WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community
2009 – 2012
Version 1
Authors: David Wilde
Debbie Wisdom
Kevin Mitchell
Irene McWilliams
Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Executive Summary 5
3. Background 6
4. Governance 7
5. Effective Communications 8
6. Facilitation of Learning 10
7. Administration, Effectiveness and Good Practice 11
8. Maximising Financial Resources & Reducing Costs 12
9. Summary and Conclusion 13
Appendix A 14
Appendix B 15
Appendix C 16
Delivery Action Plan 17
1. Introduction
In July 2008, David Wilde was appointed as Chief Information Officer (CIO) to Westminster City Council (WCC), and as part of the reorganisation of Information Services (IS) department, the Westminster Education Information and Communications Technology (WEdICT) team joined the IS department. The CIO role, as well as ensuring ‘fit for purpose’ ICT systems to support the strategic objective of ‘Living City’, is to ensure the inclusion of all service providers in the pursuit of a cohesive Westminster network that enables all stakeholders, including Schools, to access information and online services in a timely and appropriate forum.
In September 2009 an independent Education Commission reported its findings looking at ways to improve the attainment and achievement of Westminster’s young people. http://www.westminster.gov.uk/workspace/assets/publications/wec_report_september_09-1254389992.pdf. The Commission made ten key recommendations, four of which have implications for ICT and the development, and subsequent agreement of this strategy will become an ICT enabler to support the realisation of solutions to these recommendations:
Recommendation 4: Work with schools on extended services
Recommendation 5: Facilitate improved information sharing at point of transition
Recommendation 8: Increase its capacity to share best practice and resources
Recommendation 9: Access information from academies
This strategy aligns with the Westminster ICT Strategy 2008 – 2012 and the proposed outcomes and delivery plan are in line with government and local authority priorities and budgetary requirements.
This document is organic and will evolve as requirements, priorities and technologies change.
Vision
There will be a learning community working together to raise attainment and improve children’s life chances utilising cost effective and appropriate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions.
2. Executive Summary
To build on the excellent work of Schools and the Local Authority, a holistic approach to the use of technology to support learning will benefit all stakeholders in the delivery of services to our customers. This ICT Strategy for a Learning Community draws together the stakeholders and their resources to realise the full potential of ICT in that support whilst also benefitting from WCC’s existing ICT resources.
A draft strategy was produced and circulated to Head Teachers and Local Authority Officers and a series of consultation workshops were held to engage and collate information. This document now brings together the outcomes from those discussions and provides a platform for future collaborative working.
This document has been divided into four sections with outcomes as follows:
Effective Communications
Schools will use their resources to communicate internally and externally in an efficient and effective manner using existing and new technologies.
Facilitation of Learning
Schools will facilitate learning both within schools and at home in a managed learning environment.
Administration, Effectiveness and Good Practice
Schools will utilise their resources to best effect to support the learning function of the school.
Maximising Financial Resources and Reducing Costs
Schools will maximise their financial resources to manage the increasing demands on budget.
Within these four sections, specific areas of development have been identified (see Appendix A). These have now been drawn together to provide a delivery plan (see attached Delivery Plan). The communication of this plan and its progress will be achieved through a collaboration site, newsletters and stakeholder engagement.
3. Background
Westminster is a mix of Community and Voluntary Aided Schools as follows:
V1 2 of 19 May 2010
WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
40 Primary Schools
4 Nurseries
2 Specials
1 Pupil Referral Unit
5 Secondary Schools
4 Academies
V1 2 of 19 May 2010
WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
With a school population of approximately:
V1 2 of 19 May 2010
WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
10,600 primary pupils
5,300 secondary pupils
160 nursery pupils
140 special school pupils
V1 2 of 19 May 2010
WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
1,198 full time equivalent teaching staff
Current In-House Support Arrangements
The WEdICT team have supported primary schools since 2000 in their use of SIMS (Schools Information Management System) to record pupil data and submit statutory returns, also supporting the hardware and networking infrastructure. Additionally the WEdICT Team support the curriculum network in 21 schools to ensure ICT is accessible to pupils. This service is provided through a Help Desk and on-site support. This is funded by a service level agreement (SLA) being presented and Schools buying services through a fair funding arrangement.
