A Point Of View: "School Networks – No Longer Just A Man In A Cupboard…"

[torledo]

I've just looked at all three parties websites -

 

Under Economy - Labour boasts about the money they've spent and the good it's done. - Conservatives boast about tax cuts (not spending cuts) - Lib Dems argue for reforming the tax system, tax cuts for the poor paid for by tax rises for the rich.

 

Under Schools - Labour are commited to BSF - Conservatives want to build more Academies - Lib Dems want to turn Academies into Sponsored Schools and break schools away from government control.

 

 

The fiscal responsibility bill will put the onus on whichever govt. is in power to reduce the deficit in halve within four years. The tories seem to be saying the govt. can do slightly better than this...and many would agree, so it's not a major difference with what big spending labour are planning. Infact what labour are planning doesn't seem to put much urgency on the issue of the public finances it all.

 

Couldn't find any mention of this. Certainly not in their policies. Talk but no promise?

 

As i said, they've talked about this.... But then with the public finances as they are, it might be unwise to commit to ringfencing anything. that kind of rigidity in forward plannig i don't like. maybe they've thought better of it.

 

But the key point is no matter who gets in they can't afford to give us more money. Labour can't borrow more (can they?) and are commited to spending - read tax increases to pay for it all. Conservatives are want to cut taxes and pay of the national debt ASAP.

 

In light of the above, both parties are intent on cutting the deficit, both parties seem to want to maintain spending in some areas, both will have to maintain some tax hikes. Yes, maybe the tories are more so focused on the first bit.....but then such urgency isn't unwarranted.

 

I hardly think you can talk about labour using taxation to spend as opposed to the tories cutting taxes left, right and centre. Where are the numbers that point to it being a ying or yang choice like that ?

 

If our IT budgets are already underfunded and central government obviously can't afford to make up the difference, what then?

 

That's the problem, isn't it ? In an ideal scenario there should be enough central funding for a 100k rolling budget over 5 years for IT spend within your school. But then there is such variances amongst schools, as to how much they want to commit to IT, in addition to how much they feasibly can.

 

Whether at local or national level, the budgets never seem to be enough. There's always underfunding, but do you spend more to address that underfunding issue or do you undertake a reevaluation of how you spend and where it goes. Are there some ideas/initiatives which were devised and funded in the boom times, which should no longer be funded as they were, going into the new decade......maybe it's the politicians who need to get back to basics, and focus funding on where it's needed, rather than where we erm, think, it might / possibly / who knows make a difference.

 

Ofcourse every org and initiative which has been devised by labour has a list of reasons why it should continue to get the same public funding as before and why they should continue to exist, but then they would say that wouldn't they ?

[duncane]

Couldn't find any mention of this. Certainly not in their policies. Talk but no promise?

 

You could say the same of all the parties - even when they pledge to something, it doesn't mean they won't do the opposite. (See Labour's pledge to not introduce tuition fees in the 2001 election - they introduced them before the next general election.)

 

All the main parties are talking about not cutting spending on front-line education - the question is what they define as front-line? I'd argue that IT (and its support) is every much as front-line as teaching staff and teaching assistants. I think that's something we need to ensure is recognised.

 

If our IT budgets are already underfunded and central government obviously can't afford to make up the difference, what then?

 

I suspect we'll end up with a two tier system. Non-BSF will have to "make do and mend", while BSF IT spending will be ring-fenced because it's a contract. At some point someone will turn around and point out how much better IT is under BSF, completely failing to recognise the difference in funding.

 

(Alternatively, others will point out some schools without the budget who have been agile and innovative on a shoe-string, and hold them up as an example of how we can cut IT spending in BSF IT!)

[Rydra]

Posted reply on your response blog!

 

Wish my ICT budget was £75k... I've been informed we have a £6k budget and 8-10k capital funding.... and that's it!

 

Primary ICT is even more underfunded than secondary, they rely on grants once a decade to keep up to scratch.

 

The problem is, Secondary school's budgets invariably go into flogging the dead horse of a network to keep ticking along as long as it can, meaning no money for peripherals like whiteboards, visualisers etc.

