pete

^ Right, let's nip this in the bud. It is fantastically unhelpful for a school dealing with a cyber incident to also have to deal with phone calls from Internet randos who are curious about it. Had they answered, they wouldn't have told you anything beyond what's already been made available. Comms on the subject will be controlled and routed via the HT and governance. Staff will have been explicitly instructed not to discuss it with third parties, especially if they're not certain they've spotted and resolved every problem. That's normal. It's basic incident management: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/effective-communications-in-a-cyber-incident Managing external factors Manage speculative media coverage with care, such as inaccurate reporting about the impact or suggestions that personal data has been compromised when it hasn’t. By managing communications proactively, you can control the narrative around the incident. Highlight your response efforts, the steps you are taking to prevent future incidents, and your commitment to safeguarding stakeholder interests. Avoid compromising the integrity of future investigations by regulatory bodies or law enforcement agencies. You can still provide updates that are factual and consistent with the progress of the investigation, without revealing sensitive details. You should also avoid speculation or premature conclusions about the cause or extent of the incident, or who is behind it. While some groups require more detailed information about the incident than others, you should be aware of the risk that this information could be leaked to the media.

Context for the second request: On the Papercut install I'm testing it should be a valid certificate that matches that presented by mobility print and the admin/user webpages. So a better question would be "does the TLS cert on the URL above match the cert used on the admin interface?"

And if someone could go to https://papercutserver.yourdomain.whatever:9174/deploy/config and tell me if that's a valid cert or a self-signed (and so untrusted) PaperCut one, that would be handy too.

I'm trying to troubleshoot slow driver/printer deployment via PaperCut print deploy. It would be helpful to compare the local client log (in C:\Program Files\PaperCut Print Deploy Client\logs\pc-print-deploy-client.log) with a known-good log to see what's just PaperCut being overly verbose/whiny and what's actually a problem. Any offers? I'd like the "person logs in" to "printers successfully loaded" parts. cheers Pete

^ There's also the issue that Bromcom (like every MIS I've used) only has 3 levels of permission for student files: Anyone with access to student data in Bromcom login can see them (Public) Anyone with a specific permission (usually tied to a limited group) can see them (Confidential) Only the person who puts them on can see them (Private) and no-one else knows they exists if they're hit by a bus (effectively useless). When most safeguarding platforms allow more granularity, including on a incident-by-incident basis.

Irritatingly, my bookmarks are in Chrome (which doesn't timestamp them like Firefox does), so I can't tell if my swearing-at-google bookmarks relate to the Synology backup project or a few Google > 365 migrations. I wouldn't make the assumption that "super admin" in workspace translates to "do all the things in cloud" - it more likely means "you have the ability to give yourself the access you need, should you work out what you need from our terrible documentation".

When I was doing something similar (ActiveBackup for individual and shared Google Drives), I followed these: https://kb.synology.com/en-uk/DSM/tutorial/Preparing_Google_for_using_ABG https://kb.synology.com/en-uk/DSM/help/ActiveBackup-GSuite/activebackup_gsuite?version=7 But I did find some of Google's documentation wasn't up-to-date.

We're considering spraypaint and stencils, but a dystopian/cyberpunk look may not go down well with our headteachers.

Bit more worried above the indoor-rated socket mounted directly above the poo with a view. I doubt the seal between the brickwork and the corrugated roof is watertight.

The "Plan technology for your school" site looks like a worse copy/paste of all the other sites out there. And re Ofsted - they've been asking for a while (a couple of ours were inspected recently). The whole of SLT and the safeguarding teams at all our schools have a two-pager that states clearly in SLT-friendly language how the technical side of safeguarding works trust-wide and any specifics on a per-school basis (primary vs secondary vs nursery). They are not to ad-lib or deviate from the two-pager or they'll look like muppets when Ofsted cross-check it with my lot.

Our clerking team are trialing Scriba (dot co dot uk) at the moment and initial reports (three or four meetings) are positive, in terms of support, quality of minutes and timesaving. You'll need a decent external microphone for big meetings but it's not bad.

Buy an A5 license, assign it to the person pulling the searches. It's cheaper than wasting the time going through duplicates.

