IT Support Standards for Schools and Colleges Guidance (DfE Digital Standards)
The government has announced an additional Digital Standard to help with planning, commissioning and reviewing their IT support services. The services can be internal, external or a hybrid. Effective IT support is essential for maintaining technology, planning improvements and mitigating risks like outages and cyber incidents, and sits alongside the other 11 standards.
There are five main standards within this standard which schools and colleges should aim to meet:
1. Make sure IT support helps you meet the digital and technology standards
Meeting the standards is a shared responsibility across your organisation, and IT support holds a lot of the answers, as well as being able to provide guidance and advice. As recently announced, schools and colleges should be working towards meeting 6 of the core standards by 2030:
🌐Broadband internet
🧑💻Digital leadership and governance
🖥️Filtering and monitoring
🛜Network switching
🛜Wireless network
This standard is about making sure that your IT team has the necessary qualifications and experience to understand the standards and help your school or college meet them. This might include providing relevant training for your internal IT team, or checking that your IT support provider has Cyber Essentials accreditation.
2. Make sure IT support actively maintains and approves your digital technology in line with your digital strategy
This means not just having an IT technician that works through a to-do list when they come in, rather it should include:
✔️meeting statutory duties, including data protection regulations
✔️understanding what technology you have
✔️keeping your technology working reliably
✔️planning upgrades and improvements
✔️supporting staff and students to use technology effectively - so might include training staff on how to use OneDrive or SharePoint for example.
The guidance also includes details about how the IT support team should keep systems working reliably and securely.
There is clear instruction that upgrades and improvements should be planned and scheduled.
3. Make sure your IT support is responsive and meets agreed service expectations
This standard is about keeping your organisation running smoothly by minimising disruption to learning if there are problems. It also means protecting sensitive data while giving staff and students confidence when using digital technology.
It advises on setting clear expectations for IT support's responsiveness to ensure capacity in times of high demand, for example during exam periods or at the start of the year. It's important to have clear expectations about how quickly issues are resolved, how they are prioritised and how they will be escalated. There is clear guidance about how support requests should be logged and managed.
4. Review your IT support at least once a year
The guidance recommends an annual review as part of the organisation's strategy review as set out in the digital leadership and governance standard. The formal review should be led by the SLT digital lead and check what support you have, how well it's performing, and whether contracts and resources still offer value for money - value for money does not always mean the lowest cost!
The findings should be documented by the SLT digital lead and shared with SLT, the school business manager and governors/trust board to help them check against your digital strategy and make decisions about contracts, procurement and investment in IT support.
5. Make sure staff get clear guidance and training on using technology
Training staff to use technology safely, securely and effectively helps them make better use of it to support teaching, learning and school management.
Without adequate training and guidance materials, technology may be underused or misused. Inadequate training or guidance can also create safeguarding and data protection risks.
All new staff should receive induction training and should cover essential systems and cyber security training.
IT support staff should also receive regular training to keep their skills and knowledge up to date.
IT Support should develop clear and accessible guidance for common systems and procedures, such as logging in, resetting passwords, solving common problems and raising support request.
Our Key Takeaways:
🚀The SLT digital lead drives this standard forward.
🚀SLT are continually consulted so they may act.
🚀Everything in this standard should be me now by an organisation.
🚀This standard is designed to help keep data and systems secure in line with data protection guidance.
The standard was published as an update to the Digital Standards on November 17th 2025 and can be difficult to find, here is a direct link:
DPE Customers can get further help, support, guidance and access to trackers to track their progress of the DfE Digital Standards through our Knowledge Bank platform.
DPE Customers can download an overview of the DfE Digital Standards here.