ICT Advice

Site Index

Other Lewisham Sites:

• ICT Community Portal
• Education Home Page
• Council Home Page

The Lewisham FITS pilot 2005 to 2006

Executive summary

1. The FITS programme constitutes a managed approach to technical problems.
2. The Lewisham FITS pilot was designed to involve 4 primary schools and 2 secondary schools, and 2 visits per school from Terry Freedman, the independent consultant.
3. The pilot was highly successful. All schools involved gained a great deal of benefit from the programme, and in two of the schools sufficient progress has been made to furnish material for case studies which could be used by the LEA to inspire other schools in the locality.
4. The programme is to be extended so that other schools in the area can benefit from FITS.

About the FITS process

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, 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.

The Lewisham FITS pilot as it was designed

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.

The study consisted of the following stages:

1. The Lewisham ICT Technical Support Team was been trained in the FITS process, for two reasons. Firstly, to help the team look at its own processes to see where cost and time savings might be made without detracting from the service offered to schools, and secondly to enable the team to support those schools embarking on the FITS approach themselves.
2. The senior leadership or management team of each school taking part in the pilot was invited to send a representative to a half-day presentation at the PDC, to learn more about the FITS programme.
3. Following this, the schools taking part were invited to send a member of the technical support team to a one day course at the Lewisham PDC. This course not only covered the FITS processes in some detail, but also enabled delegates to start to identify issues to be prioritised in their own schools.
4. The next stage of the programme was for each school to be visited by the appointed consultant, Terry Freedman, for up to half a day. The purpose of this visit would be to provide the technical support team with one-to-one support on implementing an aspect of FITS or, indeed, of identifying which aspect(s) of FITS to implement. The dates for these appointments were set up during the one day course described in stage 3, and were all due to take place during the autumn term 2005. The visit would result in a brief report which would be sent to the school and to Lynne Heavens at the LEA. This is to provide the basis for the school to decide, through both internal discussion and discussion with Terry Freedman and/or Lynne Heavens as appropriate, what its next step should be.
5. Terry Freedman was to visit each school for half a day in the spring 2006 term to discuss progress and issues arising, in order to both assist the school and to provide the basis for evaluating the pilot study.
6. Terry Freedman was to provide the LEA with a summary report of the pilot study, with recommendations.
7. The LEA will examine the findings from the pilot study to determine whether the FITS program should be extended to a wider range of schools.

The pilot in practice

A number of changes to the planned programme were made:

• Only 3 primary schools took part because one school did not respond to any emails.

Recommendation 1

Ask volunteering schools to confirm by a particular date that they wish to take part, and that they agree to certain conditions as recommended below.

• Some of the schools which took part were so keen to implement FITS processes that we did not capture the “before” picture adequately, because they had started to think about it already, or because they implemented changes immediately on returning to school.

Recommendation 2

Ask schools to complete the questionnaire as soon as they have been accepted onto the training and to email it to Terry Freedman.

Recommendation 3

Ask schools to indicate changes on a monthly basis, or at least more often than at the start and end of the project.

• It was difficult to obtain completed feedback questionnaires from participating schools.

Recommendation 4

Ask schools to complete the questionnaire on an interim basis part-way through the project. I would suggest linking this to my input, ie if questionnaire is not completed, school is deemed to have opted out and the second visit doesn’t take place, or further information or assistance is not given.

• It would have been good to create more support for schools beyond that allowed for in the project.

Recommendation 5

Set up a discussion forum in which participating schools may exchange ideas with each other. Perhaps also build in time for me to contribute to and monitor the forum as part of the project.

• The training was well-received, but it was felt by some participants that time for planning in the afternoon would have been very worthwhile.

Recommendation 6

Reduce the “lecture” time on the full day’s training, and build in an opportunity, eg 1 hour or 1.5 hours, for participants to plan their own implementation of FITS. Planning time could also be followed-up by sharing & discussion session.

Recommendation 7

If Recommendation 6 is accepted, Terry Freedman to draw up a pro-forma and/or checklist to guide colleagues in using that time most profitably.

 

Last update: 20th March 2006

| Next | Previous | Top of Page | Home Page |