Management, Maintenance and Planning

Planning for ICT

The importance of planning was emphasised at BETT99. "Purchase should be initiated only after a clear policy for ICT has been constructed, and as a result of the school’s medium term planning process." (Banbury, 1999 ). Until recently the role of managing school ICT systems has belonged to the ICT co-ordinator and enthusiasts on the school staff. The increasing complexity of systems is placing increasing pressure on schools to make proper provision. The NGfL is providing money for new equipment, but not for maintenance. Funding is obtained from the Standards Fund by a process of bids and matching funding by LEAs. LEAs are required to demonstrate medium term strategic thinking by submitting plans with a four-year time horizon. It is essential for schools to consider the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when drawing up their ICT plans.

Schools are familiar with planning. All state schools are required to have a development plan which is submitted to the local authority on an annual basis and is reviewed as part of an Ofsted inspection. Schools have not been in the habit of drawing up specific ICT plans, and some LEAs are now requiring this as part of the funding process. For example, Northants LEA is requiring all schools to draw up a four-year ICT plan. It is giving priority to providing primary schools with networks and internet connection. The aim of the LEA is to connect all schools by 2001 to County Hall via the Internet, linking both administration and curriculum networks.

BECTa endorses planning as good practice and suggests a school ICT plan should:

Focus of the delivery of the curriculum, particularly literacy and numeracy
Reflect the LEA plans for ICT
Include an audit of current levels of resources, network use and teacher development
Include targets and outcomes consistent with the NGfL consultation
Provide for teachers’ professional development
Take account of the use of ICT in management and administration
Set out the school’s policy on protecting pupils from on-line access to undesirable materials
Plan logistically and financially for upgrading and, eventually, replacing equipment

Five steps are suggested towards drawing up the plan:

Finding out where you are now by carrying out an audit
Deciding where you want to be by carrying out research and consultation and setting targets
Deciding how you will get there by producing a detailed plan
Implementing the plan, amending it if necessary
Finding out how well you have met your objectives, by conducting an evaluation and review. (BECTa, 1998).

Funding

Most of the new funding for ICT developments is coming from the Standards Fund. As described above, grants from this fund have to be matched by LEAs. In general, schools have not developed a mature financial plan for the financing of ICT. Equipment has been obtained as opportunity presented. School budgets are tight. The biggest cost to schools is staffing. Once salaries have been paid schools have relatively little disposable income to spread across a wide range of needs. Schools need not only to consider the cost of acquiring new equipment, but the ongoing maintenance and replacement costs of that equipment.

Apart from the Standards Fund, a number of other sources of finance exist. These include:

Initiative funding, including the Single Regeneration Budget.
European funding, to enable the establishment of international links. Staff time rather than equipment tends to be covered.
Training and Education Council funding may be available for linking schools and community education providers.
Voucher schemes, such as the Tesco Computers for Schools initiative.
Company sponsorship – major companies often like to be seen as supporting education, but there can be competition amongst competing schools. In Burgess Hill, the family group of schools have combined to make approaches to a large local electronics and telecommunications company.
Internet access may be offered for low cost by a local university or large company.

Schools can be tempted by offers of equipment being disposed of by firms when they upgrade their offices. This can seem to be a good way of acquiring equipment at low cost or no cost, and there are a number of organisations specialising in accepting such offers and ensuring the equipment is in good working order and the disks properly cleaned before being passed on. However, as has already been observed, schools already have a major problem with obsolescent equipment, and they need to ensure any equipment obtained will meet their needs which are often more demanding than those of industry and commerce. There is a strong case for looking these particular gift horses carefully in the mouth.

Technical Support

"Technical systems require technical experts to ensure their proper installation and continuing maintenance and , in many of the projects, this was simply unavailable or beyond the means of school budgets" ( EDSI Group A Executive Summary, para: 101)

Schools can obtain technical support from a number of sources:

Shared technical support – small schools might share support with each other or with a local secondary school
In-house technical support – the school employs a technician or network manager. As systems become more complex such employees need to be more skilled, and are a greater cost to the school
Local dealers – although there are moves by some LEAs to encourage schools to standardise equipment within the authority, local dealers are often prepared to install software, set up hardware, offer intermediate support and provide access to higher levels of support – they may even have a child or other relation at the school and have a vested interest
Post-warranty maintenance contracts can be a very good solution for a small school with relatively few computers, but such a contract will not cover every eventuality
LEA support services – some LEAs have good IT support services and may offer schemes for maintenance and technical support
Managed services – by purchasing an all-in-one system from a single provider, a school or group of schools can buy technical support at a given level for a contracted period.