London Grid for Learning (LGfL)
LGfL is a London-wide fibre optic network providing electronic services to Schools; these include internet access, email, web hosting, anti-virus solution and safe filtering software. In addition, LGfL provides a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in the form of the London Managed Learning Environment (MLE), based on Fronter, as well as educational consultancy and learning/curriculum resources.
Building Schools for the Future (BSF)
Building Schools for the Future is the government’s national programme to transform education for all secondary school students. In Westminster over £152 million is being invested in new or refurbished buildings and ICT for all six secondary schools, one Academy, two special schools and the Beachcroft Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). (See Appendix B for further details). £14 million of the £152 million programme has been put aside for ICT, both to modernise schools’ ICT infrastructure and to enable them to refresh their ICT assets and systems over the lifetime of the contract (Sept 2014).
As part of the BSF ICT Programme, the 10 Westminster schools participating in the scheme will receive their ICT managed service from Ramesys (see Appendix C for further details) as from each school's contractual commencement date which links in with the completion of the majority of that school's Design & Build work.
The managed service e.g. logging calls, proactive monitoring, etc., is run from Ramesys' Service Centre in Nottingham, with technicians on the ground, either school-based or allocated across Westminster, fixing faults against an agreed SLA.
Current use of ICT
All Westminster Schools use SIMS to varying degrees. Academies use a variety of Management Information Systems (MIS). For approximately six years, primary schools, and some secondaries, have been using an email system that has downloaded emails to a local Outlook file from a London Grid for Learning (LGfL) mail server. Previously, schools had full access to Westminster City Council’s intranet (the Wire) until increased security, required for the Council to be able to connect to health and central government ICT services, removed schools’ access. This was partially resolved for primary, special and nursery schools.
Supporting wider aims
The ICT strategy supports the wider aims of the Schools Effectiveness Group (SEG) Primary and Secondary strategy plans in respect of moving to building a 21st century schools system.
Stakeholders
Stakeholders have been identified as follows:
V1 2 of 19 May 2010
WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
Pupils
Parents/Guardians
Head Teachers/Teachers
Children’s Services
Information Services
Relationship Managers
Building Schools for the Future (BSF)
Councillors
School Governors
Private Schools
Administrators/Teaching Support
Suppliers
Partnership for Schools (PfF)
DCFS
V1 2 of 19 May 2010
WCC An ICT Strategy for a Westminster Learning Community Version 1
4. Governance
Executive: Angela Drizi, Director of Schools and Learning, Westminster City Council
Strategic lead for information governance and ICT service provision:
David Wilde, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Westminster City Council
Senior User: Primary Heads Executive and Local Education Partnership (LEP)
5. Effective Communications
Connectivity
To help Westminster schools, the local authority and partners to communicate effectively and work flexibly, connectivity between us needs to improve. Ensuring the correct systems and infrastructure is in place to enable this is vital to the continuing education of young people in Westminster. To address this, schools will be provided with access to corporate resources by making use of the Citrix Access Gateway (CAG). CAG is a secure communications system using “two factor” authentication i.e. password and a Virtual Private Network (VPN) token (as pictured above). This is currently in the pilot stage and being rolled out to all schools. As part of the CAG project each school will be provided with two VPN tokens and two “secure” Westminster email accounts enabling secure communication between schools and the local authority. This will also provide the opportunity to utilise other corporate systems, such as the Intranet (WIRE – Westminster Information Resource) and WIMS (Westminster Information Management System). (Delivery Action Plan No. 1)
Information Sharing
ContactPoint, the national database, will build a picture of the support agencies that have been involved with any young person to ensure a holistic picture of that young person’s support network. Westminster City Council is currently working on an ICT solution that will combine four data sources to provide a data stream to the ContactPoint database. The data sources are: Capita One (education management system), Swift (social care system), Careworks (youth offending) and Connexions (advice agency for 13-19 year olds). For Schools to gain access to ContactPoint there is a need to comply with criteria prescribed by the DCSF in relation to network and computer security. (Delivery Action Plan No 2)
Unified Communications
Shared calendars and a scalable email solution for Schools are available from London Grid for Learning (LGfL). This service is provided by Atomwide as part of the LGfL subscription and is being implemented by the WEdICT team, to be completed by June 2010. (Delivery Action Plan No. 3) Further opportunities can then be explored, including instant messaging, discussion forums and video conferencing.
