A Partnership for Technology Transformation - Avon Valley College, Salisbury Plains Trust and Computeam “A partnership approach”

Avon Valley College is a secondary school with a sixth form, located in the heart of Wiltshire, close to the ancient site of Stonehenge. It serves a large military catchment, with several military bases being situated on the Salisbury Plains area. It is the lead school of Salisbury Plain Academies a 6 school trust spread around the local area.

Acting head Louisa Paston, is rightly proud of the school, “It is a school that is dedicated to achieving the best for our young people, our community and our staff.  Over the last three years, AVC has gone from strength to strength and is in the top 1% of the most improved schools in the country. Our recent success have been achieved through effective teamwork and growing our partnership with parents and the local community.”

The Challenge How can you move a school to the cloud, improve staff experience and save money.

Avon Valley College had a mixed estate of IT that had been on a replacement cycle for years with no strategic thought or direction. As old kit became redundant, it was replaced with like for like, with staff working in the same way as before. Out of date operating systems had led to combability issues with new resources, causing unreliability in teaching areas and staff losing confidence in teaching with technology. This was the same approach with their infrastructure too, with like for like replacements, and no progress on improving speed and resilience around the site.

This was supported with a full-time contracted on-site technician with Helpdesk support, accessible via the walkie-talkie

system, that led to a fix rather than solve approach, with staff becoming increasingly reliant on this resource.

All of the schools’ systems were on site, including their email server, which was unreliably hosted on failing hardware.  The MIS system was bolstered with guardian access to assessment data and as a communication avenue with home.