Ephelyon

I know foundation schools could do it as the employer is technically the Governors, but in a strictly LA-maintained school, they're not permitted and County HR would (should?) have raised the alarm. It may be that your school had "reached an understanding" with the LA, but that's highly atypical - not that I don't approve of course! Your LA might also be on top of its job evaluation, which isn't all that typical either (though there is regional variation). Here, the accepted process is that writing, scoring and evaluating a new job spec takes at least 3 months, which is why so many schools in this area just don't bother and try to squeeze people into the existing specs, many of which are now approaching a decade old and haven't been revised in any way since then. It's true that the majority of schools - since academisation - are now able to pay more (although that really wasn't the case in a practical sense prior to academisation unless you had foundation or VA status), but there are now two problems with that: 1) They believe the LA's job evaluation was fine anyway or 2) They know perfectly well they now have more freedom but pretend they don't - some foundation schools used to do that anyway though! The other well-known trick was to use a job spec that had been evaluated higher and was technically within the same domain (e.g. school IT) but didn't actually match what the job-holder did at all. That meant they could have the pay rise but also meant they could come unstuck if advised by their union to "work to rule", as they couldn't follow their job spec.

I agree with much of what you say, but sadly this part isn't always true. It's true if you're not a Maintained School, or if you are but the LA has a role structure that allows it, but there are many that don't and the problem of not being able to up support staff pay to retain the decent ones is a very real one. It's what makes me so annoyed when so many academies come back with the whole thing of "we think it's best to just use LA-defined salaries - after all, they'll have set them for a reason". Yes, yes they will have set them for a reason - they had a pay structure with a top and a bottom and the impossible job of fitting in almost every kind of role under the sun but only a limited number of pay grades! :/

And, just to muddy the water here, we also have the fact that there is one defined market rate for the ever-dwindling LA schools: the results of their Council's job evaluation for these roles, be it through NJC or anything else. What further muddies the water is that, although academies are technically free to ignore Single Status, they often tend to fall back on these rates anyway as they're unaware of how totally irrelevant they become when you take into account the fact that they only arrived at their conclusions because the pay grade had to be incorporated within the structure of the wider Local Authority and not just the individual organisation that is the school.

Like I say - think CIO, but in education. Personally I think there are quite a few NMs on here who are already doing a large part of that role anyway, but not being recognised for it. As for the impact of technology, I think there are arguably some institutions that have taken a particular technology (either of the two examples you gave there could work) and used it to make a real difference to learning - take Essa Academy for one, whether or not you agree entirely with their methodology. As for the difference a good VLE setup can make, ask @GrumbleDook about some of the work Learning Possibilities has been doing in Wales (although I acknowledge there are other threads where some of the problems there have been discussed). Then again, I personally feel the real impact of ICT on schools has been the same as with other organisations: automation. It means they are not only able to do things they were doing before but better/faster, but there are entirely new things they're doing that wouldn't be possible at all without technology. The combination of e-reg + parental texting has been proven to reduce truancy; points being automatically gained for e.g. full attendance (simply couldn't be done if someone had to go through every kid manually every day on paper); efficiencies in timetabling and cover; I've just finished tweaking a new report design that can be automatically generated so they can be printed and popped straight in an envelope without all the covering pages being done manually for each kid, saving hours; etc etc etc... Learning outcomes are the core aim of the organisation, but what an organisation is (i.e. how well it runs) is just as important as what it does, and that's really what IT was always about. If you get the former wrong, there'll always be a ceiling on how far you can go with the latter anyway. Adding value to learning is always welcome but it's a bit of a sideshow really from an IT perspective - something often lost on leadership teams consisting solely of people from the main service delivery profession. As for what I'm proposing, the intended audience isn't individual school leadership teams, but central government. Most senior leaders I've talked to (across many schools) get very antsy at first because of how much it would cost, but when asked how they'd react if they got funding for that (and only for that), they saw no real problem as long as the support and guidance given to non-teaching staff to prepare them for educational leadership was done properly and not a slapdash for-the-sake-of-it affair, which makes perfect sense. As for changing the world? Well, I wouldn't put it that grandly, but I would say I don't think the right answer is to cop out of it by, as you put it, "changing myself instead". There is a real need for change of this sort in the sector, and if done properly it's a win-win all-round. And no, I'm not suggesting that everyone who works in schools is second-rate - in fact, I regularly fight that corner with condescending IT folk from the business world myself. But what I am saying is that education doesn't have the same capacity (or, to an extent, the inclination) to actually verify the quality of what they're getting when they recruit, so there are some cases where the skillsets will be a pretty mixed bag (thinking of myself here in particular) - and that could change too. Becta was doing some great work with that about 8 years ago before they bit the dust... :/

