Supporting the next generation

Overview

Hartsdown Academy approached Educa after the leadership team established that the school’s investment in IT was falling short of expectations and needed future-proofing. The school was looking to implement support services and new technologies, and was seeking a fully managed service to ensure that the required educational IT environment was kept up-to-date, reliable, agile and efficient. Since partnering with Educa, Hartsdown’s IT systems have been running smoothly, and the school is better equipped to support future learning.

Background

Located in South East England, Hartsdown Academy is a secondary school with academy status, with more than 1,000 students and 150 staff. With the role of IT in modern education increasing, having the right IT support and technologies in place is a key priority for the school, and crucial to support students in their studies.

Challenge

Hartsdown had been operating with internal IT resources for a number of years, and the standard of technology and support was failing to meet both the current and future needs of staff and students. Following a change of governance, Hartsdown identified that superior IT management and support could be delivered by outsourcing to educational IT professionals, leaving the school to focus on its core academic activities.

Hartsdown acknowledged the need for a modern refresh of the entire IT estate, but this had to be achieved within a stringent budget. The leadership team identified that with the right outsourced managed service provider, they would be able to improve the experience, technology and safeguarding of students – ensuring that their learning experience was enhanced by IT, rather than limited by it.

Solution

After the initial meeting with Educa, Hartsdown was confident that it had found the right IT partner. Educa proposed an entire modern IT overhaul in alignment with the school’s vision, including the implementation of technologies such as the latest laptops, PC’s and ChromeBooks, as well as a fully managed service including:

• Full access to the Educa educational service desk (EducaSupport)
• Connectivity (EducaConnect)
• Safeguarding and security (EducaProtect)
• Remote management and monitoring

Dedicated Educa engineers and infrastructure consultants have become integrated with the fabric of Hartsdown Academy. Having taken full responsibility for the delivery of IT functionality within the school, Hartsdown now benefits from Educa’s on-site technicians, providing constant in-hours support. Thanks to the on-site presence of the Educa technicians, issues in the classroom can now be resolved without delay, avoiding disruption to the delivery of lessons and improving the classroom experience for all students.

Result

Partnering with Educa has resulted in the ICT operations at Hartsdown Academy being the smoothest they have been in years, with outstanding IT support satisfaction scores being achieved across all departments.

“The school’s IT function is now fully up to date, efficient and reliable with Educa,” says, Business Manager of Hartsdown. “Most recently, as a result of having ChromeBooks, we were already set up for working remotely way ahead of coronavirus. It’s great that Educa is always thinking of the future”.