#EdTech - September Was a Nightmare. Let's Make Sure Next Year Isn't.

September is always chaotic in schools. But you're not alone if your IT completely fell apart this year.

Tickets are piling up with no response. Staff were locked out on their first day back. The helpdesk is drowning. Equipment that should've been ready wasn't. And meanwhile, you're trying to start the school year while everything's on fire.

Sound familiar?

Why Does This Keep Happening?

Honestly? Because most school IT systems are held together with duct tape and prayers.

They work fine in November, and they're alright in March. But when September 2nd hits, and everyone needs everything all at once, the whole thing collapses.

It could be that your systems are old and passed ir, that your processes haven't changed since 2015, that you don't have enough people, or that all of the above are true.

Whatever it is, limping through another year hoping it'll be better next time isn't a plan.

So What Now?

You've got two options. Do nothing and have the exact same disaster in ten months. Or actually figure out what went wrong and fix it while things are calm.

That means sitting down with everyone who felt the pain—your IT team, teachers who couldn't log in, admin staff who fielded the complaints—and being brutally honest about what broke and why.

Then you need to fix it. Properly. Not with sticking plasters.

What Might That Actually Look Like?

Depends on what's broken, obviously. But here are some things that usually help:

Process reviews – A lot of September chaos comes from processes that made sense years ago but don't anymore. Who approves what? How do requests get prioritised? What actually needs sign-off and what's just bureaucracy? Strip out the nonsense and you might find your team can get twice as much done.

Proper project planning for the summer – September doesn't sneak up on anyone. It happens every year. So why are schools still winging it? If you map out what needs doing over summer—new starters, system updates, equipment prep—and actually plan it like a project with deadlines and owners, you stand a chance of being ready.

Better ticket management – If your ticketing system is basically email with extra steps, or tickets vanish into a black hole, that's fixable. Sometimes it's the system. Sometimes it's how you're using it. Either way, people need to know their issue's been logged and someone's actually dealing with it.

Capacity planning – Maybe you just don't have enough hands on deck when things get ramped up. Could you bring in temporary support for September? Could you train a few extra staff to handle the basics? Could you stagger things so that not everything happens in the first week?

System upgrades – Yeah, this one costs money. But if your servers can't handle everyone logging in at once, or your WiFi falls over when all the iPads connect, you've got to bite the bullet at some point. Better to plan it now than have it forced on you mid-crisis.

Communication plans—Half the frustration in September is people not knowing what's happening. A simple communication plan—who tells staff what, when, and how—can prevent a lot of the panic and repeated questions that bog everything down.

We Can Help

Sometimes you’re just too busy to unpick the mess, or the IT team runs rings around you with jargon and reasons why.

We do audits that actually mean something. Not the type where someone observes for a day, writes a 50-page report full of corporate waffle, and nothing changes.

We'll look at what's genuinely broken, where the pressure points are, and what you can realistically do about it. Then we'll help you put together a proper plan to fix it—whether that's streamlining processes, better training your IT team, planning your summer work properly, or upgrading systems that are past their sell-by date.

Bottom Line

September 2026 is coming whether you're ready or not.

If this year was awful and you don't want to do it all again, give us a shout. We'll help you determine what needs sorting and how to actually sort it.

No corporate waffle. Just straight talk and practical solutions.