Paul Shoesmith

News that the Department for Education has agreed to continue to fund schools sector access to the JANET network for 2011/12 somehow passed me by when it was announced a couple of weeks ago.  This is a great example of how procuring something at scale offers fantastic value and quality.  Schools who use an Internet Service Provider that makes use of JANET for the Internet "transit" (route to the Internet) benefit through reduced Internet costs as a result of JANET's buying power and technical expertise.  This means most schools that use their local authority or Regional Broadband Consortium for their Internet connection.

It was good to see the James Review, published this week, referring to the need for more effective policy on ICT in schools. As The Guardian reported on Tuesday: "The report ...says the education department needs to ensure a "clear menu" of core and additional regional broadband services for schools, so that schools select and pay only for the services they need. It calls for a strategy to get best value from existing public sector broadband networks, which would include establishing a minimum bandwidth standard of 10Mbps for primary schools and 100Mbps for secondary schools. "On procurement, the education department should set up a central framework for schools management information systems and the exisiting ICT services framework, or similar approaches, should be used for all large scale ICT purchasing. "It also says that a web based price comparison catalogue should be developed to help schools to get the best price for equipment." The report re...