[Gllug] Schools Software

[Martin N Stevens]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 09:38:36AM +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
>    That sounds like a fairly large school, and much more enlightened than
> any I have heard about, which area is it in? I have only provided very brief
> direct help for a couple of schools in north west London, and they give a
> very different impression. A friend who has provided services to a large
> number of schools in the same area over a number of years gives the
> impression of almost complete chaos and ignorance, with more interest in the
> annual budget.

The school I am at it http://www.chace.enfield.sch.uk

We have 1200 students and around 120 staff.

The way I view it is that a school is basically a business with the prime concern being education, instead
of profits we are judged on student grades at the end of each year.

And of course if you make comparisons to other businesses then there are going to be well run networks and badly run 
networks, with the whole range of abilities of IT staff from the pretender to the professional.

Most Senior staff in schools are not knowledgable about IT and hence I take it as part of my job to look at
where IT can be used to effect and where it may not be usefull.

My belief is that if a school has poor IT it is usually down to the person in charge of IT not engaging with the management
team to achieve the goal of the institution. 

As an example at this school every classroom has a PC, electronic whiteboard, projector and sound system. This allows sharing of
resources between teachers, electronic registration using a web based application, media streaming and anything else you can do with
a PC in front a class of students.

We have around 10 IT suites with between 15 and 30 PC's for class work, although these do get a fair amount of vandalism.

I started here 6 years ago as the only IT technician, now through using helpdesk software (IRM - GPL) I log work and as such have
been able to prove the case for additional staff, to the point where there is now me the Network Manager, 3 IT Staff, an 1 Database/MIS administrator.

BECTA have a framework for IT support called FITS similar I believe to ITIL and if this is is used as a guidance then you should have the basis of a sensibly run department.

As for budgets, yes this can be fun, but what I do is produce a list of equipment to upgrade during the next financial year, along with any new projects that have been requested
and other developements that are needed due to regulations, and of course the yearly ongoing support costs. I then pass this to th management team/bursar to decide what will be 
authorised and I am then given a budget that corresponds to this.

Work going on this year is integration of Cashless catering, Door access control, library lending, print management (on MFPs) using RFID cards.

I enjoy my work here. 

Regards

Martin Stevens

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