NSW DET begin hiring for high school laptop rollout

David M Williams
Monday, 15 June 2009 04:57

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The New South Wales Department of Education and Training (DET) has advertised for several hundred Technology Support Officers ahead of the deployment of hundreds of thousands of laptops to secondary school students later this year.

Hundreds of brand new positions are up for the taking, with advertisements like this one citing 53 roles in the Hunter/Central Coast area alone.

Every secondary school with more than 100 enrolled students in years 9 through 12 will receive a minimum of a full time Technology Support Officer. Smaller schools will be provided with a part-time officer, spending at least two days per week with them.

The vacancies have a salary ranging from $28,137 to $45,659 plus superannuation and annual leave loading, giving a maximum total remuneration package of $50,385pa.

The roles have a fixed term of three years and applications close on the 19th June. Applicants are expected to have successfully completed a computer studies program to year 12, or have demonstrated experience in computer use and understanding.

The position is part of the government’s $386m “Laptops for Learning program” which will see over 200,000 Lenovo IdeaPad S10e laptops distributed across more than 500 schools.

In addition to making the equipment available to students, IBM Australia will also be installing 802.11n wireless network equipment in each school. New network switches with power over Ethernet (PoE) will be used and the equipment will operate in the 5GHz range.

The jobs themselves are largely administrative, requiring the successful applicants to check all the IT equipment delivered to their school, logging and tracking missing or faulty equipment, issuing the equipment and tracking where things have gone as well as ongoing logging and management of repairs and faults.