Kingsland Primary School is located in the Kingstanding area of Birmingham. The school has over 340 students in classes from Nursery to Year 6. In May 2008, the old school building was completely demolished and rebuilt as part of the PPP2 Programme for Birmingham Schools. The rebuild had many benefits all round, especially for the use of ICT within school.
Kingsland were being supported by two, half-day a week technician visits meaning ICT related issues could not be completed in a sufficient amount of time. Staff were often reporting problems with many of the outdated ICT systems around school and would have to go for long amounts of time before their issues were resolved.
After arriving at the school, we performed an on-site survey to identify what the issues were effecting ICT on a day-to-day basis. The Student ICT Suite and Laptop trolley were not being maintained regularly, so updates to software were not being installed, and the general configuration was causing unnecessary performance issues. This resulted in teachers being reluctant to use the devices within their classrooms and pupils missing out on vital elements of the Computing Curriculum.
Printers were also a big problem at Kingsland prior to our arrival at the school – the configuration meant that staff were unable to ‘see’ the printers when trying to print from their computers.
As part of our service, a dedicated junior technician; Alex was supplied on-site twice a week at Kingsland. We introduced a cloud-based ticketing system so staff could quickly and easily report issues to us from their computer. This allowed us to trace patterns and consistencies within the tickets reported, as well as producing a termly report for the Head Teacher.
We resolved all the major issues that were hindering the learning at Kingsland on a day-to-day basis, so now the Student ICT Suite and Laptops are running much more efficiently, and our more frequent visits means they are kept up-to-date and maintained more regularly. Printers in the school were also re-setup so staff are no longer inconvenienced by them and can now rely on them working every time.
Our technicians also contribute and assist with the school’s on-going ICT development plan, including its growing network infrastructure and offering guidance and advise with regards to the computing curriculum.
The staff have noticed a considerable increase in reliability of the systems within school, especially in areas such as Student computers. Teachers can now rely on the equipment working as it should for their ICT Computing lessons. Staff are now reporting issues far less often than before, as many of the common issues previously have been successfully resolved.
I am pleased to say that Andy and his team at Haz Technology have exceeded my expectations. Alex, our onsite technician, has already built excellent relationships with the staff in the school. No job is ever too small and he is always prepared to go the extra mile. On several occasions, Alex has come in to solve problems, even on his days offsite.
He made the transition run seamlessly and has even added many efficient procedures to ensure our Computing department runs smoothly. He is extremely knowledgeable in this ever-changing industry and has proved invaluable in many decisions we have made from switching MIS provider to purchasing and implementing new software.