ICT Advice for Lewisham Schools - FITS Primary Case Study

The Lewisham FITS pilot 2005 to 2006

Case study (Primary) St Stephen’ s School

"Since introducing the FITS approach, the number of people approaching Kerri-Jane about whiteboard problems has decreased from an average of 2 per week to none at all."

St Stephen’s School has 250 children on roll, and 50 teaching and non-teaching staff. In terms of ICT infrastructure, it has a small wired network supported by a single Apple server.

The ICT co-ordinator, Kerri-Jane Lamb, is responsible for the smooth-running of the network, with support from a technician who visits the school each month to give the system the “once-over”. But as she says herself, “I’m not what you would call a techie. I’m interested in how ICT can help teaching and learning, not computers for their own sake.”

The school doesn’t have an ICT technician on the staff, and Kerri-Jane works part-time, 4 days a week. Take into account the fact that the staff are keen to make use of ICT, and it becomes clear that something had to be done to ensure the smooth running of the ICT systems. But with no extra funding and precious little time, what could be done?

Without wishing to raise her expectations too high, in order to avoid disappointment, Kerri-Jane, with the support of deputy headteacher Frances Holland, enrolled St Stephen’s on the borough’s pilot FITS programme, launched in autumn 2005.

“It was a real eye-opener”, says Kerri-Jane. “The FITS approach has been a new way of thinking, like a new door opening. It’s allowed me to be more proactive and less reactive.”

Frances agrees. “Things are running much more smoothly now. Consequently, both Kerri-Jane and the other teachers are less fraught.”

So what was it that led to this transformation? As is often the case, the answer was surprisingly simple. Kerri-Jane explains:

“I decided that the best thing to do was to change my, and my colleagues’, way of looking at things. The way I looked at it was this: if I have managed to learn how to do a few things here and there to get myself out of trouble, and I’m no more technically-minded than anyone else, perhaps there was no reason that they should not do some of their own trouble-shooting, at least in the first instance.”

With that in mind, with the aid of a colleague, Nick, she established what they called a Technical Support Pack (TSP). “We wanted to give it an important-sounding name”, says Kerri-Jane, “but not one that would put everyone off using it!”

The TSP contains answers to the most common problems encountered by staff, such as those experienced with the interactive whiteboards. However, in order to make the TSP an active resource without its becoming yet another task for Kerri-Jane alone, a procedure was introduced whereby teachers can enter details of any problems not mentioned in the pack, and how they were eventually solved. In this way, the TSP continues to meet teachers’ needs without imposing an enormous amount of extra work.

So how successful has the introduction of the TSP been? It was introduced in early October 2005, and since then the number of people approaching Kerri-Jane about whiteboard problems has decreased from an average of 2 per week to none at all. Also, teachers are less prone to get angry when problems occur, and Kerri-Jane’s lessons are less likely to be interrupted by staff seeking solutions to problems.

So was that all there was to it? Introducing a new pack with a fancy name? Kerri-Jane laughs. “As with any innovation, you can’t just introduce it and then expect everyone to start using it. Nick and I spent about a day creating the initial pack, which we were able to do because the Head supported the idea. Then we introduced it in a staff training day and then the staff were given problem-solving tasks which entailed using the TSP.”

The introduction of the TSP has been a relatively low-cost affair, and what in FITS jargon is known as a “quick win”. But what of the longer term?

Future plans include leasing new equipment to reduce the likelihood of breakdowns, setting up a regular ICT surgery for staff and setting aside one day each half-term as a file backup day on which all teachers are encouraged to backup their work to date.

However, as staff feel more confident in using ICT, the job is getting bigger and bigger, and Kerri-Jane and her colleagues feel that it would be better in the long-run if the school had a dedicated technician rather than have the job being done by a teacher and a visiting technician.

So, after all said and done, was the FITS course a waste of time and the TSP just a stop-gap?

“Not at all”, says Kerri-Jane. “The course made it possible for us to look at our situation in a new way, and gave us a breathing space in which to work out what we needed to do. We will also use the FITS approach to implement the changes we make. The FITS course showed us how a school can improve a situation even without vast increase in resources of time and money.”

Last update: 20th March 2006