Primary School Kit

[Underlink]

Hi all, I have been reading this forum to tips and support for the last two years whilst a tech at a secondary school. I am just about to move jobs to be a network manager for 5 Primary schools. I was wondering if anyone could give me some feedback on what type of kit to expect in a primary school these days?

[elsiegee40]

Hello and welcome

 

The 'average' small primary has one, maybe two, free-standing servers that do everything. There isn't the budget or the room space for separate servers for everything. No racks, no air con and often no specific server room.

 

Depending on who you are replacing, they may or may not be on Win 7 ... Too many primary networks are held together with string and chewing gum due to lack of time and investment.

 

Primaries can be friendly places though. With fewer staff, people are less jobsworth about their specific job description and everyone mucks in as needed. The small kids are curious rather than wantonly destructive. (Year 6 are a pain in every primary though) It's fun

Edited December 11, 2012 by elsiegee40

[Ryan233]

Well im Network Manager to 12 primary schools and i have to say there are very different.

 

i have about 5-6 primary schools that basically have 1 server to do everything,there are all running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition,This is soon going to change to two servers. All of these primary schools out of that 5-6 have 1 ICT suite which have 16-20 5 year old machines in there. Running Windows xp and 2 GB Ram, which was upgraded by myself. Previously only had 512mb ram.

 

The other 6 Primary schools are very posh schools, there have 3 servers running Windows 2008 R2, All setup in racks with Air con and its got a dedicated server room. these schools also have 2 ICT Suites with 25 brand new Dell SFF i5 desktops, there also have a Apple Mac Room with 10 Imacs and 25 iPADS. These schools also have a full Ruckus Wireless System installed.

[witch]

As you can see, there isnt a common type of school

I work in a Junior school (years 3-6) and we have one IT suite (Win 7)with 2 year old dual core PCs, 40 Samsung netbooks (Win 7), and two stand-alone servers. One is a new HP Procurve running 2008R2 (DNS) and the other one is the old 2003 beast running some software off the network only (didnt dare move it!)

We have a Ruckus wireless network. All teachers have laptops - mostly still on XP

[Ryan233]

Personally i think it comes down to where the school see ICT going, How far there wanna go with it and if there have the Budget to go with there plans.

 

I know that 6 primary schools that are not that good. about 3 of them are wanting to go down the ipad,imacs,new computers and wireless and the other 3 the headteacher is stuck in 1950's ha ha

[jamin100]

Im a NM at a primary school and have 4 physical servers (2 in racks) and 2 virtual servers running a mixture of Server2008 R2/ Server 2008 / FreeNas. 180 clients which are all windows 7. Minimum spec is core2duo with 2GB RAM. Best spec is core i5 4GB RAM. We have iPads, Kindles, DS's and Ruckus Wireless etc too. I only look after this one site and am here full time all year round.

 

However, when I started it wasnt like this. there were about 20 windows 98 machines and 2 very old 2000 servers...

 

So, as you can see from the replies, Primarys are all very different.

Did you get chance to take a look around the network when you were interviewed?

Edited December 11, 2012 by jamin100

[supawat1]

Primary School they use ICT as a cross-curricular subject (based on my current school anyway), so the IT Network does not need to be complex. Children usually use Word, Powerpoint, Textease, 2Simple, Wordshark, Comic Life, etc, so you will find it very easy as compare to Secondary School.

 

Staff are also much more happier once they have got good equipment that they need for their lessons e.g. IWB, visualizer, camera, a computer.

 

In term of back-end, a curriculum and an admin server will serve everything needed for Primary School.

 

You have to convince the Head Teacher and the SLT, if you want anything fancy

[hardtailstar]

I work at two primary schools and they are very different,

 

one only has an admin server for office staff, the class laptops all have software stored locally. but thats changing soon. There other has a admin and curriculum server with full blown school network with 10 laptops in each class. It also has an IT suite.

 

If you can try to scope out each school everything involved. What works for one wont always work for another.

[TechSupp]

As you can see, there isnt a common type of school

I work in a Junior school (years 3-6) and we have one IT suite (Win 7)with 2 year old dual core PCs, 40 Samsung netbooks (Win 7), and two stand-alone servers. One is a new HP Procurve running 2008R2 (DNS) and the other one is the old 2003 beast running some software off the network only (didnt dare move it!)

We have a Ruckus wireless network. All teachers have laptops - mostly still on XP

 

Witch you have been looking at my schools! Thats virtually the same as our setups (2 primary schools)

[Underlink]

thanks for all the great info. I love this forum!

 

I am actually surprised by the diversity of kit throughout. I go to my first of the 5 schools tomorow morning and I will find out what they have. the company want me to "push them into the 21st century" Haha

 

I will let you all know how it goes. Thanks guys (n gals)