News
Little Heath School in Reading unveils a brand new network for the start of the new school year thanks to UKN Group.
September 5, 2008
UKN Group provide a managed services to Little Heath School in Reading, and has just completed a thorough overhaul of their ailing network infrastructure.
Productivity and reliability were being inhibited by a troublesome network that had grown organically over a number of years. Many schools find themselves in this position because of the steady but relentless increase in demand for IT; both in classrooms and the back office. The network as it existed previously was struggling to keep pace with expectations of staff and pupils but this has now been addressed in the Continual Service Improvement Program (CSIP), that is an ITIL aligned component of their fully managed service from UKN Group.
The new network resides on a fibre backbone and structured cabling with managed switches right across the extensive campus. This has enabled a centralisation of management functions and means that users are provide with a level of consistent availability far beyond that which they had come to expect previously.
There had always been issues with delivering multimedia rich applications to the classroom and a culture of "expecting things to go wrong" had developed when using IT in some lessons. With the installation of the new infrastructure over the Summer break, Little Heath School now finds itself with the kind of network that will be the envy of any other local schools.
UKN Group specialists have worked with teachers and senior staff to align their ICT with the growing curriculum and teaching demands. A key part of this approach has been to put in place the CSIP that creates a master plan and roadmap for the school's ICT and prioritises key issues. This plan takes into consideration the constraints of the school budget and the opportune times for major improvements so that teaching is not impacted.
