Building stability in education through a pandemic

L3 Grayce Analyst, Jess Tarrant shares her experience on client site as part of the Change+ programme. 

I have been a part of Grayce’s Change+ Development Programme for just over 2 years and am currently an IT Service Analyst at Co-op Academies.

Working within the Central IT Team, my role is to help my client navigate Covid 19 and the consequent uplift in remote learning, ensuring students can learn inside and outside the classroom.

Resolving client challenges 

As part of my role, I create Google Classrooms for all of the academies, ensuring teachers can continue to provide remote lessons using Google Meet when their academy goes into a lockdown or allowing teachers to submit classwork/homework for students to continue their development.

I joined Co-op Academies at the beginning of the pandemic heading into the first national lockdown, meaning all schools had to work from home. This mean introducing new ways of working fast to ensure the continuation of learning, so I was tasked with providing academy staff and students with Google Accounts and Classrooms. As a result, staff and students are still using and requesting classrooms for use when children are sent home with Coronavirus or to set/complete homework and coursework.

Throughout Summer 2021, we had a new academy come on board, this was a brand new school. I acted as a Project Manager, ensuring that suppliers and contractors arrived on-site throughout August and that the ICT of the school was ready prior to the students arriving on-site in September. Within the first week of the school opening, all the ICT equipment was running and had been tested as part of my Project Management plan, and all students had all been given training on how to use laptops.

Continued development 

My client operates using the Agile Framework, which I learned from on the job experience alongside completing online training and working towards my AgilePM Qualification. I have built up my knowledge of Google Products including using the Google Apps Manager (GAM) command line, I have learnt this from other members of the team, as well as doing my own independent research.

Wraparound support 

At Grayce, you always have someone to speak to regarding any issues, whether that be your Delivery Manager (DM), the wider Delivery team, or another Grayce Analyst. Regular check-ins with your DM ensure that you are okay within yourself and also within the workplace.