The old stereotype of the school IT manager is a beloved one: that all-knowing person who sits in the hallowed control room, managing servers and occasionally dealing with a panicked teacher who has locked themselves out of their laptop two minutes before a lesson with those tricky Year 8s.
But schools are very different places now, technology-wise, and so a new role is coming to the fore: the chief technology officer (CTO). As the multi-academy trust (MAT) revolution continues, more and more MATs are looking at their use of technology in a more high-level way. According to James Browning, chief operating officer for AET, that means “consistently considering tech and data as a strategic enabler to schools”.
“It’s about making technology a peer to other big-ticket enablers, such as people, finances, estates, governance and, of course, education pedagogy,” he says.
“And day-to-day, this means consistently considering how it can fundamentally support school strategic objectives such as school improvement, teacher effectiveness, pupil experience, parental engagement and innovation. It’s about acknowledging that tech is more than just a hygiene factor and has so much more to offer.”
A strategic approach
And although he hasn’t seen “more than a handful” of such tech leadership roles appear so far, he continues, in the wake of the pandemic, there has been a marked increase in the importance placed on tech in the schools’ strategies.
“There are other ways to achieve this than having a dedicated CTO, particularly in smaller schools that would find it hard to justify the cost of funding a dedicated role,” he says. “This might be, for instance, by working with a partner organisation - which there has been a real rise in - collaborating with larger entities, or allowing passionate leaders to make this a part of their day-to-day considerations alongside another role.”
Ian Tufts has been in the technology sector for more than 30 years, from a start in the Ministry of Defence via a master’s in computer science through to edtech. He is currently CTO of the ParentPay Group, with part of his role overseeing the technology that powers school information management systems (SIMS).
“It was during my master’s in computer science that I first got involved in education,” he says. “As part of my studies, I got involved in computer-based training and writing online computer-based training courses. My sister was a physics teacher at the time and the software that I wrote for her school was used for about 10 years.
“My view is the education sector has still to be transformed in the way a lot of other industries have. It was nearly 30 years ago that I first got involved with computing in the education sector, and there hasn’t really been a huge transformation since.”
There has, he concedes, been advances in discrete systems that help schools, but no “seamless, integrated, wholescale transformation of the education sector”.
“There have been lots of niche improvements that haven’t been holistically imposed together,” he continues. “There’s no doubt about it, that’s the journey that I’m pushing as CTO, but it’s not going to be a quick fix because we’re not yet on the same trajectory as other industries.”
Trusts leading the way
So, how does he think this shift will come? He says the move to a MAT-led system is expediting the process, particularly through the appointment of CTOs.
“I know there are a lot of leaders, especially MAT leaders, that can see the value of the role,” Tufts continues. “It means you’ve got people who can take time out and think about what the future application of the adoption is.
“Whereas when you’ve got teachers or your IT manager within a single school, their primary focus is on educating children, and rightly so. But CTOs can take a step back and see how things can be done better, asking questions like how to free teachers’ time up so that they’re doing less and less administration and focusing on learning.”
For James Browning, that process will involve a shift in the way data is used in schools, particularly around creating joined-up systems to make the most of the vast amounts of information created there.
“Schools are incredibly data-rich and have been for many years, even if they don’t know it,” he says. “Student data - from attendance to behaviour, attainment and much more - is recorded as a matter of course. The difference emerging in recent years is a more data-literate attitude to using this data to drive decision making, and I absolutely think this will keep increasing.
“Providers of systems are getting more sophisticated and, providing they work together, this will provide a platform opportunity for schools to spend less time recording and gathering data and more time understanding and using it to drive improvements.”
But for this to happen, these CTOs will need to come from somewhere, and Browning predicts that this could mean an influx of tech talent from other industries.
“As the sector matures and the need to consider tech strategically becomes the norm, as opposed to something exceptional, I think leaders from adjacent spaces, such as health, could be the prime candidates for future academy trust CTOs,” he says.
“I came from 15 years working for an edtech provider and this provided me with a great grounding of tech knowledge and education empathy. I could also see appeal to experienced CTOs in the latter part of their career, perhaps looking to take on a role with greater public impact: there really could be no better role for a technology specialist that is looking to do this.”
