The government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme is to rebuild or renew every one of England’s 3,500 state secondary schools during the 15-year lifetime of the GBP45 billion initiative. Partnerships for Schools (PfS) is responsible for delivering BSF, working with local authorities and the private sector.
The British Education Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) is the Government’s lead partner in the strategic development and delivery of its estrategy for the schools and the learning and skills sectors. It works closely with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Mason Communications has been appointed to BECTA’s consultancy framework, which was set up in January 2006 to support the drive for “the transformation of learning and progress”.
Dramatic change
Although 90% of the BSF programme’s cost is construction, information and communications technology (ICT) is considered by the Government to be a vital element and the way ICT is delivered is going to change dramatically. Rather than relying on a local technician or the local authority’s IT department, a specialist managed services provider will be appointed to deliver services to all schools in a local authority’s region, as part of a consortium that will also include building contractors, facilities managers and investment companies.
Mason believes there is a danger that architectural and building designers are overlooking the educational drivers for the design of construction and ICT solutions because they are not sufficiently familiar with developments. Even recently designed schools have only taken the usual, basic aspects of ICT infrastructure into consideration, which is missing opportunities such as installing highly flexible, proven, converged IP solutions.
The ICT budget must embrace the totality of services: not just a certain number of PCs, but training, support, upgrades and the introduction of new services as technology and learning approaches evolve. However, the processes involved in purchasing a flexible managed services agreement are not well understood by the educational community where there is a widespread lack of experience in setting affordable and viable service level agreement terms, and dealing with providers.
Ignorance of the technology and its advantages has led, for instance, to the deployment of separate physical networks for administration, learning, telephony, fire detection, CCTV, energy management and other building management services in the mistaken belief that this is a safer approach. In fact, it makes no sense either financially or technologically.
The provision of ‘anywhere, anytime,’ learning capabilities and inclusiveness are central to the Government’s vision for education. They mandate the transformation of teaching and learning practices, and usher in the concept of multiple learning settings, both within the building and through connectedness to the school.
Learning settings
Learning settings include faithbased schools and schools that cater for children with special needs, as well as providing for children with conditions such as auditory impairment within mainstream schools. Within the building itself, thinking about ICT as being in a single specialist technology room is outmoded; it needs to be ubiquitous and flexible. Pupils need to have access to ICT everywhere, as an intrinsic part of most activities. This is dependent on having a sufficiently flexible infrastructure to support access, when and how it is needed.
Clearly this has huge implications for the design and deployment of ICT, but Mason has found evidence that the educators’ view of ICT’s role is not being fed into the design nor having sufficient influence on the whole process. As an example, if the building design does not include raised flooring to accommodate the cabling for both connections and power in classrooms, the only option is to use a dado-rail conduit for the cabling around the edges of the room, resulting in the pupils facing the walls with their backs to each other and the teacher.
Inclusion and connectedness to the school means that home tuition and other learning settings have to be accommodated. Children might be educated at home for a variety of reasons, including because they are the primary carers for their parents. It might be that children are absent from school because of a long stay or stays in hospital or because they belong to a travelling community.
ICT is about being connected to the wider community as well as enabling remote working for secondary school children. Other parties who are involved with the school and might be involved in using the ICT facilities include parents and local organisations such as museums or sports facilities or residents from local authority care homes.
Other parties
Some secondary schools also work closely with the primary schools that feed into them and allow the primary pupils to share their resources. Until now, this has meant that a technician pops along and helps out. The primary school has enjoyed a free of charge service, in effect. How is this going to fit into the world of managed services?
Now someone has to find money for providing services to the primary school. This needs to be recognised and factored into the plans. They haven’t got the option of buying into the entire renewal programme, but they have got a choice about buying into some services. Mason is working with schools to develop the requirements for the primary sector.
Unless the educators’ have greater input, the construction contractor will decide which equipment to buy to fulfil its obligations and there could well be a disconnect between the educators’ and contractors’ priorities and goals. Inevitably, private sector companies need to make a profit, whereas education is a public service, committed to providing high quality teaching to everyone. So although we think of the typical pupils being secondary school children between the ages of 11 and 16, other learners and parties are involved too.
Overall consultation with schools and a consensus of their views is crucial to the success of the endeavour. Mason recommends that all the parties involved should set up an ICT steering group as part of the overall project so that a common understanding can be established. The steering group should be a mixture of technical people and teachers; for example, in a project Mason is currently working on, a variety of roles are represented in the group.
This has proved the most productive way to communicate the educators’ needs to the other parties and in turn, gain understanding from the Mason experience in ICT managed services and the information that the private sector service providers need in order to offer acceptable technical solutions within the financial constraints within which all parties have to work.