 

Primary's rely on grants to buy equipment, so tend to have a good amount of IWB's and other learning aids, but their core network is generally years behind what it should be.

[chinatree]

Well having just read all these posts, i feel like a rant if i may. i started in a small cupboard for a technicians room, but i could see the potential of technology, so i went for the largest old toilet room, i could find. Now ten years later i've got the cupboard and the toilet. What i think we have to spell out to teaching staff or the education sector is you are not going to be able to teach without techies and their vast range of skills. I came into techland with windows 95. Ever since then i have had to re-study to keep up to date with whats out there, now coming up to windows 7. Thats just the operating system, then the server and then smartboards and projectors etc etc etc. Everyone getting the drift. Not doing teachers down, but one and one will always make two ! maths, english etc etc wont change at the rate technology is doing, and we are always there learning more to keep the teaching going. My point is for all techies to get in to the management team at school let them know just how important we are as a part of the teaching environment. Many techies have many years of studying under their belt with more years studying to come just to keep on top. It is time the government and education sector recognised what is needed for future teaching and got behind the efforts made by technicians and included them in developing a structured plan for future development.

 

Oh heck, gone on a bit, but you know what i mean.

Catch you later

[mattx]

 

In the normal workplace an end user would probably have the use of 2 to 3 applications, 5 or 6 at max, in education it is not unusual to have between 200 2 500 different applications which the teaching staff and admin staff expect to work well all of the time.

 

This amount of demand puts an awful lot of strain on both the network and the IT support team and this is where the professional skill is at the cutting edge of education. Some schools have very forward thinking Head Teachers and Governors who believe that the school is no longer just that, it is in fact a business and it is run on a very tight budget and so the professional person who runs the IT is in fact an integral part of the business and as such should be nurtured as the whole system is central to a good run school which is in the business of educating our youth.

 

This is the problem I am now having, along with the brainless tasks of showing the teacher a million times how to get the IWB working, or how a volume control works you now have to be an expert on the 100s of apps installed and quite frankly I have NO INTEREST in those applications. Call me lazy, but that is NOT MY JOB. If they work then that is my job done, call me when they error.

I no longer want to have to learn new OS in my own time, I don't want to learn about VMware / ESx but I have to, I don't want to learn about SANS, ISCSI and all that but I have to and I have to in my own time but now I don't want to. I have my OWN life and my own children to bring up, I don't want to know about this things anymore - however send me on training courses during YOUR time and I won't have a problem.....

Edited March 1, 2010 by mattx

[leco]

... and all of that is not to mention the things we deal with that never even cross the screens for our users. Thinking of the updates, browser choice, "automatic" app deployment on somebody's whim.

 

I am unable to compare life as a school technician to one in a commercial environment, but I do often wonder what "living in the real world" would be like. (That comment on "real world" is thrown at me if I complain about my work life to anyone outside of school btw.)

 

I agree with mattx, I actually do like learning but please give me a break and let me do it in your time and not what is supposed to be mine.

[broc]

@mattx & leco

 

I can echo your sentiments regarding technical training; almost all of the technical knowledge I have gained working at my school in the last 7 years has been done informally, snatching the odd hour or so here & there, or reading, researching, or experimenting at home. I have largely given this up now because of BSF & the uncertainty surrounding the technical solution being proposed by our LA.

 

On a more positive note, we have been told under our new roles (as part of a BSF managed service) technical training will be properly funded with time allocated as part of the job. Some of it is likely to happen before the service starts, and if necessary the MSP has indicated it will provide resource to support my school while we are being trained.

[torledo]

This is the problem I am now having, along with the brainless tasks of showing the teacher a million times how to get the IWB working, or how a volume control works you now have to be an expert on the 100s of apps installed and quite frankly I have NO INTEREST in those applications. Call me lazy, but that is NOT MY JOB. If they work then that is my job done, call me when they error.

