Does your LA have an Educaiton IT Dept?

[joe90bass]

Pretty self explanatory! Does your authority have an education IT dept? Our LA have got rid of theirs during a recent reorganisation and this concerns me! Now any requests go to the corporate dept who have limited understanding of how schools work, it also incurs a charge, even for just meeting to discuss a requirement/idea (cheeky *****ds!) I also feel that with VLEs, etc, this should be led centrally, especially with the 14-19 learning pathways coming in and pupils moving schools.

 

Before I rasie this at a higher level locally, I thought I'd ask here what happens in other areas of the UK!

[powdarrmonkey]

I don't really count any more, but when I was in a state school we did. They were pretty useless.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Our LA have a IT department, if you are able to contact the right people they can be useful. Although they have gone through a re-organisation recently which was a mess for a couple of weeks. The LA is also our ISP provider and to be honest this has been pretty reliable although they can be a bit heavy on filtering although I would rather this than under filter.

[leco]

Educational IT is part of the Children and Young People Service at our Met Borough Council. We have a service level agreement which gives access to an ICT Help Desk. There is a Primary ICT Network which meets four times a year (I think there is a Secondary Network as well) for ICT Co-Ord's and "other interested parties". The Primary Sector have just collaborated in the procurement of a Primary Learning Platform across the LEA.

 

So I guess both the technical and curriculum areas are provisioned, certainly in the Primary Sector.

[Sirbendy]

Telford and Wrekin do. Corporate IT helpdesk and an education one.

 

None too shabby either, especially if you know the right people.

[richardp]

We have no IT education department within our LA only a corporate one. Until recently they were almost completely focused on corporate matters with little understanding of school requirements. However with the recent appointment of a new network manager who is willing to work with the school tech teams things seem to be changing for the better.

[localzuk]

We have a couple... :-P We have the ELIM team, who deal with education directly, and we have southwest one, which is the resources directorate of our LA that has been split off and turned into a private company.

 

Makes for some interesting ticket paths! Post request to SW1, it gets passed to Elim, back to SW1, back to ELIM, on to SWGfL, etc... Can be a bit long winded.

[pooley]

Pretty self explanatory! Does your authority have an education IT dept? Our LA have got rid of theirs during a recent reorganisation and this concerns me! Now any requests go to the corporate dept who have limited understanding of how schools work, it also incurs a charge, even for just meeting to discuss a requirement/idea (cheeky *****ds!) I also feel that with VLEs, etc, this should be led centrally, especially with the 14-19 learning pathways coming in and pupils moving schools.

 

Before I rasie this at a higher level locally, I thought I'd ask here what happens in other areas of the UK!

 

Similar position as you m8, now Bridgend have disbanded the schools' team things will not be the same, corporate ideals do not fit well into schools.

[joe90bass]

Similar position as you m8, now Bridgend have disbanded the schools' team things will not be the same, corporate ideals do not fit well into schools.

 

It's Bridgend I'm in (Maesteg to be exact!) whereabouts are you?

 

Thanks for all your replies, it's an interesting mix! As Pooley said, it's the corporate ideals being forced into schools that concerns me. Though BCBC have setup (again) an IT forum. Hopefully it'll be a bit more than a talking shop (I'm an optimist, or try to be!)

[maniac]

Kent have EIS who are part of the LA but are effectively a seperate organisation with their own offices etc. EIS - Supporting ICT in Schools

 

Mike.

[cookie_monster]

In Derbyshire the education IT department has been pulled in under the corporate IT umbrella but there is still a team within that deals specifically with education.

[somabc]

At my last LA we had a central education IT team, they mainly dealt with primary schools, infrastructure, no real contact/oversight with secondary schools or NMs.

 

The LA's own corporate IT was outsourced to Fujitsu.

[Zoom7000]

Our's does... Wish it didn't! 'Nuff said really!

 

It's called ITASS... No, really... Look here!

[ThatBoringBloke]

They sure do, I work for them.