Service Level Agreements

Having a service level agreement (SLA) that sets out the service that the schools needs from the IT technician helps everyone know what to expect, especially when problems occur with any of the IT in school. For example

• if the network 'goes down' - how quickly will the problem be investigated and how are SLT kept informed of the progress in fixing it?
• planned work that could disrupt the school day is only done outside of school hours in the school holidays

To know how effective the service is, best practice is to use an Issue Tracking system to log all the IT issues and how they were resolved.

Management reports should be produced, at least monthly, so that SLT can what the IT support technician is having to fix. This can help in taking pre-emptive actions to reduce occurrence of recurring issues.

School technicians

Schools can employ IT technicians or contract a third party to provide IT technical support. The job role description applies to both and should include maintaining the school IT improvement plan for the infrastructure and shared applications.

Third party providers: Often the third party provider can help with procurement of IT  and provide support for common iT applications. You not obliged to use the IT technical company for this.   

Always check with the Local Authority what discounts are available on sotware and what support they will provide - this typically all areas of financial management eg Access, FMS and some SiMs features and common software licences and equipment.

When the Local Authority is not able to meet your specific requirements shop around by talking directly to the supplier, to other support providers or use the YPO frameworks to help you get the best price.