^ 12.5.8 also won't support many apps the schools want to run. Our criteria is: OS receiving security updates? Y/N OS still supported by the MDM platform? Y/N OS can still run the required apps? Y/N If N, replace it or (for the sole exception of the third critera) use it for web browsing and email only.

Has anyone got the text of the comms sent out? I mentioned it over coffee to one of our headteachers and they didn't think it was substantially different to the existing guidance linked up-thread.

Ah, I foolishly assumed the government, having updated the linked guidance on 19-01-2026, wouldn't throw a U-turn a week later.

The guidance (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mobile-phones-in-schools/mobile-phones-in-schools) explicitly states that work-related usage is fine in front of the kids. And if you're not in front of the kids, the guidance doesn't care what staff do.

^ It could be the kids haven't asked. Or they did ask, the teacher canvassed for who would be interested and not enough kids responded. Our schools play against other schools in football, cricket, netball, hockey, athletics, swimming, rounders, tennis in the summer, golf and other things I'm probably missing because it's part of the role for PE and (even taking that expectation into account) the teachers go above and beyond. But the majority of non-sporting clubs and activities are kept running by the goodwill of 1-2 people: The girls rugby club was linked to a specific teacher who had the time, expertise and enthusiasm to run it. They're retired now and so is the club (unless they come back for a bit of temporary supply work and run some impromptu games at lunchtime). The 40K club spent some time in the wilderness after a teacher left but has now found a home with a physics teacher. The sailing club closed because circumstances changed for the people involved (me and another colleague) and we couldn't afford 5 hours on a Tuesday (club ran from 4pm, I got home circa 9pm) every week. No-one at the school else was willing to step up to take over (which is not unreasonable - 5hrs is a lot), the club closed.

Has anyone got the dual-socket Evec vecSprint pedestal chargers? If you have, did you hardwire their network connection or rely on the built-in 4G? In initial testing the 4G (Teltonika RUT200 4G router) seems a bit flaky, even though someone stood next to the charger using a phone gets a decent connection.

But for 2025-26 context, we're shopping around for another supplier after the company changed hands and service levels declined.

Put stuff in there that puts them at a disadvantage compared to other staff if they don't read it. Put the shortcuts and the faster ways of doing things in there. Or hide chunky kitkats around the school and drop hints as to where they might be in each guide.

Retention times for deleted files and time-to-restore estimates. Accessibility options (for staff and students) - dyslexia friendly fonts, GPOs for setting 125% zoom by default, Colorveil, blue light options on monitors and accessing Night mode etc. Also, who's responsible for managing DSAs (HR in our case) Windows +P (and other projector/IWB/TV "it would be great if they remembered......" things) Email How email filtering works (what will get filtered) Attachment size limits Email signature setup Delayed Send What to do when you send something to the wrong person. Oh, and "If you spill X in your laptop, you should....." How to tell HR and IT you've changed your name (and whether you're keeping the old name as your "professional" name or not.) Ours is on a staff-accessible wiki.

We're testing Access by Examscreen and spotted the unlock PIN is stored in a user-readable file. Deciding now if that's a deal breaker. I can probably circumvent that by setting Examscreen as the window manager (vs explorer.exe) and/or setting the config file as only readable by the exam accounts, IT and invigilators groups. (The file needs to be readable by the exam account running the software.)

https://issue-education-record.education.gov.uk/ Issue education records to your pupils Select pupils individually from the pupil list or create groups to divide up your year 11 pupils. Each pupil must have the DfE education record app downloaded on their mobile device from the Apple or Android app stores. Issuing takes around 5 minutes per pupil and education records are already populated by the DfE. Each pupil must be sat with you so that you can: generate a QR code for the pupil to scan to get their education record vouch for the identity of each pupil so they are issued the correct education record (my bolding) With ~250 kids that's ~21hrs plus faffing and breaks.

Just finished The Grapples of Wrath by Alice Bell. Regional wrestling murder mystery.

^ One of our schools does, but even if a student's leaving our schools for elsewhere (uni/college/apprenticeship), the pastoral teams do a fair amount of heavy lifting to make sure the student has some form of acceptable next step.