Technology is now central to how schools across the UK teach, communicate and operate. From interactive whiteboards and learning management systems to SIMS, Microsoft 365 Education and safeguarding monitoring tools, the IT estate in a modern school is complex — and when it doesn’t work properly, the impact is felt immediately in the classroom. Here are five signs that your current IT support arrangement isn’t delivering what your school needs.
1. Teachers Are Losing Lesson Time to IT Problems
2. Your IT Manager Is Overwhelmed and Reactive
Good education IT support should complement your internal resource, not dump everything on it. A managed service provider takes on the monitoring, patching, backup management and routine maintenance, freeing your IT manager to focus on projects that make a real difference to teaching and learning.
3. Safeguarding Monitoring Isn't Properly Configured
Schools have a statutory duty to keep children safe online. The DfE’s Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance is explicit about the need for appropriate filtering and monitoring of internet use on school networks. If your IT support hasn’t reviewed your content filtering policies recently, or if your monitoring tools aren’t producing meaningful reports for your Designated Safeguarding Lead, that’s a serious gap.
An Ofsted inspection can include questions about your digital safeguarding arrangements. Being unable to demonstrate that you have appropriate filtering and monitoring in place — and that someone is actually reviewing the outputs — is a risk no school should take.
4. Backup and Recovery Has Never Been Tested
Most schools have some form of backup in place. Far fewer have tested whether that backup actually works. A backup that has never been tested is not a backup — it’s an assumption. Ransomware attacks on schools have increased significantly in recent years, and the ability to recover quickly from a ransomware incident depends entirely on having verified, working backups that can be restored under pressure.
Your IT support provider should be able to show you evidence of regular backup testing and should have a documented recovery procedure. If they can’t, that’s a conversation worth having urgently.
