Parkhead Community Primary School

Gateshead’s Parkhead Community Primary School caters for more than 380 3 – 11 year-old children and 40 staff on a site built in the early 1960s. As a ‘Community Primary School’, the children are given every opportunity to be fully prepared for their secondary school and adult life. Parkhead delivers a well-researched, inspiring curriculum with staff trained to a high level. In addition to gaining language, mathematical and computer skills, children are able to build their self-confidence, develop emotional control and learn to articulate feelings and ideas in a nurturing and secure environment.

The Challenge

Aging technology was holding back the school’s IT development. The infrastructure was virtually unusable and waiting times for students and teachers to log-on to the network and online services could be up to 10 minutes.

The situation was exacerbated by poor IT response times – it could be several days before support was available – while computer faults could be left for weeks before being looked at and resolved. Areas of the school were not covered by wireless network technology, making use of mobile devices for pupils very difficult.

School data was also unstructured and unnecessarily duplicated wasting valuable storage space.

The Solution

Advantex’s education experience came to the fore as the company supplied a versatile school-wide solution built upon new high performance IT software and hardware technology. New servers provided the power to replace the existing servers and numerous USB disks, while the latest scalable virtualisation technology provided value for money and a reduction in power costs.

Teachers were equipped with new Windows 8 tablets that could be plugged into newly installed classroom docking stations to enable them to quickly and conveniently access online resources wherever they were in the school.

A Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 was specified to meet the school’s usage requirements while a Microsoft System Centre Data Protection Manager ensured that going forward all important data would be properly and securely stored.

The Results

New investment in IT is allowing Parkhead Community Primary School to move forward with renewed confidence, providing the learning and teaching environment the children and teachers deserve to succeed and thrive.

School data is now properly secured and organised whilst network performance has been improved to provide safe and secure superfast broadband connectivity – not only in the school but also for teachers who want to access emails, files and teaching resources at home using a single secure log-in code.

Future enhancements and upgrades can be easily accommodated to ensure the changing needs of the school are met. This includes supporting future projects such as fully supported personal Windows 8 tablets for pupils that can be used at home but with the assurance that they are protected with the same security technology at school.