Peter Howard – Headteacher

Fairisle Junior School

Techs4Education, the education division of Excalibur Communications, has worked with Fairisle Junior School (370 pupils) in Hampshire for over ten years. The school has a clear goal to create a supportive environment where pupils can be their very best and enjoy a happy and fulfilled school experience. The use of technology to enhance learning and really ‘engage’ children in the classroom is an important part of this.

Techs4Education manages the school’s IT network and provides an IT help desk service. It works closely with the school and is a key partner in developing and delivering the school’s IT plan.

The coronavirus pandemic presented a new challenge to the school, in particular, getting the whole school online during lockdown 2020 so pupils could access Fairisle’s remote learning offering. Techs4Education responded quickly to make this happen. However, work didn’t stop there. Our engineers continued to build Fairisle’s online schooling capabilities in preparation for any future disruptions. This made the short notice switch to online schooling in January 2021 much easier for both pupils and teachers. Specific projects undertaken by Techs4Education during this time included:

• Enabling secure, remote network access for all staff

• Sourcing and configuration of mobile devices for children without their own equipment

• Created and managed a full series of class and staff User Groups on the Google for Education dashboard

• Completion of a larger IT project to get the school’s new server system up and running with minimum disruption

“Fairisle Junior School is very pleased to call the guys at Techs4Education true partners. Josh has been a star, especially during the current pandemic, and nothing is too much trouble for him. Over the past few months, we have taken delivery of a large number of new devices as our allocation from the DfE as well as from donations and items we have purchased ourselves. The Techs4Education team have moved quickly to get these attached to our domain in order that we can provide them to our children as quickly as possible so they can participate in our remote learning offer. Tech4Education have kept us ahead of the curve throughout the pandemic and enabled us to be well prepared for all the challenges that have arisen as a result of it.

“We are proud to work very closely with Techs4Education as a Google Apps school, which means we have full control over all aspects of security and sharing settings through being able to manage users, groups, devices and apps through the Google dashboard. Our engineer and his colleagues set up the individual user accounts and passwords for each new cohort of children as they arrive as well as for new colleagues who join our school.

“Over the past few months, we have also had a new extension to our building, which included a new server facility. Techs4Education were an integral part of getting our infrastructure up and running at very short notice. They always did everything possible to ensure we were never without our IT facilities or our domain, so that teaching and learning were unaffected by this major work. They have also supported upgrades to our phone and CCTV systems, which are also tied into our domain.

“A big improvement for us has been the move to our remote desktop, which enables staff colleagues to fully access our domain from outside the building in a secure and safe way. This facilitates remote learning for us, enabling both children and staff to benefit from the ability to work from anywhere.

“It is a privilege to work with Josh. His support, especially during the current tricky time has been brilliant. Thank you for everything you continue to do to help us provide a great service to our community.”