IT Support for school

[wjwren]

The school I work with requires some part time IT support - general admin, sorting email and server bits and bobs out, tablet updates etc etc. We are looking for someone to come in possibly 1 morning a week or maybe a full day - unsure yet. What sort of hourly rate should we be looking at.

I was unsure to post this in business or here. Admin please move if need be.

[phil4]

~£40 per hour sounds reasonable.

[clockworks]

Primary or secondary school?

If it's a secondary school, maybe one of the pupils can do it. Bound to be at least one who knows way more than any of the staff, probably the one who managed to hack the servers.

[sbk1972]

Random days here and there never work and suddenly when there is an issue it becomes extremely expensive and you're having to wait when `they are free`.

So, use these guys. You can create your own level of support.

http://www.badgeruk.com/index.html


Simon

[xjay1337]

wjwren said:

The school I work with requires some part time IT support - general admin, sorting email and server bits and bobs out, tablet updates etc etc. We are looking for someone to come in possibly 1 morning a week or maybe a full day - unsure yet. What sort of hourly rate should we be looking at.

I was unsure to post this in business or here. Admin please move if need be.

Sounds like you need someone on a more regular basis, as said above, if you have an urgent issue suddenly you'll want Dave down pronto, you won't want to wait until Monday.

I guarantee you that no matter how much you think this won't happen, it will happen.

So you have a couple of options.

Find a "company" and sign up for a very low tier of support, within next day response for break/fix and then see what cost it would be to have someone come down for 4 hours per week (a typical day rate we would charge a school is around £400 per day so half that)

or

See if you can find someone who is a smaller business, perhaps a start up, that can give a little more time to you at not much extra cost.




Do you not have anyone in house who has the skills or has the inclination to learn?

You could also look yourself into some of the free MDM available that will handle things like Software updates automatically and nearly all server issues or problems can be solved with a good old fashioned Googley if you have a bit of tech nouse.

[x2nmh]

This is exactly our gig. We charge £47/hour.

[clived]

Will they need specific skills in say your MDM platform?

[WAVman]

clockworks said:

Primary or secondary school?

If it's a secondary school, maybe one of the pupils can do it. Bound to be at least one who knows way more than any of the staff, probably the one who managed to hack the servers.

There would probably be data privacy issues with this solution?

I'm a Governor in a primary school, we have a contract with the IT team in the local secondary. This works well for us.

[clockworks]

WAVman said:

There would probably be data privacy issues with this solution?

I'm a Governor in a primary school, we have a contract with the IT team in the local secondary. This works well for us.

Chances are the kid who gets to do the IT already has access to everything.
Was certainly the case with my nephew. He was forever hacking into the school's servers, resetting permissions, changing admin passwords, etc. rather than keep suspending him, they got him working in the IT department. No more problems.

[Jessicus]

clockworks said:

Chances are the kid who gets to do the IT already has access to everything.
Was certainly the case with my nephew. He was forever hacking into the school's servers, resetting permissions, changing admin passwords, etc. rather than keep suspending him, they got him working in the IT department. No more problems.

If a student (or teacher for that matter) accessed systems that they shouldn't at a school I'd be sacking the IT manager/data manager for gross misconduct (I'm a school network manager) and hiring someone who could actually do the job. The thought that anyone who shouldn't have access could read/access potentially confidential/sensitive documents (anything to do with child protection for example) should give the governors nightmares.

OP - contact the LEA, they will probably have an in-house team that will provide support to managed schools for their MS systems (SIMs etc.) and will generally provide IT support on a contracted or ad-hoc basis. With the somewhat specialized software that a school is likely to use ideally you want a group of people with familiarity with similar setups.