A Headteacher's Experience of Project Management

I first used Tim Nicholls to project manage when I was Headteacher at Worlingworth Primary School in Suffolk. When I took over the school the ICT provision was minimal and mostly sitting under cardboard boxes! The school was also cramped and as part of a new building project we had to purchase new PCs and install the infrastructure necessary to put ICT at the forefront of teaching and learning. I needed advice and support to ensure we received good value from the new equipment and had a very stable and future-proof network and server- all on a fairly tight budget. I was also extremely busy with overseeing the construction of the school building programme and not having the technical knowledge needed  decided to needed to hand over the ICT element to someone I could trust. We received excellent advice and support from Tim Nicholls throughout the process and ended up with everything the staff had asked for and within budget. With support from Tim the school later went on to be the first school in Suffolk to obtain NaaceMark and has recently had an Ofsted Inspection where ICT was recognised as being an area of significant strength.

I have since become the Headteacher of a much larger Primary School and once again I am using Tim to project manage an extensive ICT programme. I know that the service I receive will be of the highest quality and from someone who not only has experience with the technical side of things but also can advise on effective software choices because of his educational background. The Governors and I set the budget and Tim handles the rest, giving us progress reports and updates on the spending. I will be using Tim over the next couple of years to help raise standards in ICT.

I have found that using a project manager has given us best value and the cost of the service can be, in my view, easily justified. It takes   a change in mind set to operate more on a business footing and not try to do everything ’in house’ but it saves the very time consuming business of finding ’best value’ and certainly brings down the stress levels. I would thoroughly recommend using Tim to advise and take you through your ICT projects.

Barbara McElroy

Headteacher, Sir Robert Hitcham Primary, Debenham, Suffolk.