2024 - Easter Holidays

As we go into the final term of the year, the IT Services team have been hard at work to perform essential maintenance, improvements and work across the school.  I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we have enjoyed completing the work and managing all our future plans!

Wired Network Overhaul

Essential for the smooth running of the School our wired network is the backbone of all digital communications, it carries internet, CCTV, door access, Wi-Fi, storage, database traffic and more at high speeds to each building and every computer.  Without it the School would not be able to function.

This Easter we completed a 6 month long project to replace all 40 network switches and our core networking equipment with brand new Aruba CX switches.  Costing over £150,000 this work will provide at least 10 years of network capacity and brings essential benefits such as regular security updates, cloud based management, monitoring and analytics as well as faster and more powerful troubleshooting tools to keep every connected device working correctly.  

Additionally this network will pave the way for enhanced security, ensuring that any device plugged in to the network gets the correct access to the correct services, no matter where or what port its plugged in to.

This is an incredibly complex and technical job and a great project to get ticked off.  For more information and some extra pictures click here!

Wireless Network Overhaul

What good is a network if it doesn't have Wi-Fi?  Alongside the switches we have replaced all 150 wireless access points across the School as well as added some extra to cover additional outside area's and some internal spots that had poor signal strength.  At just over £100,000 this project was also a long and technical process and now complete will provide similar benefits to the School, more reliable connections, better troubleshooting, easier updates and security patches as well as cloud based management and extra security options going forward.  Overall this should provide a much smoother and reliable wireless experience for the whole community.

More information is here as well as some pretty pictures of wireless coverage maps if you like that thing!

Microsoft Surface Devices Scheme Launched

The Surface scheme for September 2024 has been officially launched to parents and pupils after governors approved the strategy last term.  Communications and a full brochure was sent to all parents at the end of Easter and more comms is planned during this term.   A big thanks also to Jacob, the working party and marketing for all their support and effort in getting us this far.  Adam has also been hard at work preparing and testing our device deployment services so we can efficiently manage and setup 300 new devices this Summer!

Digital Leads

After interviewing last term we are in the final stages of appointing two brand new digital leads responsibilities for Senior School.  These new roles will provide a teacher led approach to digital literacy in the classroom for both pupils and staff.  They will work closely with the ICT steering and user groups as well as Vishal, our new Maths and Digital Lead for Prep School.  The Senior School leads will be announced officially soon.

Prep School Hall Upgrades

To go with its new name, the prep school hall has had a major makeover with thanks to Jason Jervis, Estates and our external AV contractors Enlightened.  An injection of £12,000 has made the space ready to provide professional talks, drama and dance performances as well as facilitate day to day teaching and parent talks.  The improvements include:

• New Badminton blue curtains along the back wall
• Brand new high power projector and larger screen
• Professional sound system with microphones and capability for bigger events.
• Lecturn (same as drama) for presenting from with your surface.
• Wireless connectivity for normal lessons
• USB-C dock and guest HDMI capabilities

Prep School Laptops On Their Way

After exploring chrome books as a cheaper alternative for the prep School we have pivoted back to laptops.  We have placed an order for 64 Lenovo yoga gen 4 devices at a cost of £40,000 which should be ready to deploy during the summer term.  These are touch screen, have a built in stylus and crucially are build for the abuse of living in a prep school!  We are also awaiting delivery and installation of 10 purpose build wall storage lockers for the devices that will keep them safe when not in use and fully charged so they are ready to go.

Running windows, teams, OneNote and more they will provide a great introduction to the Microsoft ecosystem for prep school pupils and allow much greater skill sharing between the schools.  

Along with these devices, Jacob has been hard at work cleaning and preparing the existing iPads in prep school so they are fresh and ready to be used alongside these laptops, especially for lower year groups or more creative activities.

Data Breach and Resulting Security Changes

Sadly as you may be aware, we were caught by another successful phishing attack last term during.  Unfortunately this was a repeat of the same type of attack that happened almost a year ago to the day.  As a result we are being forced to deploy additionally security measures to keep our accounts and data safe.  You can read more about the attack and the training being delivered at the start of term here.

iSAMS Additional MFA - Users who need to send bulk emails or export data from iSAMS via excel will need to setup a second layer of multi factor authentication.  This will provide a clear second barrier to any compramised accounts and significantly reduce any damage they can do.  Our Data Manager, Alice Mount will be leading this process and be in touch near the start of term to explain and arrange the next steps.

Trusted Devices Only- During the Summer term we will begin only allowing access to Office 365 on a trusted School owned device.  This will be done carefully and slowly to make sure that there is no loss of functionality.  The majority of staff already have School laptops or Surfaces so will not be effected.  

Data Protection Impact Assessments

Alice Mount, our new Data Manager has been hard at work behind the scenes and has now finished the first of our Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA)  This essential process is a requirement of GDPR and should be carried out whenever a third party is given access to store or process data we hold on behalf of the School.  It carefully assesses the data stored, its risk to the individuals and what processes and mitigations we can put in place to manage that risk.  All new services will require a DPIA which Alice will lead on and over the coming months she will be retrospectively performing them for existing third party data processors.

Alongside this Alice has begun the process of looking at how we implement our data retention policy practically and more consistently with sensitive data we store in places such as iSAMS.

School House Staff Room Photocopier Moved to the bunker

A recently fire safety audit advised that the old location was not safe and posed a significant hazard.  Sadly after exploring all other options we have had to move this photocopier into the bunker.   Its new home is less convenient for staff but we have managed to keep both devices so there is redundancy and capacity for plenty of printing.

School Office Renovations

Credit goes to the Estates team who have overseen a full painting and new carpet for School Office.  The space is now looking great.  Along side this we have installed brand new floor boxes for the new layout to keep the power and data neat and safe.

Estates Tablet Upgrades

After a successful trail using iPads, the estates team are getting modern android tablets for their day to day work.  These devices allow them to check tickets and emails easily whilst working around the School whilst being robust enough to survive the weather and hard work required by Estates