There can be little doubt that good technician help is hard to come by. But there can be equally little doubt that schools do not make it especially easy for themselves either. There are several things that schools can do to lessen the problem of obtaining and then retaining ICT technicians.

The very first thing comes in the planning stage, i.e. when you are thinking about purchasing computer systems. Because of the financial pressures on schools, senior managers often tend to look only at the monetary costs rather than the real financial costs of installing and running a system. You will pay a lot more for a system that makes network management tasks easier and quicker, and less for a system in which things take longer. But the ongoing costs in terms of people’s time should be taken into account also.

Take a simple example. Suppose in system A it takes you one minute on average to install a new user on the network, whereas in system B it takes 5 minutes. Clearly, system B costs 5 times as much as system A in terms of time, and eventually that is almost certainly going to outweigh any initial cost saving.

The real cost of a system includes all such costs over the life of the equipment, which may be taken (arbitrarily) as 5 years, and is known as the Total Cost of Ownership. For example, the TCO of a printer includes drum and toner costs. You may be surprised to learn that a computer could cost more than 10 times its purchase price over its lifetime.

Another thing that schools can do is decide what they want a technician to actually do. You may think it’s pretty obvious, but a quick look at the job descriptions of ICT technicians puts the lie to that notion. In fact, when you boil it down, there are actually three different types of technician that schools are looking for: network managers, technicians in the usual sense of the word and classroom assistants. These roles are explored elsewhere in this article, but the point here is that schools need to think about the role of the ICT technician not as an add-on and general dogsbody, but as a professional person or group who will keep the computer systems running.

Once you’ve decided what you want the technician to do, you can decide to pay him or her the commercial rate for the job. The opening statement of this article, that help is hard to find, needs qualifying: it is hard to find if you cannot afford to pay for it. However, there are ways around this problem, as discussed below. The remainder of this article explores various facets of this topic, including job descriptions, where to find technicians and how to pay for them. Hopefully, by the time you reach the end of the article you will realise that there are alternatives to pulling your hair out!

As stated above, there are three main types of technician: network managers, technicians in the usual sense of the word and classroom assistants. You need to decide on what you want, because although you may think the roles overlap, the necessary skills are not often found in one person.

This is the person who is charged with all aspects of network management, including not only day to day tasks like ensuring the server is backed up, but even the planning of equipment purchase. He or she may even be in charge of their own team of technicians.

There is no reason for this role to fall to the Head of ICT or the ICT co-ordinator.

Network management is at last being recognised for what it is: a more or less full-time task if it’s to be done properly, especially in a large school, and especially given the Government’s requirement that the administration and curriculum networks in schools be linked with each other. Bear in mind, though, that the network manager does not have to be based at the school: you can opt instead for a managed service – see the section entitled “Where have all the technicians gone?”

This term covers a wide range of activities. Science technicians spend a large proportion of their time in preparing for lessons and clearing up afterwards. On this model, you could require the technician to put files on the school network prior to teachers’ lessons, although these days it’s easy enough for teachers to do that for themselves without crashing the network.

Other tasks include routine maintenance, recording serial numbers, making sure that the printers have paper in them, maintaining a stock of blank formatted diskettes and so on. He or she may even walk around with a screwdriver in their top pocket, but not necessarily: these days a lot of equipment needs specialist facilities and personnel. The school technician’s role here is to know who to phone.

Many schools now require that technicians be able to assist in lessons in terms of helping the teacher help the pupils with software tasks. It may be hard to find a technician who can undertake such a role, because it requires two skills which he or she may not have.

First, it requires a knowledge of the software. Paradoxically, somebody may be highly knowledgeable about the innermost workings of Windows 2000 and be able to build their own computer, and still not know anything about Microsoft Word.

Secondly, non-teachers’ method of helping pupils is quite often to thrust them aside so that they can do it for them, which is not really what you want.

Sometimes technicians are expected to take on the role of what I suppose you would call a teacher assistant, as opposed to a classroom assistant. I have seen situations in which the technician is expected to assist with the marking and recording of pupils’ work, and to run INSET courses for staff. Quite often, these sorts of tasks are not in the technician’s job description, a situation in which the technician can easily start to feel exploited.

I am often asked to assist with writing job descriptions for technicians. Each one will be unique to the needs of the school concerned, but as a general rule the advice given by a contributor to a newsgroup on the internet some months ago is probably correct: think of as many things as you can, and then add a few more!

As a general guide, at the end of the article is a generic job description which you will need to adapt to your own circumstances and requirements.

The last item is quite important. Ideally, you should be able to give your ICT technician a great deal of autonomy, on the grounds that there’s no point in having a dog and barking yourself. The question is, how much? Personally, I have always thought that if the technician understands, through being involved in meetings and briefings, what you and the school are trying to achieve, there is much to be said for letting them get on with it – even to the extent of giving them control over a budget for the purchase of tools and materials, and the authority to order consumables on your behalf.

Technicians do not grow on trees, but they are not as difficult to find as people often think. Again, it comes down to what you are actually looking for. Finding a general assistant is always going to be much easier than finding a fully qualified network manager. Here are a few suggestions which many schools have found can work quite well.

Managed services provide individual schools or LEAs, or even clusters of schools or LEAs with what is effectively a “one-stop shop” in which the school buys the hardware, software and technical support from one company.

This has two main advantages, these being:

You are dealing with one company for everything, so you should not have to contend with the problem of the hardware company blaming the software company, or vice versa, when something goes wrong.

It can be a cost-effective solution to the problem of finding and then employing a technician, since many problems can be solved remotely via a modem as a result of a telephone call to report the problem.

The main disadvantages of using managed services is that you are tied to a particular company for some time, and the service can appear to be quite expensive. Go to http://managedservices.ngfl.gov.uk/ for more details and a list of approved suppliers.

A group of schools can club together and pay for a technician. This approach can work very well for small primary schools which are not too far from each other.

Explore the possibility of using students, either for a day a week or for a year’s work placement. This type of arrangement can be quite useful to the student, because it breaks the vicious circle of not being able to get a job because of a lack of experience…, and it can help the school by providing a person at relatively low expense.

The disadvantages are that you may have to train students, who then disappear at the end of the year taking their expertise with them. Also, you will probably have to pay them, although this will be at a much lower rate than in the “real” world.

You may have a lot of expertise on hand to undertake some of the routine tasks involved in system maintenance, such as ensuring that printers are stacked with paper. This is not a substitute for a technician, of course, but the existence of pupil technicians can substantially ease the pressure on employed technicians and thereby enable them to get more difficult or more important jobs done.

You may be able to get financial assistance to employ a technician. First, there are sometimes ad hoc opportunities, as when a local consortium offers, say, £5000 towards technician costs in return for an imaginative bid.

You may be able to obtain sponsorship from a local company. (You might even be able to arrange a work placement for a company employee – companies often like to be seen to be doing their bit for the local community, and that includes schools.)

There are other sources of funds, which may be categorised as official bodies, European educational bodies and charitable organisations. You can find lists of these at http://www.becta.org.uk/schools/smanagers/schools/fund.html  and also at http://www.niace.org.uk/Information/ExtFunds/Default.htm . The latter is biased towards adult education. Nevertheless, many of the organisations listed cover school education too.