ICT Advice for Lewisham Schools - FITS Secondary Case Study

The Lewisham FITS pilot 2005 to 2006

Case Study (Secondary) – Sydenham School

"Not only are we giving a better service to staff, which is satisfying in itself, we also have the time to try out interesting new ideas to make the network even more efficient."

Sydenham School is a large secondary school comprising around 1500 pupils and 170 staff (both teaching and non-teaching). With 6 main computer suites and 13 satellite ones, supported by 9 servers, the school’s ICT infrastructure is almost a mini-industry in itself. Throw in the fact that the school has a wired network, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the technical support staff must be on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown.

But walk into their office, and a strange sense of calm descends upon you – a fact which is all the more surprising given that there are only three members of the team. In fact, not only is the team coping with the workload very well, more ambitious plans, involving the evaluation and eventual implementation of a virtual learning environment (VLE) are also in progress. How come?

As is typical for many schools, when technician Frank Burnett undertook the FITS training in September 2005 a “corridor culture” prevailed whereby he would be asked to do jobs as people saw him. Needless to say, this was an inefficient approach because as well as being tiring it did not allow jobs to be prioritised. Consequently, everyone felt frustrated: the technicians for all the frenetic activity, and teachers for whom the work never quite seemed to get done soon enough.

However, a couple of relatively simple innovations has enabled this approach to be abandoned in favour of a more systematic one which is more beneficial for the school as a whole, because the most important jobs are given a higher priority.

So what were these changes?

The main one was the setting up of a centralised service desk: all requests now first go through to Ken Devine, Frank’s line manager, who thereby shields Frank from interruptions to the work he’s doing, and prioritises the requests. These requests are made on a very simple (paper) request form which is not frightening for non-technical staff.

The team has also introduced more network monitoring software, which enables the technical support team to predict problems before they actually occur. This is complemented by planned regular room checks in which small but important issues are sought out and dealt with, such as loose connections.

Other important factors have been the replacement of some old equipment with newer equipment, resulting in greater reliability. This has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of incidents of faults being reported.

One critical factor underlying the team’s success has been the proactive and active support of the senior management team. All procedures have been discussed with Tim Hickman, Deputy Headteacher, to whom regular reports are made. According to Tim, “The FITS process has enabled us to clarify the procedures for dealing with issues in term of priorities, roles and responsibilities, and this has resulted in improved quality of delivery. It is already impacting on how teachers use the support structures in the school. Our aim is now to address teachers' planning and management in terms of how the use of ICT impacts on teaching and learning.”

Another important element of success is not being precious about always having to use technology where a simpler solution will do.

Over to Ken:

“Paper systems can be very effective, especially in the early stages, in order to start changing the culture of an organisation or at least giving the technical support team a breathing space. It’s true that we then have to spend a few minutes entering the details into our incident database, but the costs are far outweighed by the benefit in terms of staff actually using the system to log requests in the first place.”

So was the implementation of the FITS framework an unqualified success? According to Frank and Ken, the answer is “Yes, but…”.

“You do need to get certain things in place for it to really work properly”, says Frank. For example, having Ken look after the office-type procedures allows me to get on with the work itself. If I was the only member of the team, I don’t think I could have achieved as much as we have in just a few months.”

Ken agrees. “You need a critical mass of staff on the team. That may be only 2 or 3 people, but it lets you introduce a certain amount of division of labour. You also have to buy time by replacing older equipment. But also you can’t get away from the fact that in the early stages at least you have to put in a bit of time over and above, as it were, to try out new procedures.”

More time in an already overcrowded week? Is it worth it? The answer is a resounding and unanimous “yes”. “We’ve now moved beyond fire-fighting all the time and running around like headless chickens”, says Frank. “The job is much more enjoyable now. Not only are we giving a better service to staff, which is satisfying in itself, we also have the time to try out interesting new ideas to make the network even more efficient.”

But nobody at Sydenham is resting on their laurels. There are still aspects of the FITS programme to be implemented, and once the new VLE is in place that will no doubt bring more challenges. Somehow it looks like Ken and his team will be more than up to meeting them head-on.

Last update: 20th March 2006