Sectors / Education

IT that lets teachers teach, and IT teams sleep.

Safeguarding, MIS, classroom kit, MAT-wide identity — designed around how a school actually runs. Whether you're a single primary or a 30-school trust, the bones of a good setup are the same.

  • Since 2003
  • Pre-school to MAT
  • DfE-aligned
  • On-site or remote
23 years in schools

We've been working with schools since M-Tech was founded in 2003. Several of the founding team had worked in schools before that. It's not a sector we picked up — it's one we built the company around.

Today we work with a number of multi-academy trusts in substantial capacities, and run a number of full-outsource arrangements with M-Tech engineers embedded on site. A wider group of schools, colleges and trusts sit alongside in lighter capacities. Pre-school through to MAT, on-site through to fully remote, aligned to the DfE Cyber Security Standards for Schools and the KCSiE filtering and monitoring obligations.

Education

Since 2003. In schools every week.

The same engineering bench that designs and runs networks, identity, cyber and managed service for the rest of the business does it here — fitted to how schools actually operate. Term-time, holidays, parents' evenings, INSET days, the lot.

Inside the school

High-density Wi-Fi

Designed for classroom and assembly-hall density — surveyed, tuned and supportable. Designed once, run properly.

Safeguarding & filtering

KCSiE-aware web filtering, content monitoring and alerting (Smoothwall, Lightspeed, Securly, Senso) that satisfies the statutory obligation without turning every legitimate site into an escalation.

Devices & MDM

Intune, Apple School Manager, Jamf — chromebook, iPad or Windows estates managed at scale across primary, secondary and trust contexts.

Classroom AV & interactive displays

Promethean, ClearTouch, Clevertouch, projection — installed, calibrated and supported as part of the wider IT estate, not as a separate vendor's problem.

M365 & Google Workspace

A1, A3, A5 Microsoft 365 Education — and Google Workspace for Education where it fits — designed, licensed and operated properly across the trust.

Across the trust

Trust-wide identity

Central Entra ID, single sign-on, joiner-mover-leaver flows that close the door when staff move schools — without locking the trust office out of central admin.

Cyber aligned to DfE standards

Posture mapped to the DfE Cyber Security Standards for Schools. MFA, segmentation, backup, logging, audit. Evidence on demand for the trust board.

MIS-adjacent integration

Bromcom, SIMS, Arbor, ParentPay, FFT, Smartlog — the systems sitting alongside the MIS need to interoperate cleanly. We make them.

Hosted, on-site or co-managed

Sized to fit. Embedded engineers for trusts that need an in-school presence; remote managed service for trusts that don't; co-managed where you already have an internal team.

On-prem to cloud journey

Hosted in our UK data centres when you're ready to retire the server room, then onward to public cloud as the trust grows into it. Lift-and-shift done out of hours, on the network, with the change invisible to staff and students.

What that depth in schools actually buys you.

Since 2003, in schools every week

Institutional knowledge that doesn't come from training videos. Half-term comes round, MIS goes down on results day, parents' evening hits a Wi-Fi limit — we've seen the shape of all of it before.

On-site or remote — both

A number of multi-academy trusts work with us in substantial capacities. Separately, several full-outsource arrangements with M-Tech engineers embedded on site. Wider group supported remotely. Same engineering bench either way; sized to fit.

Trust-wide consistency

Central identity, DfE-aligned cyber, MIS-friendly integration. From one primary to a 30-school MAT, the bones of the setup are the same — only the scale changes.

  • Since 2003 in education
  • DfE Cyber Security Standards
  • KCSiE-aware filtering
  • DBS-Enhanced — every employee
  • ISO 27001
  • Cyber Essentials Plus + IASME
Trust-wide consolidation

Five things a trust does better by sharing.

For multi-academy trusts, the case for consolidating IT across the estate is rarely about the technology — it's about cost, resilience and getting the same outcome for less effort. Reduced environmental footprint, lower energy cost, lower capital expenditure, fewer suppliers, more options for business continuity. The places this lands hardest:

Shared telephonyOne phone system across the trust — central number routing, call overflow between schools, one bill, fewer suppliers.
Shared licensingMicrosoft 365, Google Workspace, safeguarding and AV licences consolidated to trust-wide agreements. Less procurement, sharper unit cost.
Shared connectivityA trust-grade network spine connecting school sites — sized properly, peered properly, supported as one estate rather than a dozen contracts.
Shared infrastructureServers, storage, identity and backup hosted centrally in our UK data centres — schools get a clean network drop instead of a server room to look after.
Shared safeguardingFiltering, monitoring and alerting joined up across the trust so a safeguarding lead sees a coherent picture, not seven separate dashboards.

