All good reasons, but... I'm on considerably more than that, but I manage a
team of 8, including developers (Delphi, SQL, PHP/DHTML), and provide
support to 2500 users directly and 10,000 indirectly over 40 sites. I'm
project managing a team to develop a open source school/LEA ERP system (so
much more than SIMS...) in partnership with a private company. I also take
care of a lot of ICT purchasing decisions - well over £0.5 million in 18
months.
The team locally support 250 PCs and 200 laptops and remotely another 200
PCs and 25 laptops. In addition there are 11 servers locally and 4 remote.
There is something on the order of 100 different applications, running on 8
operating systems (a combination which would never be allowed in an
enterprise). There is a layer 3 switched network (about 600 ports) with
gigabit fibre backbone mixed with wireless. We use enterprise level software
and hardware to maintain, manage and secure the systems, for example Fluke
Network Inspector/Fluke DSP2000SR, Symantec Ghost Enterprise, Norton AV
Corporate, Borderware Firewall, Veritas Backup Exec, etc.
The point of this mini-CV? Commercially, my experience/skillset is worth
£40k+ even in the local government sector, but schools in their current
mindset could never pay a non-teacher that sort of money, or anything close.
Their unwillingness to pay a non-teacher more than a teacher, coupled with
the lack of professional courtesy given by most teachers to other
professionals in schools, leads me along with countless other school IT
staff to the verge of leaving. If the team here all gave their contractual
30 day notice and moved on to better-paid, better valued, positions, the
associated schools would be stuffed. Without the type of handover you would
expect in the commercial sector, a new team would be at a complete
standstill for 3 months. A new team made up of the people who are likely to
respond to an advert for a position at £12k would probably be at a total
loss to even maintain the network. A team of people recruited at more
realistic salary levels, with appropriate commercial experience would almost
certainly not cope with (a) the lack of respect, (b) the lack of
knowledgeable users (c) the numbers of users per PC and (d) the number of
users trying to circumvent security measures and vandalise equipment.
Present company excepted, there are very few experienced and skilled IT
professionals in schools, but a large number in industry who cut their teeth
(read "broke stuff") in schools before moving on to industry, leaving
patched together undocumented systems to be rebroken by the new recruits.
School ICT systems cannot become truly better unless developed by
knowledgeable people working to a strategy developed by the knowledgeable
people in consultation with the teaching staff over long periods of time.
Refusing to consider that IT professionals need to be paid reasonably if
they are to stay long enough for strategies to be developed, and also
treated as the professionals they are (or should be), will result in much
money being wasted over and over again. Our money.
Commercially I was always against out-sourcing. In education, maybe an
out-sourced education ICT support service is the only way. Any takers?
Chris Puttick
IT Manager
Central Manchester City Learning Centre @ Trinity
0161 212 1972/70
-----Original Message-----
From: Robb Bloomfield
To: suse-linux-uk-schools(a)suse.com
Sent: 10/30/01 11:55 AM
Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Techies
> Bear in mind that this is a private school - in LEA controlled schools
> you'd be lucky to get 10K for a part time, term time only position,
> probably requiring you to do much of that work, manage the entire
> network and run the MIS system!
Just over actually, I'm on £12,000 for 42 weeks. And yes, I do it all
(bar
SIMS)...
> So, I wonder why we do it?
Well, it's experience, it pays the rent, and it was an ideal job for a
school leaver, who'd already helped run the network as a student.... so
a
big thanks to the RLS.
Robb