBoringBloke]

10 Secondaries = at Least 20 Staff.

Centrally 1 x Manager and 4 x Tech's = 5 staff.

All in that's at least 25 IT Staff.

I'd say that's a pretty good number of Staff for the number of schools.

Sounds to me that there is a need to look at how the Trust deploys its IT Team. Do the secondaies need at least 2 people full time every single day?

[TheHyperTechie]

My old Trust was a similar size, although we had about 5 secondaries and 25 primaries. Each secondary had a senior tech and a junior. As our schools were spread out geographically, we had mobile technicians who would visit schools based on their home location; for example, I covered the schools closest to where I lived. There were five of us doing this, so we each had five schools to cover.

 

Our IT Services Manager was also based at one of the secondary schools.

 

To be honest, it was tough. We basically had no cover if one of us was ill or needed time off, as every day we were at a different school.

 

Can't your Trust look into apprenticeships? we had some interest with this, when previously advertised.

[johnabbots]

@ThatBoringBloke that's a good way of looking at it actually. Most of the secondaries are over 1200 students so have at least 500 devices to manage. Unfortunately the equipment in most schools is old so from what I've seen they're up against it. With most having only two staff if any one is off on holiday or sick etc it does seem to cause issues.

 

I guess eventually we'll have to centralise the teams. Is that what most people have done and if so do you still keep a technician onsite in a secondary?

[Oaktech]

We're a trust with, I think, now 40 schools - 2 secondary and the remainder primary ranging from 2500 pupils down to 90.

 

We have a trust central team of 4 - Head of ICT who is mainly finanacial and strategic, a systems manager who deals with trust owned software, a deputy IT manager with responsibility for devices & infrastructure and a senior engineer who oversees projects and acts as a 3rd line for all schools. We then have around 15 technicians or systems managers who are owned variously by the Trust and individual schools. Most in-school technicians work with at least 2 schools, a few work with up to 6 schools, but those schools are tiny. I 'own' 3 schools, but I also help out as required.

 

Edit to add... Our 2 secondaries are fairly close to each other and each have an NM and a technician plus a 3rd technician shared between them who has an AV specialism.

Edited May 9, 2024 by Oaktech

[synaesthesia]

You will always need permanent staff in secondaries - usually 2, permanent, on site for secondaries of 1000+ and scaling up as appropriate. It's not a hard and fast rule as responsibilities will often vary as will specialisms (for instance music & media technicians may be under your remit).

What works for one won't work for all of course - I've seen trusts with particularly large central teams and some with very few, but all have needed feet on the ground at each site. Primaries will vary, many have coped for years with visits from MSPs on a weekly basis, some need full time staff. With what you describe, I'd suggest more bodies on the ground to start with, with the view of moving them to a central support team when you have things at a better state and improving rather than firefighting.

[will2102]

I Work in a MAT that has, 15 Primary, 1 all - through (thats a Pru) , 6 secondary schools

 

we are split into Hubs, each hub has a Network manager and then Techs

in total we have 8 Techs across 3 hubs.

 

we support all primarys, secondarys and Central teams.

 

we are having to pay for contractors / agency staff for additional IT support, how that makes financal sence is beond me.

There also have a 3rd Party company that provides a Service desk manager and Technical delivery manager.

 

we are allways taking on new schools however never gaining IT Staff, topped off with poor IT Staff wages.

 

the Trust nont long went to 1:1 ipads that has caused our workload to skyrocket, we have to handle all the day to day management of the iPads, breakages, and issueing of devices,

[mavhc]

Are all the schools joined to 1 domain so they can be configured centrally?

 

What's taking up your time? If there's 10 blocks of time in a week, what are you spending them doing?

[PotNoodleTech]

I would be guessing that you actually need less management in each school and more technician time to support the daily stuff more effectively.

 

Some tough decisions to make / conversations to have methinks.

[Iain.Faulkner]

We're a much smaller Trust, but our setup is similar. Two secondary schools and three primary schools.

 

We have Director of IT, Trust IT Manager and then a team of two at each of our secondary schools. We currently don't provide support to our primary schools they buy into a separate third party each. The team is a central team though. I think in terms of workload it does vary based on the school more than anything. One of our secondary schools we get an almost constant stream of low level first line type jobs on the helpdesk. The other secondary is much less, however, that secondary school has the expectation that we will provide the reprographics function (for historical reasons prior to the centralising of the IT team) and the majority of their workload is printing. Like mentioned in the OP, it's a nightmare with the schools all doing different things using different products though and makes it virtually impossible for us to send staff to other schools.

 

Supporting the Trust central team is done by the Director of IT and Trust IT Manager.

[CrootUK]

Also much smaller, we have

1x all through (2400+ kids) (1x senior, 3x techs)

1x secondary (1x senior, 3x techs)

 

4x primaries (supported by field team)

1x alternate provision (supported by field team)

1x primary customer (not trust) (supported by field team)

 

11 separate “premises” in total though, some schools have more than one site.

 

Central Team

IT Lead x1

Tech Manager x1 (infra, projects, escalation for all sites)

Tech Engineers x2 (infra, projects, escalation for all sites)

 

Field Team (supports primaries, alternative provision and customers)

Senior Technician x1

Technician x1

 

14 staff total in IT.

 

We fight not to support AV, but sometimes we have too, CCTV and Door Access sits with Facilities team, everything else “IT” is us, no MSP.

