Achieving the right results for Sidcot School
A £1 million-plus investment project is delivering major improvements in education technology for one independent school. We look at how Edwards and Platt achieved top marks for implementation.
Catering for some 530 pupils with ages ranging from three to 18, Sidcot School in North Somerset is a successful and respected independent Quaker boarding school.
Regularly achieving academic success – 96% of students gained at least five A* to C grades at GCSE last summer – Sidcot prides itself on being a non-selective school. With one teacher for every 10 pupils, the emphasis is on individual attention and it consistently achieves strong results, ranking consistently with some of the best selective schools in the South West.
As good as its results are however, one area of the school which required urgent attention in 2009 was its ICT provision, a fact brought home to Christine Edwards, the school’s former director of finance with responsibility for ICT, when she was on holiday in Peru.
“I was halfway up the Inca Trail when I picked up an email saying the school’s IT system had been down for several days,” she said. “We had known for a while it needed an overhaul and this was the catalyst for realising we had to do something radical to improve technology facilities for the school as a whole, the teachers, pupils and parents.”
On return, her solution was to set up a high level working party to tackle the problem – including governors, senior staff members, administrators and teachers – and ask education technology specialists Edwards and Platt to undertake an in-depth audit of existing systems before producing a strategy plan.
The approach was two pronged: the first priority being to stabilise and strengthen existing capacity, and the second to prepare a vision for future ICT at Sidcot.
Christine acknowledges that, like many smaller schools in the independent sector, Sidcot couldn’t boast the investment in technology that many state schools have enjoyed, but she says that the small class sizes and a more “old fashioned” one-to-one approach to teaching has meant pupils learn in a much more traditional way, rather than each simply having access to their own PC.
“Prior to this project, we had two IT suites, some data projectors for teaching and some computers in our library, but it’s fair to say we hadn’t had a great deal of investment in IT in the past and we hadn’t embraced technology as much as we realised we need to now,” she said.
“Bringing in Edwards and Platt enabled us to take a much broader view of what was required, they helped us plan for the future and at the same time, introduced some interim measures to help improve the stability of the system in the short term.”
The audit process looked at existing equipment and the network infrastructure, and was underpinned by an awayday with the school’s senior management team to find out what they wanted to achieve through the use of IT.
“It was really important for us to understand what the school required and to make sure they understood what we could deliver,” said Mark Platt, co-founder of the partnership with John Edwards. “The awayday was extremely useful because the management team needed to buy-in to the process and we were able to show them the different stages of the project – for example some quick changes to improve facilities – and how each step of the programme would bring them further towards their final goal.”
The resulting outline ICT strategy plan set out core goals to be achieved for different sectors and enabled the school to have three distinct sets of projects across a detailed timeline.
At the heart of these was a very simple mandate: “To have ICT that just works: support, training, commitment and partnerships”, while other goals included providing anytime, anywhere secure access to enable everyone to carry out their jobs or to learn more effectively; to ensure the appropriate resources and tools were always available; and for all users to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to ensure better use of ICT.
The first stage of the programme included practical steps to upgrade the infrastructure and technical facilities, additional training for the in-house IT team and the purchase of additional computers. In addition, it also meant enlisting an external contractor to handle day-to-day ICT maintenance.
The second and third phases will include provision of ongoing support services, further training and investment in new equipment and the launch of ICT awards for both staff and pupils for innovative use of new technology.
“The plan made it quite obvious to us that we needed to outsource our IT to people who could bring in a range of skills on an ongoing basis, Edwards and Platt have been helping us with the procurement process and that’s been extremely useful,” said Christine.
“Our most important driver has been to make sure that the core system is robust, so we have been constantly reviewing what has been achieved so far, and what more needs to be done.
“There are lots of ways we can use IT for the benefit of everyone and this is only the start. The initial phase of the plan gave us a ‘quick hit’ when we bought new PCs and data projectors for the teachers, now we are working on linking the various boarding houses, adding wireless networks and upgrading our broadband connections – there’s still a long way to go but there’s a real air of optimism because everyone can see that things are being delivered and can make a real difference.