I no longer want to have to learn new OS in my own time, I don't want to learn about VMware / ESx but I have to, I don't want to learn about SANS, ISCSI and all that but I have to and I have to in my own time but now I don't want to. I have my OWN life and my own children to bring up, I don't want to know about this things anymore - however send me on training courses during YOUR time and I won't have a problem.....

 

i am, or rather was, in a similar boat. I didn't want to have anything to do with doing application usage support, and fortunately management agreed that it was the role of the teachers to understand and work with the applications.....as you say i'm there for the error messages.

 

and i've got to the stage where i'd really rather not fill my head with the stuff i need to know about. Time away from the day job within work hours to do the training is one thing.....or allocating time specifically for training, but to come home and have to do it - and the sacrifices that entails..........well, to be fair i'm getting quite partial to the idea of doing nothing of an evening or weekend.

[GrumbleDook]

I've been doing it the other way around for quite a long time.

 

I worked out fairly early on in my career in schools that the best way to help the staff and students get the most out of the software was to understand it, understand what they wanted to do with it and help them make a decision about whether it was the best thing to be used. By doing so I found that I could strip out a lot of the software that was causing problems, had less user problems from those staff and was able to get on with other things. A lot of this involved sitting down with staff and asking questions, looking at their schemes of work and so on.

 

I was lucky though ... I was in a school that had the schemes of work available (not just ICT but pretty much all subjects) and as long as you got the right teacher they were very helpful. Admittedly it wasn't done with the knowledge of senior manglement and they did not like it when they did find out ... but it worked for me.

[Flakes]

Posted reply on your response blog!

 

Wish my ICT budget was £75k... I've been informed we have a £6k budget and 8-10k capital funding.... and that's it!

 

Primary ICT is even more underfunded than secondary, they rely on grants once a decade to keep up to scratch.

 

The problem is, Secondary school's budgets invariably go into flogging the dead horse of a network to keep ticking along as long as it can, meaning no money for peripherals like whiteboards, visualisers etc.

 

Primary's rely on grants to buy equipment, so tend to have a good amount of IWB's and other learning aids, but their core network is generally years behind what it should be.

 

oh man and i thought we were bad, we are looking at 60k budget and thats it, ~500 computers (150 staff laptops, ~120 student laptops, rest are desktops), 13 servers, 8 color printers, god knows how many black and white printers... and this 60k has to include new laptops to replace the 40, 6year old laptops and 30 projectors oh yea and 2 IWBs that just decided to break this year.... our budget used to be around 200k 5years ago, its been declining fast since then. we probably need around 160k just to function at a optimal level and atleast 250-300k to get back up to some sort of decent standard. however we fear that when the new budget rolls around we will be getting even less than 60k and thats the sad bit, we are out of cash, pulling spare parts from a pile of around 60 laptops to keep the school computers running and we work in a cupboard that allows us to work on 2 computers at a time while there always seems to be double that broken... dire times

 

 

the funny thing we got some slight relief with 25k capitol and got told we had to spend it on NEW equipment but not to replace the OLD equipment ohno to add onto the network, we had to fight that movement fast, how in hell does it make sence to buy more new equipment when you cant even afford to run the old equipment?! unfortunately this 25k went on replacing 3 printers, 3 projectors, toner cartridges, and some machines(we had some m200 6yr old machines for replacement 30 total) 10 M750 toshiba's for our uses that dont have acccess to a IWB, 20 U500 Toshiba's (really nice machines) for the others.

 

/rant

 

i too wonder what it would be like to work in one specific area of IT in Industry, rather than dealing with software deployment, SIMS, data backups, HTML, PHP, ASP, SQL, Group Policy, Active Directory, training staff(i teach VTLE and Netsupport on teacher training days) etc:evil_twisted:

[mattx]

In fact Bossman I am really pleased you have bought this up [ number of apps having to install and try and support ] as this is now something I am going to raise at our next ICT meeting. I have already pointed the NM, ICT Teacher and Bursar to the main article so at least [ if they read it ] they will have some pre warning !!

[russdev]

I have added comment to the blog but to expand slightly here.

 

The nail on the head for me is differences between schools if you have a good SLT who view ICT in high regards wages can be commanded. If on the other hand ICT is seen as a addon then the support will be seen as that.

