Second World War battleships had computers on them - analogue number crunchers that absorbed data about speed, course and the range and bearing of the target, and converted it into information about where the guns should be pointing. That’s why, on 23 May 1941, the Bismarck, steaming at nearly 30mph, was able to hit and destroy HMS Hood, travelling at the same speed in a different direction, with a shell the weight of a Volkswagen at a range of 15 miles. (Try it with your iMac) You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if a delicate electro-mechanical device could survive on a battleship doing 25 knots under fire in the North Atlantic, then a 21st-century computer would do fine in a harmless environment like a school. That’s probably what some IT suppliers thought when they saw that there was money to be made in education.

Little did they know. As Andrew Mullholland of Viglen, a major supplier to Northern Ireland schools says: “A school is a very hostile environment. In business organisations, for instance, you don’t get employees pushing jam sandwiches into floppy disk drives.”

To be fair, it was a throwaway remark - good schools don’t let food or drink near the computers. (And none of us will be convinced that all adult users are innocent of computer abuse.) His more serious point, though, is that school computers live a hard life.

“Schools are run by the bell,” he says. “At the start of a lesson everyone logs on at the same time. Then people all print at the same time, and at the end everyone boots down together. This subjects the network to surges that networks in other places don’t have.”

Ray Fleming, marketing manager at RM, agrees, adding that teachers sometimes have expectations that seem reasonable but aren’t. “For instance,” he says, “Someone might come in with a CD-Rom wanting to use it in a lesson that day.” (Problems caused by software that isn’t designed to run on networks, or which causes general mayhem among other applications are very common in schools where there isn’t sufficient control of what’s brought in and loaded up.) There are other pressures too - of computers being used by many different people, for instance, and of networks being asked to carry far more applications than would be used in the average business office.

All that would be fine were the school network supported by the kind of IT team you’d find in any business organisation. In few businesses, for example, is anyone going to phone up an external support line to ask how to print, or how to change a password. Educational ICT suppliers and authority support services, though, still get queries like that every day.

The reason is simply that schools, traditionally, have managed their computer systems with very little in-house support. It’s not just that there’s a lack of expertise. As Nick Hall, of RM’s Online Support, points out, where there is a competent person in school, he or she is likely to be stretched: “It’s very common for network managers who are teachers not really to have the time to sufficiently manage their network,” he says.

There’s an increasing need, therefore, for schools to examine the way their ICT provision is acquired, supported and sustained over time - and it may be that some hard decisions will have to be made about the proportion of the budget that goes in that direction. For many schools who just don’t want technical hassle, the fully managed service makes sense. RM’s service has been adopted by the whole of Dudley authority for example, and Viglen’s recent contract to provide ICT in a thousand Northern Ireland primaries includes full managed support.

This is the chosen way forward at King Harold School in Hounslow, Essex, where, as the network grew, a decision was made that all in-house ICT expertise should be curriculum focused, and technical skills would be bought in. Malcolm Burnett, King Harold’s business development manager, says: “When you reach the 100 computers mark you know you can’t have a teacher as network manager.”

The challenge for a primary school, it seems, can be quite the opposite. Janet Espley, at Thames Ditton Infants in Surrey, gets excellent technical support from her authority. “We pay a couple of thousand a year and it’s effective,” she says, but the school is crying out for curriculum expertise. “Everything we’ve done has been off our own bat.”

One response to this is that it’s precisely in schools where the curriculum expertise should be found. John Anderson, who is in charge of ICT strategy for schools in Northern Ireland says, “The real experts are in the classroom.” He believes in, and is working hard to promote, the idea of using the technology to spread good practice among schools.

“It cries out for a practical collegiality within the profession,” he says, “Online collaborative communities.”

ICT support

Good support for ICT:

* Makes the network available at all reasonable times

* Respects teachers and doesn’t patronise

* Frees teachers to teach

* Meets teachers’ needs rather than telling them what they can do

* Links the school to good practice

* Keeps systems up to date.

* Protects against abuse and virus attack

Development

Points for school managers to consider:

* The balance between outside and in-house support - full managed service at one end of the scale, against in-house support backed up by telephone or website contact

* Decisions about support taken when the network was in its infancy should be reviewed

* Network management and technical support aren’t good use of a teacher’s time and expertise - there are costs, in terms of quality of teaching as well as of finance

* The internet is increasingly important for support (some suppliers provide frequently asked questions (FAQs) on their website, and also post answers to problems

Resources

* Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) www.becta.org.uk has numerous supportive and informative sites including development plans and policies on www.becta.org.ukstartictplans. html

* At www.becta.org.ukslict is the School Leadership and ICT site, run in co-operation with the National College of School Leadership www.ictadvice.org.uk

* DFES Information Management Strategy - www.dfes.gov.uk imsindex.shtml

* DFES Purchasing guide for schools www.dfes.gov.ukvfm pg.shtml

* NGFL managed services and technical support ngfl.gov.uk

* getconnected.ngfl.gov.uk - designed to enable those implementing ICT to make informed decisions about networking technologies

* technicalsupport.ngfl.gov.uk - A guide to managing the ICT (technical) support in your school