Appropriate technical back-up can be a particular burden for smaller primary schools. The EDSI projects showed that relationships between primary feeder schools and their related secondary schools were enhanced by shared technology. Often it was possible for a secondary school to offer support to the primary schools within its family group.

Managed Services

Managed services are a relatively new concept in education, though local authorities have been involved in contracting services for some twenty years and outsourcing is a familiar part of the IT industry. The basic idea is that the ICT supplier provides a complete service together with hardware and software maintenance functions. RM has entered into a number of such agreements. It offers three levels of support to schools:

Installation, teacher training, hardware repair and maintenance, and trouble-shooting
Network management, applications management, anti-virus protection and management and support of the school intranet
Strategy and planning for future resources and framework agreement covering the future procurement of hardware, software, Internet and upgrades. ( Cole, 1999)

The cost of a basic managed service for an average secondary school with a single-server network is about £12-15,000 per annum. Although this is expensive in school budget terms, it is about half the cost of a network manager, making it an attractive proposition to schools.

A number of long term agreements have already been signed. For example, Dudley Grid for Learning has entered into a ten year contract with RM; RM will provide equipment, support, management and development. (Sabbagh, 1998). In South Lanarkshire, RM has another long-term managed service, where it will support and equip all of that authority’s twenty-one secondary schools. ICL, Xemplar and Akhter are also seeking school contracts. ICL has a £12.5million contract with Moray to equip its schools and local libraries. This is funded by a public finance initiative (PFI) where the supplier pays the costs of developing and implementing the services, and rents the service back to the public sector. Dan Technology has a similar contract to supply computers to schools in Bradford.

In the EDSI project, the Bristol Online Education Network (BEON) linked 11 schools with an interactive system used by over 100 teachers and more than 3,500 primary and secondary school pupils. The service was fully managed, and the model was particularly effective, allowing teachers to concentrate on education rather than technical concerns. It was clear that the true costs of a project of this scale and complexity were beyond the budgets of the schools.

Not only education authorities, but individual schools are entering into managed service agreements. Holland Park School in Kensington has a large computer network with NT servers. Cole (1999) quotes the Headteacher: "I’ve been told that in terms of complexity, it would have six full-time technicians supporting it in a private-sector company. We obviously don’t want this level of support. The big problem is that if you train someone up to support and manage your school network, you then find that you either cannot afford to pay them because they have become a highly skilled member of staff, or they disappear into the private sector, which is more lucrative."

I find something curious about a situation where the commercial sector is looking more carefully at managed services and long term agreements while the education sector is being courted with the tacit approval of government. "Managed services are being pushed by the Government as a way of taking from teachers the burden of maintaining their school’s computer services." (BETT’99, unpublished press release).

One of the roles BECTa has been given is kite-marking the suppliers of managed services. Those approved by the agency will be labelled as "National Grid for Learning Certified". In summer 1999, the DfEE are expected to announce an approved list of managed service providers. The deadline for applying to be approved by BECTa was January 8^th, 1999. It is understood over 100 suppliers had applied before the deadline.

Staffing

Closely allied to Managed Service Agreements is staffing. Carew ( 1998) quoted David Perry, the Technology College Trust’s director of research and development for ICT: "The biggest challenge for schools is the procurement of highly skilled staff… Outsourcing ensures reliable management but it costs even more than hiring a network manager."

Staff time is not only taken up with maintaining the system, but in preparing appropriate lesson materials. The CREDITS project in Cumbria uses Resource Managers to assist teachers to use information technology. "A Resource Manager is someone who assists teachers to use information technology in order to stimulate and intensify the teaching and learning in the classroom, or assists in using information technology to create a more efficient school. (Xemplar, 1998).

School librarians are also used to seek out appropriate web sites for use in the curriculum. It is clear, teachers do not have time to do all the research necessary to effectively use Internet resources. There may be a role for a new school employee, with a similar role in relation to ICT to the Media Resource Officers in the former Inner London Education Authority who located and prepared AV materials to free teachers to teach

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