“Once we have done that, we will be focusing more on how the teachers use IT in teaching and looking at what we feel is appropriate for our school environment. We don’t believe we should be going ‘helter skelter’ towards the state school style of each student having a PC because it is our style of personal teaching that is our USP and really makes Sidcot different.”
As well as looking at how teachers use IT, Christine says the upgraded facilities have already started to improve the way the school interacts with parents, many of whom are overseas.
Weekly and termly newsletters, reports and bulletins can now all be sent electronically and the eventual plan is for parents to be able to log on to the school’s website for fast access to information about events. The school’s recently built new arts centre will also feature as, once broadband facilities are in place, staff will be able to record drama productions and enable parents to watch online.
For pupils, the biggest bonus to date has been the wireless networking which enables many of them, especially those with their own laptops, to access their schoolwork whenever they want to.
“Without the help and support of Edwards and Platt we wouldn’t have been able to gather our thoughts into such a coherent plan,” she added. “We knew what was wrong and we knew roughly where we wanted to be but we had no idea of what the journey would be like to get us there.
“Bringing in external experts with a broad range of IT skills made all the difference because they were able to see things that would have been impossible for us to think about in-house. They helped us to define where we needed to get to and, by doing the audit and talking to the governors and everyone in the working party, they provided an unbiased view of the action and input that was required. Now we have the confidence that, with their ongoing support, we’re well on the road.
“Their education background and experience was crucial to the success of the project, especially because it was very important that the teachers embraced what we were doing and they could see that John and Mark knew what they were talking about.
“In addition, they were excellent at documenting and preparing the reports and tables that we all needed to understand the process – there were a lot of us on the working group and it was very important for everyone to know what was happening at any one point.”
For the Edwards and Platt team, the ongoing experience has underlined the importance of persuading schools in the independent sector to put more emphasis on their ICT requirements.
“As Christine has said, they knew where they wanted to be, but they didn’t know how to get there,” continued Mark Platt. “Our knowledge within the education sector helped us understand their requirements and deliver what they wanted.
“We were able to help them define their priorities, both in terms of the teaching requirements and the commercial needs of the school, and help them see how best these could be achieved, partly through improved use of in-house facilities and partly through outsourced services.
“It was a very exciting project to be involved with and the feedback and success has been very gratifying.”
Catering for some 530 pupils with ages ranging from three to 18, Sidcot School in North Somerset is a successful and respected independent Quaker boarding school.
Regularly achieving academic success – 96% of students gained at least five A* to C grades at GCSE last summer – Sidcot prides itself on being a non-selective school. With one teacher for every 10 pupils, the emphasis is on individual attention and it consistently achieves strong results, ranking consistently with some of the best selective schools in the South West.
As good as its results are however, one area of the school which required urgent attention in 2009 was its ICT provision, a fact brought home to Christine Edwards, the school’s former director of finance with responsibility for ICT, when she was on holiday in Peru.
“I was halfway up the Inca Trail when I picked up an email saying the school’s IT system had been down for several days,” she said. “We had known for a while it needed an overhaul and this was the catalyst for realising we had to do something radical to improve technology facilities for the school as a whole, the teachers, pupils and parents.”
On return, her solution was to set up a high level working party to tackle the problem – including governors, senior staff members, administrators and teachers – and ask education technology specialists Edwards and Platt to undertake an in-depth audit of existing systems before producing a strategy plan.
The approach was two pronged: the first priority being to stabilise and strengthen existing capacity, and the second to prepare a vision for future ICT at Sidcot.
Christine acknowledges that, like many smaller schools in the independent sector, Sidcot couldn’t boast the investment in technology that many state schools have enjoyed, but she says that the small class sizes and a more “old fashioned” one-to-one approach to teaching has meant pupils learn in a much more traditional way, rather than each simply having access to their own PC.
“Prior to this project, we had two IT suites, some data projectors for teaching and some computers in our library, but it’s fair to say we hadn’t had a great deal of investment in IT in the past and we hadn’t embraced technology as much as we realised we need to now,” she said.
“Bringing in Edwards and Platt enabled us to take a much broader view of what was required, they helped us plan for the future and at the same time, introduced some interim measures to help improve the stability of the system in the short term.”
The audit process looked at existing equipment and the network infrastructure, and was underpinned by an awayday with the school’s senior management team to find out what they wanted to achieve through the use of IT.