M-Tech were responsible for helping us to achieve an IT system that other schools envy.

Voice of the clientIT Director · Alexandra Park School
What schools and trusts say
Fast, professional, painless and affordable. The migration was done in the evenings on our network. Zero downtime — staff and students completely unaware of the change.
Greg StolarekCavendish School
The strongest aspect of the service is our on-site support. Our move to M-Tech has been transformative in terms of user and teacher experience.
Deputy HeadCathedral School, Cardiff
Instrumental in helping the Trust achieve trust-wide connectivity and collaborative working. Hugely knowledgeable, diligent and professional throughout.
Network ManagerBourne Education Trust
What could have been an incredibly stressful process — moving and upgrading our entire system — has gone unbelievably smoothly.
IT ManagerFalkner House School
How to engage

Sized to the shape of the trust.

Most schools start with an audit; most trusts start with a single school or a refresh project and grow the relationship from there. We'll quote on what you've actually got, not what a generic brochure assumes.

  1. School or trust audit

    Two-week fixed-fee read on the existing estate — Wi-Fi, cyber posture, M365 tenant, MIS interfaces, suppliers, contracts. Findings, gaps and a closure plan in plain English.

  2. Refresh project

    Wi-Fi refresh, M365 migration, cyber-hardening pass, MAT-wide consolidation. Fixed-scope, fixed-price, scheduled around the school calendar.

  3. Co-managed

    We sit alongside your in-house IT — the day-job stays with them; we handle the heavy lifting, the security baseline, the on-call.

  4. Fully outsourced

    Embedded engineers in the trust office, or in individual schools, plus the wider M-Tech engineering bench behind them. Sized to the trust.

FAQs

Questions we hear from school and trust leads.

Do you provide on-site engineers in schools?
Yes. We run a number of full-outsource arrangements with M-Tech engineers embedded full-time — sometimes in the trust office, sometimes in individual schools, sometimes rotating across the estate depending on what works. The wider M-Tech engineering bench and SOC sit behind them. Across the multi-academy trusts we work with in substantial capacities, the engagement model varies — sized to fit each one. We can do that, run the same service remotely, or split it co-managed alongside your existing internal IT.
Do you align to the DfE Cyber Security Standards for Schools?
Yes. The DfE has written to school leaders multiple times now, pressing the importance of reviewing existing cyber defences and taking real steps to protect networks — and schools and trusts continue to hit the headlines after ransomware incidents. Our standard cyber posture for trusts maps directly to the DfE standards — MFA, segmentation, backup, logging, supplier risk, the full set. Findings and evidence presented in a format the trust board and DfE audits can use.
Are M-Tech staff DBS checked?
Yes — every single one. Every M-Tech employee holds an Enhanced DBS check and stays on the DBS Update Service, not just the engineers who visit schools. Office-based staff, support staff, management — everyone. We think it's the right standard for a company that spends this much time inside schools.
How do you handle KCSiE filtering and monitoring obligations?
We work with the established filtering and monitoring platforms (Smoothwall, Lightspeed, Senso and the like) depending on the trust's existing setup or preference. The point isn't which tool — it's that filtering, monitoring, escalation paths and evidence are joined up properly so safeguarding leads get the alerts they need without drowning in noise.
Can we buy you through JISC or RM frameworks?
Yes — and through Crown Commercial Service for the public-sector buyers. We're happy to be procured via whichever framework your trust standardises on. See Accreditations for the full set.
Pre-school to MAT — same approach?
Same engineering bench, sized to fit. A 60-pupil pre- school doesn't need MAT-wide identity, but it does need the same standards-aligned cyber and the same safeguarding rigour. We scale what we deliver, not what we deliver to.
Can you take over from our incumbent?
Yes — it's a common starting point. We begin with a documented posture review of the current estate, map what stays and what changes, and bring it onto our baseline at a pace that suits the school year. Handover from incumbent suppliers is part of the work, not a separate scramble.
Our hardware refresh is coming up. Do we have to buy new servers?
Often, no. Several of the trusts we work with have used the refresh moment to retire the on-prem footprint instead — we lift-and-shift the remaining workloads into our UK data centres (mtech.cloud), then carry the trust further into public cloud at the pace it's ready for. Cutovers are run out of hours, on the network — staff and students typically don't notice the change happened.
/ Start a conversation

Tell us what you're trying to do.

Whatever the shape of your team or your stack — multi-site, lean on IT, or somewhere in the middle — we'll listen first, ask the right questions, and tell you honestly how we'd approach it.

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