I don't know if I can flesh it out any further without getting into great detail that would arguably vary from school to school anyway. You could call it an education twist on a CIO-style role in the business world. There's no reason why a school can't educate children while also providing adequately for its staff. The simple fact is that you can't recruit and retain the best with the way things are structured for anyone who isn't a teacher in this sector at the moment. That needs to change - it would be expensive but that's tough (I mean central funding from government should increase). I certainly wouldn't suggest it should be limited to IT staff in particular; I suppose it's just easiest to talk about that on EduGeek as it's our field. In business it's quite normal to consider that potential leaders could be drawn from anywhere in the organisation, and a well-run organisation of any sort does not put up artificial barriers to people's progress. That's what I'm talking about here: not adding further tree extensions, but removing the current glass ceiling so as to normalise with other sectors, which should have happened a long time ago (though I can see why it didn't). It's not as if any of this thinking is new either (and see attached). As for the problems? Well, look at the resentment culture that has sprung up - the "us and them". All the stories we've heard over the years from people who have been broken by this system. It's a ridiculous nonsense that needs to end. A new era for school leadership.doc

@pcstru, what they would do is a combination of the high-level technical side and working with teaching and leadership to strategically lead on the adoption and best utilisation of technology, both in and out of the classroom. I fundamentally disagree that schools "need" opportunities like that to develop teaching staff; teaching staff already have a wealth of development opportunities (the entire sector focuses on them in that respect) - what is missing is those same opportunities for non-teachers. I take the view that problems (of this nature) for individuals inherently are a problem for the organisation - it may just not be aware of that.

I'd agree with your points a-e) there, though I would comment on this from the other thread: I believe the problem is that they don't know what they actually need, consequently don't advertise for it at the proper rate and therefore, indeed, don't get what they actually need... then again, not knowing how much better some affairs could be, they are often blind to this. I've certainly seen some schools happily swallow service standards that are way below the bar... I have also seen schools where the IT team are outstanding but get precious little reward. I do believe we are - and should be - moving towards a sector with a specialist IT provision: an "educational IT manager", whether you call them an E-Learning Manager or anything else. However, I'd disagree that this should be a person with a tech-lite skillset. They should ideally come up through a technical route while gaining support, guidance and experience in the ethos of this sector, our roles in supporting young people, etc. Such a role may also be classed as a senior management/leadership position in their school depending on a number of factors. They are essentially NM-skilled but with a passion for - and demonstrable skillset in - understanding and applying technology to develop young people (as well as the organisation itself), this being something that they have been encouraged towards. And they are paid appropriately for their role as you might see in industry. Technical people who don't aspire to "get all educational about it" and just want to focus on the IT side clearly have their place too as nothing gets done at all without them - so the Technician / Senior Tech would suit them best. But there would be also be "somewhere to go" for those who want to add a passion for what the technology does to their existing passion for what it is... and you would avoid the haemorrhaging of talent this sector currently faces when people hit NM and then realise there's nowhere left to go: the so-called "glass ceiling" for support staff. It sounds a tad biased to say they should have a technical, not a teaching, background... until you bear in mind that teachers already have established career paths towards leadership that they can follow if they wish to. This would open up the same for us too, and I think it's fair to say we do have some people in our profession with the capacity for that, and many more with the potential to develop it.

Potentially an odd question, but... ... do you want us to apply as one would for a job? As in, lay out why we think we are one of the right 10 people to be helping out? In which case - as one might see with a job advert - what criteria are we matching to? Or are you just looking for names and willingness?

First result on search "folder redirection security id may not be assigned as the owner of this object"... At least it's working now from a functional perspective

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2493506

In that case, have a look at the Application Event Log for Group Policy events during user logon. If the Shell Folders / User Shell Folders links aren't being updated, the policy isn't applying properly and something is very wrong...

