blog Believe it or not, it’s a pretty hard life being an IT support officer for a school. You have demanding teachers to deal with, students who often seem intent on breaking into the IT infrastructure you’re supposed to be maintaining, and of course there’s always a problem attracting the right level of funding to do what you need. That’s why we’re not happy to hear from The Register that the NSW Department of Education and Department may be about to sack some 610 technical support officers. The publication reports (we recommend you click here for the full article):
“The New South Wales Department of Education and Communities has written to staff, advising them that 610 Technical Support Officers (TSOs) in the State’s schools may lose their jobs in March if the federal Digital Education Revolution program is not offered renewed funding.”
It’s hard not to be incredibly cynical about this move. This is precisely the kind of situation which many commenters warned of when Kevin Rudd’s Labor administration first kicked off the Digital Education Revolution program to put laptops in schools (heard of the term ‘Total Cost of Investment’? Yeah.). It should be obvious by now that you can’t just hand out IT infrastructure in schools and expect it to function forever; you need resources to help support and maintain it. Well, many of those resources may just be about to disappear, leaving schools to come closer to fending for themselves. Great. I’m sure that will work out just hunky dory.