What a school's IT support should include and what ‘response within four hours’ means

An issue at a school is not handled the same way as at an office

Dealing with an issue in an office is not the same as dealing with one in a school with several classrooms working at the same time. Nor is it the same to start investigating a problem when a teacher reports that something is not working as to receive an automatic alert before the first lesson has begun. That is why, at PenwinEdu, we see a school's IT support as something broader than dealing with issues: it means knowing its infrastructure, monitoring it, setting priorities and knowing what can be sorted out straight away and which work needs to be scheduled so as not to disrupt teaching.

In a company, an IT fault may affect one person or one department for a few hours. In a school, a seemingly small problem can directly affect a lesson that is already under way. A classroom that loses its Wi-Fi, an interactive panel that does not work or several devices that cannot connect can force the teacher to change, within a few minutes, a lesson they had prepared in advance.

Also, the person reporting the issue is not usually a technician. It is normally a teacher standing in front of a class who describes what they can see: ‘the internet isn't working’, ‘the screen won't connect’ or ‘the computers won't get on the network’. It would make no sense to ask them to work out whether the problem lies in the access point, a VLAN, DHCP, the switch or the internet connection. That part is the job of the technical support team. A support team used to working in schools has to be able to turn a simple description of the problem into a technical diagnosis without shifting that burden onto the teacher.

You also have to understand when it is possible to step in. Restarting a switch mid-morning may be a very simple operation technically, but if several classrooms depend on it, doing it at eleven o'clock can cause more problems than it is trying to solve. Sometimes the best decision is to sort it out immediately; at other times it is better to prepare the work and carry it out during break, in the afternoon or in a period with no teaching. That ability to weigh up the impact before acting is particularly important in education.

What responding within four hours really means

At PenwinEdu we work with a commitment to a response within four working hours, but it is important to explain exactly what that means. Responding to an issue and resolving it are not necessarily the same thing.

Response time indicates how long can pass from when the school reports an issue until our technical team picks it up, classifies it and starts working on it. From that moment, a remote check can be carried out, a correction applied, additional information requested or a decision made that an on-site visit is needed. What matters is that the issue is already being handled and the school knows what is happening and what the next step will be.

Resolution time, by contrast, depends on the type of problem. An incorrect configuration can be corrected remotely in a few minutes, whereas a hardware fault may need a replacement part. If the problem lies in a line from an external telecoms provider, a third party is also involved whose timescales the school's technical support does not directly control. Promising that all these situations will be resolved within the same number of hours would not be realistic.

That is why we prefer the commitment to be clear: when we start dealing with the issue, what priority it has, how it is being handled and what resolving it depends on.

Not all issues have the same priority

A good support service should not treat every issue in the same way either. An office printer that stops working does not have the same impact as losing connectivity across a whole floor, and a problem affecting a single classroom should not be handled in the same way as an issue that stops the whole school from working.

Service levels make it possible to set these priorities using criteria agreed in advance. Instead of relying on vague expressions such as ‘urgent’ or ‘priority attention’, it is better to define which situations correspond to each level, which response time applies and which procedure is followed in each case. That way, both the school and the technical team know from the outset how each issue should be handled.

This way of working is particularly useful at very busy times, such as the start of the school year. In September, devices, classrooms, user accounts, platforms, printers and services that may have seen little use for several weeks all come back into use at the same time. Good support planning makes it possible to anticipate much of that load rather than simply reacting when problems appear.

Monitoring the infrastructure completely changes support

There is an important difference between waiting for someone to report a fault and having systems that monitor the infrastructure continuously. In the first case, the service starts when the user notices that something is not working. In the second, certain problems can be known about even before they affect a lesson.

Take an access point that stops responding first thing in the morning. Without monitoring, probably nobody will notice until a group arrives in the classroom and tries to connect. Then a teacher will tell the IT lead or log a ticket, and the diagnosis will begin. With continuous monitoring, the system can raise an alert as soon as the device stops responding, which means the problem can be investigated before lessons start. The failure is the same, but the impact on the school can be completely different.

Monitoring also provides information that makes diagnosis much easier. It shows when the problem started, which device is affected and which other services may depend on it. That is why at PenwinEdu we regard 24/7 monitoring as a fundamental part of infrastructure maintenance and not simply an add-on to the support service.

Every issue should be logged

The phone is useful when you need to talk to someone and a message can settle a quick query, but issues should always be logged. When information is scattered across calls, emails and conversations with different technicians, it is easy to lose the history of what has been done, especially if someone is on holiday, changes role or simply another technician has to carry on with the work.

We work with a support portal that records which problem was reported, when it started, who is handling it, what checks have been carried out and what the solution finally was. This information does more than make support easier; over time it helps to detect problems that would otherwise go unnoticed.

If the same classroom builds up several connectivity issues over a few months, for example, we are probably no longer looking at unrelated faults. There may be a coverage, cabling, power or network design problem. Having the history makes it possible to spot those patterns and look for a permanent solution instead of repeating the same work every few weeks.

Support needs a well-defined scope

Another important point is knowing exactly what the service includes. A school may have a Wi-Fi network, switches, a firewall, servers, computers, interactive panels, printers, phone systems, CCTV, access control and many other devices. Not everything has to be included in the same contract, but it should be clear which part of that infrastructure is maintained and who is responsible for each element.

You also need to define how pupils' devices are managed, especially when there are devices owned by the school and others that belong to families. With the latter, the school normally controls their access and behaviour on the network, but does not administer the device as it would one of its own. Likewise, it should be clear in which situations work is carried out remotely, when it requires a call-out and how work that may affect several classrooms is scheduled.

There is also one matter that should not be left until there is already a fault. In certain jobs, the technical team may need to access systems that contain personal information about pupils, families or staff. That access must take place within a properly defined framework, with the corresponding data processing agreement where applicable and with a record of the work carried out.

The school's IT lead should not face every problem alone

In many schools there is someone who acts as IT lead, but that does not necessarily mean their main role is maintaining the infrastructure. It may be a teacher who also coordinates technology, a member of the administrative staff with technical knowledge or someone who spends just part of their working day on these tasks.

A good support service should take the most specialised part off that person's hands. It makes little sense for them to spend hours investigating why an access point is not responding, going through firewall logs or chasing a fault with a telecoms provider if there is a technical support service contracted precisely to do that. Their knowledge of the school is enormously valuable, but it should be used to coordinate needs and priorities, not to turn them, out of necessity, into systems administrator, network specialist and support technician all at once.

This is one of the points where specific experience in education matters particularly. Knowing the technology is not enough; you have to understand how it is used in a school and what impact each technical decision has on lessons, teachers and the running of the school.

How we approach support at PenwinEdu

At PenwinEdu we have spent years designing, installing and maintaining technology infrastructure in schools. That experience has given us knowledge of the networks and systems we use, and also of the reality our clients live with during the school year: the busiest moments, the September changes, the issues that cannot wait and the work that has to be planned so as not to interrupt lessons.

But there is a part we consider just as important that cannot be summed up in an SLA: knowing the infrastructure we are maintaining. When we look after a school's network, we know how it is built, what equipment there is, how it is connected and which services depend on each device. That cuts diagnosis times and makes it possible to take decisions with considerably more information when a problem arises.

The experience we have built up working specifically with schools is precisely what we bring to our clients. Our aim is not simply to react when something fails, but to help the infrastructure run reliably throughout the school year and to get ahead of problems, whenever possible, before they reach the classroom.

Our support service combines:

• 24/7 monitoring.
• Technical support with a response within four working hours.
• Management through a support portal.
• Service levels tailored to each school.