Investing in a dedicated ICT technician

Brief description of the project

In many cases, the children's learning in this special school is aided by special equipment, much of it electronic and some of it purpose-designed to an individual child's needs. In addition, there is a heavy reliance on conventional ICT equipment in teaching and learning.

Maintaining this equipment on a day-by-day basis has been a major problem and distraction for teaching staff. Breakdowns do occur and there were no on site resources to deal with such events. Teachers and learning support assistants would attempt minor repairs, but most were technically complex and required assistance from outside.

For teachers, this often resulted in wasted time on attempted repair (for which they are not trained) of faulty equipment or the commissioning of new equipment. For students, there was interruption to education while awaiting repairs to equipment which the school could not deal with, but on which the students depended.

The school decided to employ its own part-time (0.5) technician to service all its equipment repair and maintenance needs.

Outcomes of the project

The Head teacher and staff consider the investment in an ICT technician as an unqualified success. An immediate result has been a decision to make the position permanent and to increase the technician's hours from 15 to 20 hours per week at the expense of learning support assistant hours.

The principal benefits have been:

• Virtually all repair and maintenance needs met in-house
• Previously logged teacher and support staff input to problem-solving and repair eliminated (estimated at about 400 hours per year)
• Much reduced incidence of essential teaching and learning aids being unavailable
• Improved management of ICT purchasing through the school budget and commissioning of new equipment and software
• Proper inventory of software maintained, all hardware security marked
• Equipment more effectively deployed and shared, with redundant software downloaded to free up memory and reduce system failures
• Staff competence and confidence in use of ICT enhanced including simple fault-finding and rectification

Transferability

The school successfully recruited a well-qualified person from a strong field despite a pay rate equivalent to a learning support assistant. All candidates were set practical tests under the supervision of an experienced technician from another SLD school within the Local Education Authority. The effectiveness of their interpersonal skills and ability to relate to children with disabilities were also assessed.

The amount of equipment in this type of special school is substantial. However, schools with proportionately less equipment per pupil increasingly need this kind of expertise in support of teaching. Many secondary schools now have equivalent posts. Primary schools might want to consider a consortium or cluster approach to establishing and sharing a post of this kind to meet their growing ICT needs.

The National Agreement of January 2003 states that teachers should not routinely be required to undertake administrative and clerical tasks, which includes ICT trouble shooting and minor repairs and commissioning new equipment.  An exemplar list of these tasks and the target dates for their transfer to support staff can be found on the Cutting Burdens website.

Specific advice to help schools transfer these tasks is contained in the ‘Match staff to activities’ section of the Bureaucracy Cutting Toolkit. However, schools are advised to work through all the stages of the Toolkit (1 to 7) in order to gain the maximum impact on reducing teachers' workload. The Toolkit and the National Agreement can also be accessed through the Cutting Burdens website.

ICT support has become more readily available for schools following the Department’s Managed Services Initiative. The Department has approved a number of suppliers to provide, install and service ICT equipment in schools at a reasonable rate. For more information on this initiative and for a list of suppliers in your area please visit the NGfL website.

For further details contact:

jekratochvil@portables1.ngfl.gov.uk

Resources and staffing

The cost of the technician was in the region of £6,000 per year for a part-time (0.5 full-time equivalent) post.

Methodology

In the term and a half leading up to the appointment of the technician, the school logged most incidents where intervention was needed on ICT and other electronic equipment. This showed a total of 74 incidents of which only 46 per cent could be resolved in-house.

The total staff time diverted was:

• Deputy head teacher: 9 hours
• Teachers: 108 hours
• Support staff: 89 hours

This averaged about 11 hours per week.

The objectives of creating the position were:

• Immediate attention in the event of breakdowns
• Routine maintenance to reduce failure
• Provision of technical advice to teachers
• Better purchasing and commissioning of new equipment
• Reduction of the reliance on, and the cost of, maintenance contracts
• A more consistent approach to such matters as health & safety and asset management and recording

Context

Five Acre Wood School is a 5-19 all-through special school for about 70 children with severe learning difficulties.