BSF schools will use Ramesys’ centrally-hosted Microsoft Exchange email system rather than the one provided by LGfL – over time, we will look for opportunities to merge/link these separate email systems.
Telephony (Primary Schools)
The delivery of telephony in primary schools has evolved on a piecemeal basis over time and is separate from provision of data networks at school sites. The systems used for telephony in schools are provided by a mix of suppliers, offering varying functionality, and have been in situ for different periods of time. The majority of primary schools have at least one telephone number on the Council’s corporate 7641 telephony service e.g. 020 7641 1234. In some cases primary schools entirely use the 7641 service, others link the 7641 service onto a smaller telephony switch which they own and manage, that also has other telephone numbers at the school and the remainder have other arrangements. As technology has evolved telephony and data systems have become integrated, utilising a single shared infrastructure. More recently it has become possible to integrate Mobile Voice Telephony into this environment and create a seamless communication path between Fixed and Mobile telephony, the common term being Fixed Mobile Communications (FMC). There are considerable financial and operational benefits to convergence which schools can take advantage of.
Westminster City Council has deployed an FMC solution corporately and is offering this solution to schools as a replacement for the existing 7641 service provisioned originally by British Telecom which must be phased out within 2010. (Delivery Action Plan No. 4) A pilot phase which delivers the Council’s new corporate telephony service commenced in March 2010 at St. Luke’s CE Primary School. Use will be made of the existing LGfL connections into schools to provision the new Westminster Council Corporate telephony service. Such a deployment will not only give cost benefits but also a more co-ordinated management for telephony in the schools community.
BSF Telephony
Ramesys provides a Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) telephony solution as part of the BSF managed service (St. Marylebone and Pimlico Academy are currently live with this system). However, the Council corporate service may offer better value for money and this is being explored with the schools. Costings have been provided to the schools, and we are in the process of comparing the two solutions and determining whether schools going live in Summer 2010 could use the Council corporate solution instead of Ramesys. (Delivery Action Plan No. 5)
It is unlikely that St. Marylebone, who has already fully implemented the BSF Telephony solution, will be able to change over to the Council service on grounds of cost and return on investment although the infrastructure rolled-out as part of BSF will support such a change at some time in the future. Pimlico Academy, who has only partially implemented the Ramesys solution, may be able to move over to the Council service (subject to technical and timing issues being resolved).
6. Facilitation of Learning
The ICT strategy for a Westminster Learning Community will harness technology through the Managed Learning Environment (MLE) to support and extend teaching and learning in partnership with Schools.
Managed Learning Environment (MLE)
The MLE will enable teachers and pupils to gain access to online learning space and by September 2012 for parental access to school based information (September 2011 for secondaries). Whilst the BSF ICT Contract does not explicitly state that BSF Schools must use Fronter as their Managed Learning Environment, there is an implicit understanding in that the Schools' contribution contains an element to pay for Fronter's annual charge, as well as central funds to integrate Fronter with Ramesys' managed service.
There is a variety of opinions on the performance of Fronter and a study evaluating the effectiveness and current usage within Schools would provide the information to establish whether this system remains “fit-for-purpose” and represents “value for money”. (Delivery Action Plan No.6) The MLE will be able to support different types of information, such as school life and events; learning and achievement; urgent and sensitive information.