Mt Barker Community College’s Jason Thomas honoured at WA Technical Support in Schools Association awards

A tech guru responsible for keeping the devices and networks of a Great Southern school ticking has been lauded as the best in regional WA.

Jason Thomas took out the title of the regional technical support staff member of the year at the 2025 WA Technical Support in Schools Association awards night on June 5.

Mr Thomas, who serves as network support officer at Mt Barker Community College, said he was honoured to receive the surprise award.

“I’d been to the WATSSA conference a couple of times but never bothered with the dinner, so when my boss was telling me I had to go, I was like ‘yeah alright’ and then I got an email come through that I was a finalist and I understood why,” he said.

The technician has worked at the school since 2017 and has racked up a decent resume of achievements including putting every classroom’s interactive panel into a remote management system, upgrading the school’s network and half of its wireless access points and creating four new fibre runs.

He also manages the school’s 160 iPads, 480 computers, many phones and deals with any IT queries any of its 650 students and teachers may have.

“I get to play with different technologies and research little projects to enhance the school,” he said.

“I’m about to work on adding our lab of 25 Mac desktops for media studies into our mobile device management solution that we already use for managing the primary school iPads.

“(It will) allow me to fine tune what functionalities are and aren’t allowed on the devices based on their location in the school, as well as deploying programs and apps to them.”

“There’s always something to do.”

The school’s manager of corporate services Cecilia Douglas and principal Leanne Prior nominated Mr Thomas for the award.

Ms Douglas said he has been instrumental in ensuring not only Mt Barker Community College’s IT is looked after, but also the devices of several smaller nearby schools who don’t have a designated technician.

“Jason is always willing to help and support both the school community and the general community and always does so in a friendly and helpful manner,” she said.

“Without an IT staff member here we wouldn’t have a school that works, so Jason just makes sure our everything runs smoothly.”