Agenda item

Consideration was given to the report of the Corporate Director of Education which was presented to provide Members with the opportunity to scrutinise progress in relation to the ICT - Infrastructure Connectivity Project (ICP). In addition, the report will provide an overview of the Welsh Government’s Hwb EdTech Programme and its alignment with the Blaenau Gwent ICP.

The Education Transformation Manager spoke to the report and highlighted the main points contained therein.

A Member commented that the use of technology had changed dramatically this year and enquired if this new infrastructure would be able to cope with changes to blended learning and if it would help with learning across schools in subjects in low demand e.g. languages, etc. so that pupils from other schools in the Borough could join in with those particular subjects.  The Education Transformation Manager said that from a consistency and infrastructure perspective schools were in a better position with equitable standards across the school estate.  Work with schools on replacement of end of life devices was ongoing.  An ICT Strategy was being developed with schools and the Education Achievement Service, the Strategy would be drafted over the spring term for consultation and implementation from September 2021.  The infrastructure as facilitated had improved opportunities for remote learning across the board.

The SRS representative supported the Officers comments and said that IT was constantly changing and Wi-Fi installed in classrooms 10 years ago was now out of date.  The new technology would enable blended learning, remote learning and classroom based learning in the most secure way with monitoring and support by an SRS Education team.  They were putting out a specific network to accommodate the use of iPads and Chromebooks, there was also guest access to enable guest speakers to come into schools, and a BYOD platform rolled within it, which schools were looking at ways they could make use of this within the classroom setting.  IT was a big enabler, the same classroom device being the same device taken from home, this was seen to some degree with the devices put out as part of the Digitally Disadvantaged Programme (DDP).

He continued that with regard to enabling schools to intercommunicate and allowing learners from one school to join with learners from other schools there was evidence that the technology enables that to happen, however, SRS could not direct schools on how best to use the technology installed but they were working with Blaenau Gwent and other partners to incorporate some of this in to a wider strategy.

The Member felt that this would be a big advantage moving forward to have specific schools teaching certain subjects right across the board.

In response to a Member’s question on the Data Centre, the Education Transformation Manager said that this linked into schools migrating from BG learning to schools EDU platform.  The SRS representative said the Blaenavon Data Centre would move elsewhere but the services that were provided on the schools EDU platform would continue.  There was a move to Cloud computing and they would be looking at what the hub could bring in for Blaenau Gwent and partners over the coming years.  The Education Transformation Manager said that part of the migration aspect of the project was very much aligned to the Data Centre developments and they were working closely with the Corporate team to look at any potential implications.

The Member enquired if data was kept separately in each school or stored at the data centre in Blaenavon.  The SRS representative said that the majority of the data was kept within the data centre in Blaenavon which followed data standards.  There was very little data kept on site but there were on site servers that dealt with system functions.  Documents, emails and SIMS were all kept at the data centre in Blaenavon. 

A Member enquired if the service was compatible with other local authorities and Coleg Gwent.  The Education Transformation Manager confirmed there was an alignment with SRS local authorities.  The Hwb Edtech initiative sought to achieve a level of consistency across Wales to work more consistently, share practices and resources etc. and SRS facilitated that interconnection between their local authorities within the region which included Monmouthshire, Torfaen and Newport.

The Chair referred to the works being carried out at Pen-y-Cwm school and hoped that disruptions would be kept to a minimum.  He commented on the great work that had been done with blended learning especially in the primary schools.  Equipment had been given to the most vulnerable pupils and he enquired what support was given to their parents to help them set up their children to be able to access online learning.  The Education Transformation Manager said that schools were working very closely with those parents, St Joseph’s school had held an engagement session with parents demonstrating online learning.  From an inclusion perspective support could also be provided by the Inclusion team should it be required.

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted and endorse Option 1; namely that the report be accepted.