ICT Advice for Lewisham Schools - FITS Briefing for Senior Management

The Lewisham FITS pilot 2005 to 2006

FITS: a briefing for the senior leadership team

Introduction

We all know that ICT has a tendency to swallow up huge sums of money. Unfortunately, buying the equipment is just the first step: the computers have to be maintained and, every few years, replaced, in order to ensure that they are useful. In fact, the total costs of ownership (TCO) are several times the cost of the equipment itself. With this in mind, the senior leadership team and the board of governors will want to make sure that the school is obtaining value for money on its investment in ICT.

FITS, or the Framework for ICT Support, constitutes a systematic approach to the management of technical support for a school’s ICT provision. However, it is much more than a way of ensuring that the equipment works: it covers financial and strategic planning, and if adhered to can help to ensure that the senior leadership team has a firm grasp of the reins when it comes to expenditure on ICT, and also that the team is well-prepared for any visit by Ofsted inspectors!

About the FITS process in general

Think of school-based ICT technical support and probably one of two images comes to mind: either it is non-existent, or technicians race frantically from one crisis to the next – with jobs prioritised according to who managed to grab the technician in the corridor in the first place, or the seniority of the person experiencing the computer problem. As a result of circumstances like these, some or all of the following tends to occur:

Staff and pupils typically have to wait a long time for problems to be fixed.
The problems that are fixed first are not necessarily the most important ones.
Once a member of staff has reported a problem s/he is not kept informed of progress.
Because of the frantic nature of this way of working, many or even most incidents are not logged, with the result that underlying long-term issues are not picked up.
As a result of these factors, the school is unable to guarantee value for money, either in terms of the reliability of the equipment or the deployment of its technical support staff.
Consequently, staff confidence in ICT may suffer, resulting in less use of ICT across the curriculum than might be hoped for.

Because of these and a whole range of similar issues, the British Educational Computing and Technology Agency (Becta) has been developing and refining the Framework for ICT Support (FITS), culminating in highly successful pilots in Sheffield and Bolton in the last year.

FITS has been distilled from an extremely detailed and complex system developed in the industrial and commercial sectors over the past 20 years to a much simpler system that can be implemented in schools.

It is important to note that FITS is not about technical matters per se, but the management of technical support. In other words, it is concerned with establishing processes and procedures that enable a school’s ICT systems to work smoothly.

It has been found that the senior leadership team has a crucial role to play

FITS and Ofsted

How could implementing FITS enable a school to make a good impression through completion of the Self-Evaluation Form (SEF)? We can readily identify the following:

Characteristics of the school

Section 1c requests: Please outline specific contextual or other issues that act as aids or barriers to raising performance. Matters pertaining to accommodation and resources may be mentioned here, and that would include the ICT facilities and their maintenance. It is now widely acknowledged that ICT has an important part to play in learning and teaching, and that poor access, whether due to insufficient equipment or because of equipment breakdown, can act as a significant barrier. Any steps taken by the school to address these issues can only count in its favour.

Quality of provision

Although primarily concerned with teaching and learning and curriculum issues, this section might also be used to address accommodation and resources – and in particular the allocation of resources to ensure best value for money.

Leadership & management

FITS offers a means of linking the expenditure on ICT to the school’s strategic plan. Even unforeseen circumstances such as a network breakdown can be accommodated in a calm and systematic manner. This is why it is so important for the senior leadership team to actively support FITS.

Overall effectiveness and efficiency

FITS has been found to dramatically improve the effectiveness and efficiency of ICT support staff. Salaries make up a large percentage of the school’s budget, so it’s preferable to improve a team’s efficiency, where possible, rather than simply increase the number of its members.

The Lewisham FITS pilot

As part of its commitment to raising educational standards and achievement across the LEA, Lewisham’s ICT Advisory team established a pilot study involving six volunteer schools (4 primary and 2 secondary). The aim of the study was to see whether and how far the implementation of the FITS process (or aspects of it) leads to more cost-effective and efficient technical support.

You can obtain more details of the study from the Lewisham website, but, as you will see from the two case studies on the web, the project was an unequivocal success. Even in those schools where relatively little actually changed over the life of the project, a number of areas for improvement and a suggested action plan were generated, which the schools are able to incorporate into their strategic planning cycle.

Because of the success of the programme, Lewisham has successfully bid for more funding in order to help a further 10 schools enjoy the benefits of FITS. If you would like to be considered for inclusion in the next phase of the project, please contact Lynne Heavens by (deadline has now passed).

About Terry Freedman

Terry Freedman has been involved in ICT in Education for a number of years, and has worked in both inner London LEAs and the QCA. He has been involved in Becta’s evaluation of the FITS programme in Bolton, and is a Becta-accredited FITS trainer and provider.

Last update: 20th March 2006