In March 2022, the Department for Education (DfE) announced a series of guidance documents to help schools develop their technology strategies.
The first four to be published focused on broadband, network switching, network cabling and wireless and were then followed by cyber security, filtering and monitoring, cloud solutions, and servers and storage.
Now, two more updates have landed: one covering laptops, desktops and tablets and another on digital leadership and governance. And there’s plenty for schools to digest.
A new role for SLT
Perhaps the most notable of the two is digital leadership and governance, which will have a clear impact on school leadership teams and workload, as its first recommendation is to assign a senior leadership team (SLT) member to be responsible for digital technology.
This person will need to have some spare capacity as the guidance says they should “have strategic oversight of all digital technology” and “create and manage the digital technology strategy led by the needs of staff and students, not the technology itself”.
Not only this, the guidance says the role will require the digital lead to act as “a link between” a raft of staff, such as others in the SLT, curriculum leads, data protection officers, safeguarding leaders, business professionals in the school and, in a trust, any IT director or equivalent.
It also suggests that a governor or trustees should be assigned to link with the SLT member with these digital responsibilities so they can monitor the work being done.
What will this work entail? The guidance sets out two main practical tasks:
- Keep registers relating to hardware and systems up to date, such as hardware and software licenses and subscriptions.
- Include digital technology within disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
On the second point, you’d imagine schools would hopefully have it laid out already in the aftermath of the pandemic. If not, the RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) crisis will have sharpened minds further about the importance of technology during periods of disruption.
A regularly reviewed strategy
Once all this work has been done, this digital lead within the SLT will then have the following - more high-concept - task ahead of them: Have a digital technology strategy that is reviewed every year.
This strategy must not only “support the school or college’s development plan and educational vision” but also be “sustainable and minimise the impact on the environment”.
To help achieve this, the guidance suggests it could be “informed by stakeholders and by visiting other schools and colleges with similar needs to yours”.
Put all this together and the strategy becomes a “longer-term vision for digital technology” in the school, which will “take into consideration the changes in digital technology and the longer-term plans for what might need to be refreshed or replaced”.
That is why it suggests designing anything as a “minimum two-year strategy”, which should be reviewed “annually (at a minimum)” and amended in light of any changes that impact the vision. Phew.
Workload implications
Although there’s plenty of good advice offered, James Bowen, assistant general secretary of the NAHT union, says the scale of what is proposed seems unrealistic for many.
“While having a strategic approach to technology is clearly a good idea, not all schools will have the capacity to appoint a member of the SLT as a digital lead,” he says.
“It’s going to be a particular challenge in small schools, where SLTs may well be just one or two people, who already have many other competing priorities to manage.”
It’s a view echoed by Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, who said the “staffing and workload implications” of requiring a member of the SLT to be responsible for digital technology was a major task.
“Staffing is so tight there is unlikely to be room for taking on additional staff so this is yet another extra responsibility that has to be absorbed in some way.”
Guidelines, not rules
Caroline Barlow, vice-chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable and head of Heathfield Sixth Form and Community College, was on the Digital Standards DfE Group that created the standards. She says she understands this view, but argues that schools should use them as a guide, not a checklist.
“It is not enormously helpful that they are referred to as ‘standards’ as that has a language connotation where it sounds like something you’re going to be measured against,” she says.
“But they are intended as an audit tool. That’s certainly how I’ve used them and it’s how I’m encouraging schools I’m working with to use them - to think about what we meet already, what we don’t, and to get us thinking about our intentions [around technology].”
Barlow says she has witnessed the standards being helpful in this area already in some schools. “The response I’m getting back from schools is often, ‘This is clearly something we need to be thinking about but we haven’t got a clue where to start’, and the standards help them start to think about what they do already, and what they don’t do.”
Digital device guidance
Schools will find the second guidance document useful too. It focuses on tips for the purchase and use of laptops, desktops and tablets.
The advice covers some highly specific points, such as that tablet devices should have a minimum 9.7in screen, warranties for laptops and desktops should last three years, and security patches from a manufacturer should last three years for tablets and five years for laptops and desktop machines.
There are also recommendations on how to ensure devices are safe and secure, including the use of firewalls and virtual local area networks, and ensuring anti-virus and anti-malware software are used as required - all of which fall under the SLT digital lead’s remit.
More holistically, the guidance also states that devices should “meet educational needs and support the digital technology strategy” so that everything from “curriculum planning and delivery” to “administration, including data and financial management” can be achieved.
Finally, schools should make sure that devices are energy efficient, and are bought and disposed of sustainably. This means ensuring they are low-energy certified and can be disposed of under Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment regulations.
Barton says that while these ideals are well meaning, the reality is that many school budgets do not give much leeway when it comes to choosing the best technology.
“The big problem with this issue is lack of resources. Budgets are so constrained there is bound to be a gap between the technology that is needed and what schools, colleges and trusts can afford.”
Barlow, though, reiterates the point that the documents can help schools self-assess what they are doing with technology and provide a framework to plan for the future, rather than having to adhere to everything at once.
“Speaking as a school that is now 9-10 years embedded in using technology, we are changing it all the time [and] we’re not fulfilling all of the standards. I can easily point to a couple and say, ‘we’re not doing that and we’re not doing that’.
“So we’re going to have a really good think about the reasons why we’re currently not and whether we should, and that is important - that it stimulates thought.”
Dan Worth is senior editor at Tes
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