Saturday, September 09, 2006

That was the week that was ...

Are any of you old enough to remember that programme?

I thought that the week would get better as it went along. We started with about 60 of our Year 10 students having spaces in their timetable, by the end of the week none of them had a timetable! On a personal note, my week had been reasonable with no real upsets until Friday. Friday was the day that the computer network was to be taken off line while the new high speed internet link was installed.

I was ready for it; I would deal with my late arrivals and then spend the morning catching up on non-pc based tasks such as a bit of filing, impromtu meetings with various people I don't usually get to see, mixed in with a little social interaction until lunch time when the system should be back on-line. No such luck. Although the network fired back up wonderfully, and the internet connection is blisteringly fast, the information management system refused to even raise an eyelid in response to my frantic requests for access. It seems that the technicians responsible for my bit of the network decided to tinker with the virus protection programme for good measure, 'while we had the system down'! Well come 1700hrs on Friday evening (the technicians having gone home around 1530 in the fond belief that the system was up and running) I was still trying to convince it to produce class registers for Monday. As the ex-network manager I can't begin to imaging what they have done - but it probably involved a bright idea that turned out to be as dim as a TocH lamp! I gave up and printed of a Word document as a temporary solution - hopefully we can get the problem sorted so I can catch up on Monday.

One of my colleagues from the office left on Friday. She is moving to a similar post at another school, although this time a private school run efficiently along business lines. It seems quite amazing that supervisors and management at our school seem oblivious to the discontent amongst the support staff.

During the down time of the computer network I had a meeting, in my role as Safety Rep, with the H&S Administrator. This was a very productive half an hour and we should be able to move things forward at the school. Luckily, I have more training than her so I have the advantage should we need to enter into any negotiations.

AJ is back at college. Julie ran him to the bus stop on Friday, but force of habit led her straight past without stopping. A quick about turn got him there before the bus. Hopefully the enrolment season will drop off soon and she will be able to come home from work at her proper allotted time. She is so worn out this weekend that we haven't bothered taking the camper away.

I've still got Sunday to re-charge my system, then back to the front line to get the timetables, registers and absentees sorted - sounds like another busy week ahead!

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Back to School

Well, it is for some. Some of us have been there all through the summer, making sure everything is ready for the start of the new school year.

AJ is getting ready to resume his A Levels at college, Julie is enrollling new students at hers and I am preparing for my new season as Safety Rep for Unison at my school. This should be interesting as, prior to my excursion to the NHS, I was on the other side of the fence as H&S Administrator in the same establishment! Hmmm! I'm not short of the theory or its practise - but dealing with things from the staff side will need a different approach.

We've still got Sunday to go before the onslaught of the tiny sevens, and on Tuesday the rest of the rabble arrive - not least the teachers. We'll soon find out what we've forgotten, or got wrong over the break. I'm gonna put some new systems in to action to try and streamline my job, and hopefully the teachers can start using e-mail and electronic storage to reduce the amount of paper generated.

I'll let you know what happens ...