Down the bottom of the Management Console: Group Policy Modelling Wizard (simulates applying all settings and shows where policies might conflict) Group Policy Results Wizard (collects actual results of policy application - must be run against a user currently or previously logged on to a computer since the last reboot)

You've found more details of the issue, but a Preferences-based fix is not ideal - the ordinary redirection policy should be applying. Do the Wizards shed any light on that - conflicting policy upstream etc?

It should just be %HOMESHARE%, I think. It might be worth logging the test user on, then opening the Registry on that computer (ensure the Remote Registry service is enabled and started), finding their profile hive key (i.e. SID) in HKEY_USERS and drilling down through Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer to check how the entries for Personal have been applied in the Shell Folders and User Shell Folders subkeys. They should be the direct result of whatever settings the policy has applied. If they don't look right, or don't seem to be updating when you change the policy, it'd be worth running the Group Policy Modelling/Results Wizards against that user/computer combination.

Just checking. For info, what that command does is enable symbolic links to work across different local and remote volumes, and from local to remote and vice versa. We use it to enable a symbolic link in our redirected Start Menu to the local menu (only admins can see it though - ABE is enabled on the Start Menu file share). What happens if you change the default target of File Explorer from Quick Access to This PC (in Folder Options)?

Just a hunch - and it's probably wrong - but does it work if you run the following as Administrator on your testing workstation (and reboot to be on the safe side)? fsutil behavior set SymlinkEvaluation L2L:1 L2R:1 R2L:1 R2R:1

Thanks to OP for posting this - I hadn't heard by other channels. Does anyone know if this means "500 devices per school" (possible for some, totally unrealistic for many others) or "500 devices from schools nationally" (seems a low figure from that perspective)?

I've just posted this submission to a Labour Policy Commission on the topic of enforced Academisation. It's actually responding to this one, but I wanted it to go through as a submission in its own right, not just a comment. Yes, yes, it reveals my name... but to be honest I've been finding myself less and less concerned with that in recent years. I can always make a throwaway account if I need to discuss things anonymously, after all.

The computer is indiscriminate, dispassionate, detached, neutral, indifferent, unbiased and unprejudiced. This all stems from the fact that it lacks a brain. Perhaps you could hint at a similar underlying cause for your second scenario? In all seriousness though, if you're running Exchange/O365 with its internal spam filter, and you wanted to strike a balance between maintaining general spam filtering and whitelisting all internal users, you could populate all your staff users' Manager attributes in AD to reflect your organisational hierarchy and then create a Transport Rule along the lines of: "Apply rule to messages when the sender is the 'Manager' of a recipient set the spam confidence level to '0'"

There doesn't appear to be a matching vacancy here: Vacancies : Christ the King CVA Perhaps they'll advertise it on their own website after the break, but that's cutting it pretty fine...

I was exactly where you are (including age-wise) 4 years ago. My advice would be to look for an equivalent position in a larger school with more money and a bigger team under you for the moment. In the longer term (i.e. not yet by any means, but perhaps as a goal) would be to reach for a Director of IT role within a MAT. That being said, we all know jobs aren't necessarily up for grabs at the precise time you want to move on. If there aren't any immediate opportunities in your area and you're worried about "going stale" in the meantime, you do have one big advantage: you work at a school. There are almost always things going on at a school that could be interesting to get involved with if you have some time free - clubs, trips etc. For example, I now regularly go into classrooms (mostly CS lessons) and provide additional input to the teacher's instructions from the practical standpoint of working in IT professionally, such as real-world use cases for what's being taught, some help with coding, etc. I've also set up a VMware Free host with a mix of Windows and Linux VMs, with full admin access and stuffed full of development tools, that are reset to snapshot every midnight so students have the freedom to experiment and learn without risking the rest of the system. In doing so, I've got to know a number of them and that's made both my experience in my role and theirs as learners more rewarding.

A proper one, I presume?

I agree completely in terms of the way you'd expect it to work out politically. But if you want the politics resolved, it would need to be presented as a way of moving forward without declaring project failure... if you can find a way to present it as a "best of both worlds" approach, they might listen.

If the politics could be dealt with, perhaps an option to put forward to the WAG could be that individual schools establish an External Trust between their own O365 tenancy and the All-Wales one, such that the OneDrive resource existing in All-Wales is available for mapping by users in the local tenancy? I'm assuming the main issue is that no trust relationship exists...