The Problem
Sidney Stringer Multi Academy Trust have five schools within the trust and have worked together for a number of years for the benefit of their pupils. Three of the five schools have been rated as Outstanding by Ofsted and their aim is to ensure that all of the schools provide a good standard of education and that all of their pupils make good progress.
The MAT consists of primary, secondary and special schools from across Coventry – this includes Sidney Stringer Academy, Sidney Stringer Primary, Radford Primary, Ernesford Grange Community Academy and Riverbank Academy. Collectively they have just over 2,600 pupils and employ over 500 teaching and support staff.
The Academy wanted the ability to network all their sites and create a secure private network with capability for expansion in the future.
In Summary
As a complete communications provider HBT are always looking at how efficiencies can be introduced by streamlining costs. The MAT have recently rationalised their mobile telephones across the trust. By implementing a thirty-day rolling contract for all mobiles, the school can cancel and introduce phones as and when required, the schools will never be in a situation where mobile phones are sat in drawers unused.
HBT are now working towards delivery of a centralised telephone platform. This will enable calls to be answered centrally in one location enabling greater integration. The new system will bring numerous other benefits to the school; integration with the SIMS platform enabling you to call directly from the screen, voicemail to email, receive calls directed to your telephone extension on your mobile, the ability to set-up dedicated lines to broadcast parent messages and many other features.
The Solutions
HBT implemented a network that supplied Gigabit connectivity to each school, this has provided a resilient platform with bandwidth that is ten times higher than the previous network. Schools rely on e-content for the delivery of learning, having a network that has capacity and resilience is paramount for the ongoing development of education within the school. The design of the network has meant that security and online safe guarding can be centrally managed negating the need for multiple firewalls, meaning both an improved service for the schools and financial savings.
Testimonial
Some of the schools in the MAT have worked with HBT for a number of years but over the last 12 -18 months we have brought the whole MAT into the partnership. We have always found HBT to be reliable, supportive, value for money and efficient in picking up any after salesissues and queries.