Edited May 9, 2024 by CrootUK

[rogerdnixon]

We are similar in size - 9 Secondaries and 19 primaries + couple of teacher training orgs.

Central team is me - 3 days a week and then 2 days based and teaching at one of our secondaries

Senior Network Manager - 3 days Trust - 2 based at one the the secondaries

System Engineer - full time Trust

 

Then between 1-4 people onsite at the secondaries (typically 1 and a bit). So 20 it total.

Primaries - we split between us and some of the secondary staff do one or more primaries.

 

The only way we have been able to manage stuff is be standardising as much as possible over the years. So all the primary setups are basically the same. Common MIS, helpdesk, one Google Workspace tenancy for all, common filtering and common device management (everything on the Google Admin console as much as possible). Takes time - but worth the effort.

[ITGuyNW]

We are going to be joining a trust in Sept. As a small-medium size Secondary, its assumed it will be one manager and one IT technician.

[DEfrostphone]

I've worked in both primaries and secondaries since 1998. As people have already stated, it varies widely between schools/trusts. It might seem like you have a lot of staff, but if every school is different and very old kit, you're going to have no end of issues.

 

The first thing to do in a situation like that is to wipe the devices and put a standard image/setup on the network with the long-term goal of replacing the hardware, PCs, and infrastructure to be as similar as possible to aid maintenance and support. Critically, which a lot of people seem to miss out,is get a good RMM tool with scripting capability.

 

With a setup like that, you can have one person per high school, mobile techs for the primaries! One trust locally with 24 primaries, uses an MSP for all the primaries, they get remote support with a visit once a month. They have three techs for the whole MSP!

 

The other biggest issue you've got is the pay; The better the skill level of the people you have, the more schools they can support, and you'll get a network that eventually runs quite smoothly.

 

I went for a job interview at a trust for the director of IT, six secondary 2 primary and growing. There had been a massive underinvestment for the last five years. They were using an MSP as the third-line support and to support the primaries. They had three senior technicians and two junior technicians. I said you needed at least one person per site at the secondary, a central team of at least 3 (director, senior engineer, mobile engineer). Told them they have to invest in the software to actually automate a lot of stuff as much as possible and training for the techs. It wasn't just about buying a set of screwdrivers! They didn't appoint anyone out of the seven they interviewed. My feedback was, even though I was the most experienced person they interviewed, I had unrealistic expectations!

 

In a nutshell, if you've got a standard setup that you can replicate across a number of sites, this reduces your maintenance time as well as automates as many tasks as possible and rolls stuff out using the RMM. If you don't, you will be constantly firefighting. The other big issue is the money for the staff. A MAT who is taken over one of my primary schools advertised in March for a technician to go around the primaries and secondaries in the trust. They currently have a network manager at each of the high schools, and they've taken on the 4 primaries this September. The pay for this mobile technician was £21,500 full time, 35 hours a week, and had to use his own vehicle. Until the schools/trusts management value their IT support staff, it's never going to get any better!

[mavhc]

How much money are you wasting by not paying for better IT? You pay teachers average £35k, but it's costing you more like £45k once you include pensions and admin. At school they're working 1560 hours per year so that's £0.50/minute. Assume every teacher wastes 2 mins per hour on bad IT. That's £1560 per teacher per year, and you don't want to pay £500 for a new laptop? Or pay £5000 more for a better IT support person?

[johnabbots]

Critically, which a lot of people seem to miss out,is get a good RMM tool with scripting capability.

That's really good advice thanks. Do you have any preferred RMM's that you have used in the past please?

[TheHyperTechie]

That's really good advice thanks. Do you have any preferred RMM's that you have used in the past please?

 

Action1 RMM

[DEfrostphone]

How much money are you wasting by not paying for better IT? You pay teachers average £35k, but it's costing you more like £45k once you include pensions and admin. At school they're working 1560 hours per year so that's £0.50/minute. Assume every teacher wastes 2 mins per hour on bad IT. That's £1560 per teacher per year, and you don't want to pay £500 for a new laptop? Or pay £5000 more for a better IT support person?

 

I agree, but unfortunately a lot of SLT don’t value the IT equipment and in most cases the support staff in general. I can still remember in 2001, been told there wasn’t enough money to buy a new server @ £800 Three weeks later, that school spent 25 grand refurbishing the headteacher's office!

[DEfrostphone]

That's really good advice thanks. Do you have any preferred RMM's that you have used in the past please?

 

There are numerous remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools available, each catering to different needs. Some are cloud-based with pre-made scripts, while others require self-hosting and script-writing. Without understanding your specific setup and expertise, it's challenging to provide a tailored recommendation. I'm available for one-off consultations, having recently transitioned to forced part-time work due to Schools going in to Academy and having to change support, 10 hours a week down since April!

[mavhc]

I agree, but unfortunately a lot of SLT don’t value the IT equipment and in most cases the support staff in general. I can still remember in 2001, been told there wasn’t enough money to buy a new server @ £800 Three weeks later, that school spent 25 grand refurbishing the headteacher's office!

 

SLT is just old teachers, they're not good at finance.

 

But mostly remember: When they say there's no money for IT, that's not true, there's always money

[TechMonkey]

That's really good advice thanks. Do you have any preferred RMM's that you have used in the past please?

 

We have ConnectWise ScreenConnect and have coveted ConnectWise Automate for a while but never been able to justify it.

[PotNoodleTech]

But mostly remember: When they say there's no money for IT, that's not true, there's always money

 

This ^^^