 

Russell

[broc]

Think yourselves lucky to have a budget, I didn't get enough to cover the cost of toner this year because of BSF.... but wait until you see what the school has to pay for equipment as part of BSF.... then you will really want to cry

[tmcd35]

I have added comment to the blog but to expand slightly here.

 

The nail on the head for me is differences between schools if you have a good SLT who view ICT in high regards wages can be commanded. If on the other hand ICT is seen as a addon then the support will be seen as that.

 

Russell

 

100% agree with that! But I think a lot of schools are now turning that corner and it's a trend that's been happening for the last 2 or 3 years. I mean lets face it at the end of the day if the servers where switched off the data manager, heads pa, deputy headand business manager would all be at my door complaining long before the ICT teachers turned up to ask what is going on.

 

ICT in schools has become mission critical. And I think SLT are beginning to see it that way and realise our value even if they don't understand the work we do.

[broc]

ICT in schools has become mission critical.

 

That is a key message promoted by Partnership for Schools and is one of the reasons why they are adamant that BSF schools sign up to managed services because in their opinion a managed service will deliver a more professional, industry strength solution than most schools can do going it alone.

 

It is a tough message to argue against, even for the best of schools. I know that in many respects a managed service will be better for my school, I also know that there are as many aspects that will be worse, not the least being the cost of the service.

 

I also believe that many BSF projects are confused about the difference between best & best value...... we don't need the best at all costs in school, we need something that will do the job & is affordable.

 

Spending 40% of the total equipment budget on Cisco networking kit may be a case in point....

[jamesbmarshall]

I have added comment to the blog

 

Thanks for your comment, Russell!

 

I suppose the logical question to come out of all of this is: given all the information, what would be the realistic solution? Schools employing their own, internally regulated and funded, IT support departments? Forming "support coalitions" with other schools in the LEA providing centralised support, but maintaining individual funding (almost like a mini-outsource)? Outsourcing completely to an IT specialist? etc etc etc...

 

I quite like the idea of a coalition with other schools in the sense that a lot of services are duplicated, unnecessarily, across secondary schools - are there benefits to be had from centralising some of these?

 

Also, with that in mind it would put in place a rigid structure of responsibility and management - the Network Manager would have Senior Techs for each school, and each Senior Tech would have one or two Jr Techs 'on the ground'.

 

Forgive my idealism, and feel free to shoot me down if you think it's a poor methodology!

[Domino]

Personally, it'd be far better for schools to hire a IT manager with business experience (as many have)

 

My main issue when at the school was that we were totally at the whim of the heads latest fad.

 

My budget was used completely when she ordered a laptop for every member of staff - meaning my smoothwall/ruckus/netbook scheme was pushed out another year. And then I got the brunt of complaints about that.

 

I'm not saying it should be more 'us versus them' - but I feel a member of the SMT should be technically and business minded to lead improvement and also explain concepts and requirements.

 

Yet again, this is only from my experience - and I fear the main problem will turn out to be the differing attitudes and experiences depending on your workplace/LEA

[GrumbleDook]

@Domino

Coming from a business background would not stop some Heads (or others) making silly purchases or planning (or lack of planning) decisions.

 

When we are talking about 'industry' we are talking about people how have experience of planning and are given the role to do that job without the interference of manglement.

 

You know my thoughts on this ... and I try not to sound like a broken record but FITS is where this is trying to be changed. Getting that message across to heads is difficult. FITS is far more relevant to schools than ITIL is. It might be that long term a school who still has their own support (post BSF ... you never know) will go the next step and go down the ITIL route, but unlikely if they have FITS in place.

[Dos_Box]

@Domino

Coming from a business background would not stop some Heads (or others) making silly purchases or planning (or lack of planning) decisions.

 

When we are talking about 'industry' we are talking about people how have experience of planning and are given the role to do that job without the interference of manglement.

