Building Schools for the Future

ICT support staff and technicians

As part of the ICT Managed Service, network managers and technicians in schools will be given the opportunity to TUPE across to the company running the Managed Service. This does not mean that technical staff will disappear from schools or that someone will have to be 'called in'.

The local authority and its schools specify the level of technical support which they expect from their Managed Service partner. This might include the retention of one or more full-time technical staff on-site in each Building Schools for the Future school.

In such circumstances, the technician might be the same person with a different badge on their shirt. They would be working to a clearly defined set of service standards and would be trained to help them achieve those standards.

Many 'technicians' actually perform a much more varied role in schools. With the increasing reliability of hardware and software, many schools have developed their technicians so that they provide direct support to learners and teachers in the use of ICT.

As technology develops, remote technical support of ICT equipment will become more efficient and offer better value for money. Consequently, pupils and teachers will gain from the opportunity that having a wider role will bring to technical staff.

Additionally, in most Building Schools for the Future projects to date, the solutions being tendered include the provision of a central (usually locally sited) data centre on the wide area network. There are usually still some servers retained in schools for functions such as content caching, but most server functions transfer to the data centre.

Once the data centre is established it will need managing by high quality staff who understand the education sector. It is important to remember that the commercial ICT partner will need to recruit locally.