“It was really important for us to understand what the school required and to make sure they understood what we could deliver,” said Mark Platt, co-founder of the partnership with John Edwards. “The awayday was extremely useful because the management team needed to buy-in to the process and we were able to show them the different stages of the project – for example some quick changes to improve facilities – and how each step of the programme would bring them further towards their final goal.”
The resulting outline ICT strategy plan set out core goals to be achieved for different sectors and enabled the school to have three distinct sets of projects across a detailed timeline.
At the heart of these was a very simple mandate: “To have ICT that just works: support, training, commitment and partnerships”, while other goals included providing anytime, anywhere secure access to enable everyone to carry out their jobs or to learn more effectively; to ensure the appropriate resources and tools were always available; and for all users to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to ensure better use of ICT.
The first stage of the programme included practical steps to upgrade the infrastructure and technical facilities, additional training for the in-house IT team and the purchase of additional computers. In addition, it also meant enlisting an external contractor to handle day-to-day ICT maintenance.
The second and third phases will include provision of ongoing support services, further training and investment in new equipment and the launch of ICT awards for both staff and pupils for innovative use of new technology.
“The plan made it quite obvious to us that we needed to outsource our IT to people who could bring in a range of skills on an ongoing basis, Edwards and Platt have been helping us with the procurement process and that’s been extremely useful,” said Christine.
“Our most important driver has been to make sure that the core system is robust, so we have been constantly reviewing what has been achieved so far, and what more needs to be done.
“There are lots of ways we can use IT for the benefit of everyone and this is only the start. The initial phase of the plan gave us a ‘quick hit’ when we bought new PCs and data projectors for the teachers, now we are working on linking the various boarding houses, adding wireless networks and upgrading our broadband connections – there’s still a long way to go but there’s a real air of optimism because everyone can see that things are being delivered and can make a real difference.
“Once we have done that, we will be focusing more on how the teachers use IT in teaching and looking at what we feel is appropriate for our school environment. We don’t believe we should be going ‘helter skelter’ towards the state school style of each student having a PC because it is our style of personal teaching that is our USP and really makes Sidcot different.”
As well as looking at how teachers use IT, Christine says the upgraded facilities have already started to improve the way the school interacts with parents, many of whom are overseas.
Weekly and termly newsletters, reports and bulletins can now all be sent electronically and the eventual plan is for parents to be able to log on to the school’s website for fast access to information about events. The school’s recently built new arts centre will also feature as, once broadband facilities are in place, staff will be able to record drama productions and enable parents to watch online.
For pupils, the biggest bonus to date has been the wireless networking which enables many of them, especially those with their own laptops, to access their schoolwork whenever they want to.
“Without the help and support of Edwards and Platt we wouldn’t have been able to gather our thoughts into such a coherent plan,” she added. “We knew what was wrong and we knew roughly where we wanted to be but we had no idea of what the journey would be like to get us there.
“Bringing in external experts with a broad range of IT skills made all the difference because they were able to see things that would have been impossible for us to think about in-house. They helped us to define where we needed to get to and, by doing the audit and talking to the governors and everyone in the working party, they provided an unbiased view of the action and input that was required. Now we have the confidence that, with their ongoing support, we’re well on the road.
“Their education background and experience was crucial to the success of the project, especially because it was very important that the teachers embraced what we were doing and they could see that John and Mark knew what they were talking about.
“In addition, they were excellent at documenting and preparing the reports and tables that we all needed to understand the process – there were a lot of us on the working group and it was very important for everyone to know what was happening at any one point.”
For the Edwards and Platt team, the ongoing experience has underlined the importance of persuading schools in the independent sector to put more emphasis on their ICT requirements.
“As Christine has said, they knew where they wanted to be, but they didn’t know how to get there,” continued Mark Platt. “Our knowledge within the education sector helped us understand their requirements and deliver what they wanted.
“We were able to help them define their priorities, both in terms of the teaching requirements and the commercial needs of the school, and help them see how best these could be achieved, partly through improved use of in-house facilities and partly through outsourced services.
“It was a very exciting project to be involved with and the feedback and success has been very gratifying.”