£40m Investment in School Broadband

An amazing announcement yesterday by the Welsh Assembly First Minister. £40m to be pumped into broadband provision to schools with LEAs getting £27m to upgrade their provision and then secondary schools being given £20K each and primary £10k each to put into infrastructure improvements or hardware improvements.

Link: Learning Wales

Brilliant.

Gareth

Now that is good thinking as long as that 20K comes direct to yourselves doesn't pass the LA etc... that will be great :) If like most pots that we have had in England in recent years, its yes £xK per school then in the small print its via the LA who will then decide to top slice 90% off for "central IT services" as a small group of people decide that and we get a few £ so its worthless to make any impact :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by john

Now that is good thinking as long as that 20K comes direct to yourselves doesn't pass the LA etc... that will be great :) If like most pots that we have had in England in recent years, its yes £xK per school then in the small print its via the LA who will then decide to top slice 90% off for "central IT services" as a small group of people decide that and we get a few £ so its worthless to make any impact :(

---

I know what you mean - however I have been told that £20K is being directed to Secondary schools and £10k to primary schools. £27million is being shared out between LEAs.

Now all we have to make sure is that the school let the funds go to ICT and not to a new roof.

Gareth

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by garethedmondson

I know what you mean - however I have been told that £20K is being directed to Secondary schools and £10k to primary schools. £27million is being shared out between LEAs.

Now all we have to make sure is that the school let the funds go to ICT and not to a new roof.

Gareth

---

Couldn't agree more, however IF my school was in Wales I would cheer the money for a roof if it was the leaking one above my server/store room that is rotten... :D I think £20K on a roof would be a good investment over maybe a £80K Insurance claim for damage to our Server systems :)

Fingers crossed your place gives you the money :)

That sounds like a fantastic investment, hopefully it will bump up fibre provisions to the rural schools in the rural areas of Wales. Have fun spending your monies :)

We recently had a stupendous upgrade to our broadband provision (8mb shared to schools to 2x100mb shared), the filtering is the real bottleneck now but all improvements would be appreciated. £20k would go a long way to sorting out a proper wireless provision though!