Broadening education

Deputy headteacher Gwyneira Davies explains: "The Government sees broadband as the vital pipeline network for its intent to deliver its Curriculum Online strategy and having this in every school is a vital means of developing better IT and communication skills.

"The target is for every school in England and Wales to have this broadband internet connection by the year 2005, but so far only a quarter of them have been linked up. So for Treorchy Comprehensive the challenge was turning this vision into reality – right now."

The IT generation
Information and communications technology (ICT) is well established in the curriculum at Treorchy. In fact, it is used to such an extent that the limitations of the existing ICT infrastructure were all too clear to the 80 teaching staff and 1500 students.

The root cause of their difficulties was the ageing data network, reports Davies: "The existing installation had been developed on an ad hoc basis using a mixture of Category 5 and Category 5e cable. Linking 11 blocks scattered across a lengthy campus, the network had no structure or warranty, suffered from poor installation and delivered variable performance quality.

"Our growing use of electronic whiteboards and the prospect of a broadband hook-up meant the cables were now a major stumbling block," she declares.

Only expert assistance could resolve the disorder, so Treorchy called in a specialist in ICT services for schools, Networking Systems of St Mellons near Cardiff.

Steve Bowen, infrastructure services manager with Networking Systems explains: "Reliability, robustness and value for money are crucial to the education market. We fully understand the issues facing schools, as well as the problems related to emerging technologies such as broadband, in the context of their budgetary constraints.

"Everything that we supply is intended to represent quality of both product and service and we would rather be judged in this context as opposed to being just another price-driven organisation that is more concerned with price than anything else. In any case, there's growing evidence that many of the budget Category 5e systems already supplied to schools do not fully perform to Category 5e standards and will not support Gigabit Ethernet."

An educated solution
Networking Systems' approach secured the company a contract valued at over £100 000 to replace the existing network with Krone's PremisNET system to advanced Category 6 standards.

The final installation includes 400 outlets, 24 patch panels and 20 000 metres of Krone LSZH untwisted pair Category 6 cable. These serve 280 Pentium 4 computers, 19 interactive whiteboards and data projectors throughout the school. Networking Systems also laid over half a mile of fibre optic cable to provide a resilient link between the various cabinet locations, of which there were 11 in total.

The installation will support both the administration and curriculum networks at the school using PureLan 10/100 switches. Through virtual lan systems and filtering, the new network will also provide the platform and the necessary security needed for the forthcoming broadband implementation. It will also facilitate the use of videoconferencing for opportunities such as centralised teaching and providing distance learning to other schools in the area.

The actual installation took three months from start to completion. This was scheduled to fit in with the school terms and had to be completed at easter.

The contractor produced a Gantt chart and project plan together with a method statement encompassing health and safety issues, based on minimal disturbance to the school's routine. A lot of the work had to be carried out after the school day was over. Installation was further complicated by the need to install materials in the ten separate and widely dispersed buildings.

Bowen remarks: "While the time allowed seemed generous, we knew that we would be pressed to complete on time as school examinations coincided with a significant part of the installation period. Another consideration was the reinforced concrete floors in the buildings, which made some of the cable runs extremely difficult to organise."

Reliability and lifetime cost of ownership issues determined the contractor's choice of materials. "We selected Krone [products] because of their reputation and ability to provide a network infrastructure that will benefit the school for the foreseeable future," says Bowen. "A major factor in this choice was the quality of product and the makers have gone out of their way to assist us, as have their main distributors for the contract, ProNet. It's a first class solution and we are proposing it now to other education customers too."

Teaching in the future
With the new network in place and a high-speed connection to the internet imminent, everyone at Treorchy Comprehensive is eager to exploit the new opportunities offered.

"Inevitably it will enrich not just the curriculum but the whole learning experience, making subjects far more meaningful for the students," declares Davies. "Bringing schools together using ICT and delivering digital education resources right into the classroom and homes are powerful means of transforming education, while there are administrative benefits too. Live videoconferencing with other Rhondda Valley headteachers is one possibility."

Inevitably the installation will become a local role model for other schools to emulate and it's also a major achievement for Networking Systems. "This project represents a significant change in the attitude of schools to the requirement of designing, procuring and installing, as well as having the ability to support a network infrastructure that is standards-based and quality-driven as opposed to the traditional approach of so-called 'best value'," Bowen states. "All too often the latter has resulted in cheap multi-manufacturer networks of poor quality, with all the incompatibility that this entails. Treorchy demonstrates the best quality can also be the best value."