 

You know my thoughts on this ... and I try not to sound like a broken record but FITS is where this is trying to be changed. Getting that message across to heads is difficult. FITS is far more relevant to schools than ITIL is. It might be that long term a school who still has their own support (post BSF ... you never know) will go the next step and go down the ITIL route, but unlikely if they have FITS in place.

 

After a meeting with FITS this morning we shall be seeing a lot more of them on EduGeek in the very near future

[russdev]

A number things as a follow up..

 

First I do think sometimes hiring someone from a business background can be wrong. As sometimes people with business background do not understand the 'education side'.

 

Another point we say about wages in industry being better but a blog post from Mike at ComputerWorldUK brought something up interesting.

 

IT strikes, a sign of the times? - Community - ComputerworldUK

 

Surprising too is the minimum basic wage of £12,000 promised by the union. IT service companies promise to reduce user organisations’ costs through economies of scale and labour arbitrage – a fancy way of saying they will push down staffing costs.

 

So people think that industry have higher wages and yes this was true 2 years back but under current climate that is not so true.

 

Russ

[broc]

So people think that industry have higher wages and yes this was true 2 years back but under current climate that is not so true.

 

Russ

 

Oh really?

 

How about these, plucked from Google 30 seconds ago....

 

Network Manager Renfrewshire

Type: Permanent

Salary:£32,000 > £40,000

Date added:10 February 2010

 

IT Network Manager

 

Listed on: 17th February

Location: South East south east

Salary/Rate: £45000 - £50000

Tags: network | network manager | change management | wan | network south east

[russdev]

@broc

 

I am not saying that high wages do not exist. What I am saying is people see the industry in a certain way. The high wages are there but not as many as people think there is. I also think the IT in industry will start to see wages decrease as they have been unhit up untill recently. I think Fujitsu is the tip of the iceberg.

 

But to add another element to it the same blog post.

 

I wonder though how many organisations that contract out to IT service providers would be happy if they knew the staff working on their systems were on £12k basic? Would they want call centre staff on £12k? How much commitment do you get for that sort of money?

 

The fact that Network Managers can in some areas get £12K this links back to OP point of view that commitment needs to be their from SLT etc to get the commitment back.

[broc]

I think that salaries are in general depressed across many industries, both in the public and private sector. Excluding investment bankers of course.....

 

Large corporations like Fujitsu are jumping on the 'recession' bandwagon & using their corporate 'muscle' to drive down wages & pension costs to enhance their balance sheets, knowing that employees are anxious about their job security & will put up with a lot more than they would in a buoyant job market.

 

This is happening across the board with big accountant-led IT companies such as IBM, HP, Fujitsu & others even though they are still turning in decent profits. They are savaging their pension schemes too all in the sake of shareholder value.

 

Companies such as IBM are even trying to offload staff costs through early retirement schemes rather than redundancy as it enables them to avoid making redundancy payments by making their pension schemes pay out & it keeps jobs open ....

 

At some point the tide will turn...

Edited March 3, 2010 by broc

[teejay]

Ok, I've worked both in business and education, so a few thoughts.

Pay

For technician/engineer level work, the pay can be much higher in industry due to overtime, out of hours, on call payments etc.

On middle management level jobs, such as network manager, although the renumeration appears higher you end up doing a lot of unpaid overtime and actually end up on real rate of pay less than a school network manager.

Leadership

The same muppetry goes on in business, dont think this is just a school think ;-)

Some businesses have very good, forward thinking leadership who value the input of their staff, others don't, so not much different from schools.

Budgets

Yes, most businesses have a higher ICT budget, but they also pay a lot more for their kit, especially on software licensing as education gets very heavy discounting. You also start looking at the cost of some of the back end business software such as SAP and the costs really do make your eyes water, SIMS licensing is nothing compared to this stuff.

 

Where I do find a big difference is when govt starts sticking their oars in, either Central Govt or Local Govt and this is where the vast majority of waste and stupid fad ideas come in from. I would much prefer a system where schools were directly funded, had to meet certain educational standards and were then left to get on with it.

[Dos_Box]

I would much prefer a system where schools were directly funded, had to meet certain educational standards and were then left to get on with it.

 

You mean like Academies?