Essential ICT Management Skills for School Leaders

The start of a new academic year brings with it a reminder that the challenges we left behind before the summer break are still here to be managed now.

Today many schools have considerably more ICT than most businesses.

Businesses operate their ICT effectively and efficiently by adopting ICT management practices that are considered to be best practice and are proven to impact positively on the user experience.

For ICT to impact positively on teaching and learning experiences and outcomes, school staff must be confident that;

• the equipment will work reliably
• issues will be resolved quickly
  
• problems won’t recur
  

For this to happen;

• teaching and admin staff need to know the process for reporting issues
• technical support staff need to know the process for resolving issues
  
• leadership teams need to know the process for managing issues
  

FITS (Framework for ICT Technical Support) is an international methodology specifically designed to help schools manage ICT implementation, day-to-day performance, and technical support. FITS improves the quality of ICT technical support services through the use of a structured service delivery framework.

FITS helps schools by;

• reducing ICT support costs by as much as 25% through efficient and repeatable processes
• shifting technical support from reactive fire fighting to proactive management
  
• promoting a customer service ethos among technical support staff
  
• creating an environment of common language and understanding of ICT across the entire school
  
• improving communications and relationships between technical support staff, teachers, office staff and school leaders
  
• integrating ICT into the school planning and budgeting processes
  

Best results are achieved when schools train a team comprised of;

• Principals, business managers and other school leaders who drive ICT strategy in the school
• ICT directors, managers, technicians and other staff who support ICT in schools
  

In the past we provided FITS training at two levels – Practitioner and Advanced. Both were accredited through SQA (The Scottish Qualifications Authority) and consequently carried internationally recognised qualifications.

As part of the move to FITSEd we will be developing courses online rather than classroom based as they were in the past. This will allow people from all around the world to get the benefit of FITS training.

To register your interest in taking control of your ICT through the FITS training and learn more about FITS go to https://fitsed.org/members