jsuk2000

I know, I am competeing with "Technical Support Visits" part of the services to schools. They still pay for the internet filtering, AV, network backup etc seperately. However they could change this...

RE: Contract. Good point, I will dig it out. However ironically I was originally a 3rd party technician for the same schools, and they "poached" me on to their team a few years ago!

Thanks for your replies, heres a boring spreadsheet of the options I am considering etc. school visits proposals.xls

so anyone else gone down this route?

Thanks, yes I am aware of the tax/NI/accountant implication. £26k route sounds good, but I think the schools are looking to cut costs. Yes, the school said on average employees cost them 25% in ongiong costs. So £25,000 is actually £31250 to the school etc. RE: £6k, I've got an awlful feeling the school isn't allowed to make a profit like that, although I am sure they would love to! Well it seems the only way up at the moment, maybe get some more information from the schools etc. To my advantage I have never had a run in with a school, 4 of them I have been at for 6 years!

Hi there, I wonder if any of you could offer me some advice. Basically at the moment, I work for the LEA School IT Support team visiting 5 schools a week, doing 6 half day visits a week, one day on the Education IT Support Desk and one day in the office, doing admin/development work. I currently earn £23,708 a year, and am on the top point of Scale 6, ie no further way up. Now, several of my schools are considering employing their own technician in their own clusters, realising it could be cheaper, and have dropped hints they want me to be that technician. Saying I could earn more and they pay less etc. They all pay the LEA about £5000 a year for a half day visit per week for a "junior" technician. To put it in perspective, I bring in to the LEA: School / Visits Per Week / Cost School1 / 1 / £5000 School2 / 1 / £5000 School3 / 1 / £5000 School4 / 1.5 / £7500 School5 / 2 / £10000 = £32,500 brought in to LEA. Two of the heads suggested I either work for them directly and they bill the other schools, or I go freelance and invoice them etc. However being employed by the school would end up with me taking on more schools to increase my income, so - School / Visits Per Week / Cost School1 / 1 / £4000 School2 / 1 / £4000 School3 / 1 / £4000 School4 / 1.5 / £6000 School5 / 2 / £8000 = £26,000 - 25% employee costs etc, = £19,500 salary. = £26,000 if Freelance, So already I would have to take on another school to earn £30,000 freelance or £22,500 salaried. I know my current wage is pretty good in the current climate for Level 1/2 support in a primary school, I do everything except setup new servers. Email and internet connectivity etc is done by the LEA. Looking at other jobs I would be lucky to get £18k for the same level of support, and to get £24k I would need to know things like Exchange, SQL Server, Web Technologies and more indepth server stuff. I am aware I need to invest in further qualifications. You could say I have just had a wake up call, I am 30 and with public sector pay currently frozen and capped at 1% I doubt my wages will ever increase. There is no way up on the LEA team, or within the council to be honest. But there are pros and cons of going freelance - Pros- Better Money, money to invest in qualifications, certificates etc. Own Boss Cons- Schools could shop around and get it cheaper elsewhere. Lack of council support and benefits, ie sick pay, pension (if I had one!), redundancy, conditions, access to colleagues knowledge etc. No backup when things go wrong, although the only thing I can't really do is migrate a new server over. But the School could buy two days LEA Support. If a few schools are considering this already, it wont take long for others to follow suit, and the LEA School IT team may cease to exist. I have learnt a lot at this job during the past 7 years, however I haven't had much in the way of official training. Just odd bits here and there, and most of it I have learnt by doing it every day etc. I would appreciate any thoughts. The 5 schools I visit are very supportive of this though.