Minutes of Meeting of Headteachers

MINUTES OF MEETING OF HEADTEACHERS’ ICT & E-LEARNING GROUP THURSDAY 16 January 2014 SHREWSBURY TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

Present: Steve Compton – Shropshire Council – SC Tony Davies – Minsterley Primary (SDG-2) – TD Suzi Davies – Shropshire Council – SD Sophie Ewan-Roberts – Shropshire Council – SE-R Steve Beard – William Brookes (Secondary) – SB Andrew Smith – Mary Webb (Secondary) – AS Sharon Geddes – The Marches (Secondary) – SG Barry Wilkinson – Shropshire Council – BW Mandy Hopkins – Dorrington (SDG-11) – MH Claire Collier – Belvidere School (Secondary) – CC Dave Richards – Shropshire Council – DR Andrew Hodson – Newtown (SDG-10) - AH Fiona Pidduck – St. George’s, Clun (SDG-12) – FP Claire Gaskin – Worfield (SDG-8) - CG

Action 1. Welcome and Apologies Apologies have been received from Ian Crilly – Lakelands (Secondary); Sarah Longville – The Marches (Secondary); Ann Hill – Much Wenlock (SDG-3) and Phil Wilson – Shropshire Council

2. Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising The minutes of the last meeting held on 14 November 2013 were agreed as a true record.

3. Software/Softbox Rachel Faulkner from Softbox gave a presentation on her company’s role with the council and the schools. Contact details can be found on the SITSS page of the SLG.

A copy of the presentation, a glossary of the terminology used and examples of SD/RF pricing models are to be put on the gateway.

4. Connecting Shropshire This item did not take place.

5. Feedback from schools SDG-10 queried via AH if IT support can be purchased from other local authorities (LA’s) and where the funding for Shropshire support came from. SD advised that SITSS is funded from SLA’s only and thought that other LA’s were funded similarly. She also stated that schools were able to buy support from wherever they wanted to, but they may have issues with compatibility with

Headteachers’ ICT & E-Learning Group - 1 Shropshire Council programmes. The group also wanted assurances that SITSS are still able to get good value for schools when it comes to purchasing IT equipment. SD confirmed that SITSS go through a procurement process for all purchases. TD said it would be useful if SITSS could send out an e-mail to schools highlighting the potential pitfalls if buying support elsewhere.

6. Schools ICT network provision An agreement with Siemens to extend the contract has not been secured and the matter has now been put out to tender. TD raised concerns about time-scale as the Siemens contract ends in May and wanted assurances that the group would be part of the tendering process. BW said there was a back-up plan and the Siemens contract could be extended for a month or so if required. SC asked about costs and BW stated that schools would not be paying any more than they are currently and schools would be asked to sign-up to the new provision. AS asked if it was known how many schools were interested in signing up? BW said the council had not yet gone to schools. AS asked if the information regarding this could be communicated separately to Secondary Schools.

7. Office 365 (O365) update SC reported that the changeover had gone well with only a few queries. He asked schools to be wary of e-mail content on O365, as the system is not a Shropshire Council only system. Schools asked if they could be given advice on encryption and e-mail content. Spam filtering – Tim Fryer will pick this up on his return to work. Guidance notes to assist schools dealing with starter and leavers will be set up around Easter-time. All support materials for O365 can be found on the SLG. 8. SLG update It was not possible to send a beta version to schools for trial as promised. The new version was launched on 19 December. Instead of a feedback form, there is an e-mail address at the bottom of the home page for schools to raise issues. Each school has two log-ins. One for the head who can access school specific information. The ‘yellow book’ which was under the Assessment page will be added in due course. The second log-in is a shared account for remaining staff. SC reported that over the last 2 week period there had been activity as follows: 7000 unique visits 15000 visits 50000 page views

SC encouraged schools to give feedback.

Headteachers’ ICT & E-Learning Group - 2 9. SITSS update Census – there were problems uploading data early on in the day, but this has since been resolved.

Schools’ Helpdesk – from 13 January 2014, the Council IT Service Desk will log service desk calls from school customer. Schools may continue to use (01743) 254230 number to log incidents but are strongly encouraged to log queries via e-mail [email protected] Call responses have been monitored over the last two weeks and show a reduction in lost or abandoned calls.

Link Technician Service – a form to indicate preference for link technician service is available online on SLG.

Capita Web Parts/SIMS Learning Gateway – options for the on-going use of CWP were presented to secondary schools on 15 November 2013. The majority of schools opted to discontinue use after 31 March 2013. Some schools have not responded. It was the schools’ responsibility to notify Capita by 31 December 2013. 2 schools are investigating self-hosting. Some schools already self-host. Based on responses received, kit at Shirehall will be decommissioned from 01 April 2014. Further discussions show that some schools would be interested in secure remote access to their schools network. SITSS will test options with a pilot school.

Video conferencing (VC) – the schools’ equipment warranties expired on 1 April 2013. The infrastructure warranty expired on 31 December 2013. There is the option to extend the school’s warranties but the cost from Logicalis is £80000 per year excluding the central hardware (i.e. approx. £3700 per school). If individual schools arrange warranties they will not achieve the same economies of scale. Extending the warranty for the core infrastructure would be £18000. There is no central funding available to extend warranties. The SITSS support flowcharts and SLA for next year have been updated to reflect the changes. The core infrastructure presents a possible single point of failure that could affect the VC capability of all schools. A plan will be put together so that we can continue to use the current core infrastructure but move to JANET’s infrastructure in the future if performance is compromised. Primary schools currently use Movi/Jabber licences that are licensed on the core infrastructure. Transferring the licences to JANET infrastructure will be investigated. Moving to JANET will have some impact on services (e.g. current address books for Shropshire schools will be obsolete, recording facilities will be removed). The group agreed this was the best way to move forward. However, asked Graha that usage statistics be presented at the next meeting to help inform further m decision making. Moore

SB asked if schools who do not use their equipment could pass it on to schools who do.

Headteachers’ ICT & E-Learning Group - 3 10. Any other business Create-IT competition – closing date for entries is 07/02/14 Create-IT award evening – 20/03/14 at William Brookes School E-safety computing and ICT Conference – 06/03/14 Full details for all of the above can be found on the SLG. 11. Dates of future meetings (all at Shrewsbury Training & Development Centre) Thursday 8 May 2014, 2.00 – 4.00 pm Thursday 10 July 2014, 2.00 – 4.00 pm

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