In November 2025, the DfE expanded their digital and technology standards to include IT support standards for schools and colleges.
These standards set out what your school should meet when planning, commissioning and reviewing your IT support services.
Throughout these standards, ‘IT support’ refers to the person or team responsible for making sure digital technology works reliably, is secure and stays up to date. The IT support may be internal; employed by your school or multi-academy trust (MAT), external; an IT service provided by a third party or local authority, or a hybrid mix of the two.
Throughout these standards, ‘digital technology’ refers to hardware, software and digital services connected to the internet or network in your school. This technology may be used to support teaching, learning, administration or safeguarding and may be configured or managed centrally, with support provided remotely.
Summary of recommended standards from the DfE
The DfE list 5 recommendations relating to IT support standards. The outline of these recommendations is below.
Make sure IT support helps you meet the digital and technology standards
Your IT support should have the knowledge and experience to understand the digital and technology standards. The IT support team should be making decisions and providing guidance that is geared towards being compliant with the standards.
Your SLT digital lead should consider whether your IT support provision requires professional certifications, such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) or Cyber Essentials – this is largely dependent on the scale of the support needs of your establishment. The SLT digital lead should also use the requirements when creating your digital technology strategy and school development plan, working alongside your IT support to identify technical needs and risks.
The DfE’s free plan technology for your school service helps schools track progress towards meeting the standards and provides actionable recommendations where required, which can aid buying and decision-making.
Make sure IT support actively maintains and improves your digital technology in line with your digital strategy
Your IT support should help you in various ways including meeting statutory duties, understanding what technology you have and how it’s supported, keeping your technology working reliably at all times, planning upgrades and improvements and supporting staff and students to use technology effectively in your school.
Your SLT digital lead, business manager and other SLT members should work together to establish the IT support that your school requires. Considerations when making this decision should include reviewing technology and services in use, understanding day-to day technology needs, planned upgrades and improvements, and aligning IT support with your digital technology strategy.
IT support should complete tasks such as maintaining asset registers, providing technical information to the business manager, supporting training and documentation, and keeping user and technical information up to date to inform and maintain their understanding of your IT support needs.
The services provided by IT support should keep your IT systems working reliably. Their support should include proactive tasks such as network monitoring and management, security patching and checks, helping you with cyber response plans, implementing backups, working with safeguarding leads to implement and test filtering and monitoring, managing users and policies, as well as resolving day to day IT issues.
Your IT support should also be involved in identifying when technology needs replacement, including advising on recommendations whilst considering budget implications.
Make sure your IT support is responsive and meets agreed service expectations
Your SLT digital lead should work with your IT support to set clear expectations for how quickly issues will be responded to and resolved. These expectations should also include how issues will be prioritised and how serious incidents will be escalated.
The SLT digital lead should meet with IT support regularly to review the service and ensure it is sufficiently meeting requirements. There should be multiple ways for support requests to be logged with IT support, such as phone/email, and all requests should be formally recorded and trackable. These records can be used to monitor the IT support and to identify recurring issues. In addition, these records can be used to assess the capacity of the IT support provision.
Review your IT support at least once a year
Your SLT digital lead should lead an annual review, working with the IT support, teaching staff, business manager, head teacher and school governors/board. The review should consider how well the IT support is performing, technical and staffing needs, curriculum gaps that require IT support, budgets and value for money – using all of the findings to review if any major decisions, such as changes to contracts are required.
Your SLT digital lead should share a written summary of the findings with SLT, business manager and governors/board to help them check progress against your digital strategy and make decisions about contracts, procurement and investment in IT support.
Make sure staff get clear guidance and training on using technology
All staff should be given induction training when joining your school or moving roles, followed by scheduled refresher training. Training should cover systems such as your management information system (MIS), any safeguarding and behaviour platforms and cyber security awareness training.
Training for staff may be provided by IT support, other technically qualified staff, third-party providers, or through online resources. IT support staff should also receive regular training to keep their skills and knowledge up to date.
IT support should provide clear and accessible written guidance for common systems and procedures, such as logging in, solving common problems and how to raise support requests
When should you meet the standards?
You should already be working towards meeting the IT support standards for schools and colleges, and all schools and colleges should be working towards meeting 6 core standards by 2030:
Broadband internet
Cyber security
Digital leadership and governance
Filtering and monitoring
Network switching
Wireless network
The review of your IT support should be carried out each year alongside your school or college’s wider digital strategy review.
You should already have training and guidance in place. Review them regularly to reflect new technology and other changing needs. This can be part of your annual digital technology review.
Read the standards in detail
You can find the DfE’s standards in full by following the link: IT support standards for schools and colleges
How we can help
For over 20 years, we’ve been trusted to deliver reliable IT support to schools and multi-academy trusts. We offer flexible support models to suit your needs – from dedicated onsite technical engineers to fully managed IT services, or a co-managed approach that works alongside your internal IT team.
Our experienced team includes technical support engineers, IT consultants, project managers, and a large, responsive service desk – all focused on keeping your technology running smoothly.
Get in touch to arrange an initial discussion and find out how we can support your school or trust.