KevByrne

Hi @deadno3693, I work for a secondary academy and our 3 year contract with Schools Broadband went live last July, this is possibly the worst mistake I have ever made. I was sold the service on the premise that we had our own hosted Lightspeed webfilter and own hosted Fortigate box (both of which are very good products) which would be completely independant to other schools and we could setup how we wanted. Effectively we would have our own virtual boxes at a fraction of the cost it would be to purchase the products direct. Unfortunately these claims turned out to be false as although we can access our own tenant/area of these boxes, there are lots of settings that we cannot access and can't be setup how we would like as these would affect all of the other connected schools. The system is in effect very limited and changes made for other schools without our knowledge will then suddenly stop things working or unblock sites that we have previously blocked. After our leased line was installed Schools Broadband then tried to charge us over £3,600 to install our backup ADSL Line!!! This was sorted but only after a lot of very stern discussions with Dave. When we first went "live" the box allowed complete and unrestricted access to pornography and we have had to spend months trying to get the boxes setup to a resonable level of security. We have had to manually block all search engines except Google as all other sites allowed inapropriate images and videos. Simply opening Yahoo images and typing the word "porn" resulted in pages of hardcore images. We are currently having issues restricting youtube within school and for iPads out of school, I have been informed today that since Google moved to HTTPS the system has not been able to reliably restrict youtube. This is a another major and ongoing issue. To be fair their support team are a nice bunch who do their best to fix our issues, however the problems we have are with the way the system is actually designed so there isnt always that much they can do. It is simply a case of constantly identifying and then rectifying problems which often then reoccur. We are probably too far away from you to visit as we are based in Wednesbury West Midlands, however if you did want to pop in and see the system in action and the issues we have faced then please feel free to message me and we can arrange something. Thanks Kev Byrne

Wood Green Academy - Wednesbury Jnc 9 M6 Salary Range: BAND E - £23,166 to £27,394 Full Time, 2 Year initial contract in the first instance. 37 hours a week. CLOSING DATE: 15/03/2017 at 9AM For full details including Job Description and Person Spec download the Job Pack from Vacancies - Wood Green Academy

Wood Green Academy - Wednesbury Jnc 9 M6 Salary Range: BAND E - £23,166 to £27,394 Full Time, 2 Year initial contract in the first instance. 37 hours a week. CLOSING DATE: 15/03/2017 at 9AM For full details including Job Description and Person Spec download the Job Pack from Vacancies - Wood Green Academy

OK - Thanks Dave, Just thought it was worth checking and also clarifying for any other secondary schools out there. Regards Kev

Hi Dave (Schools Broadband), We've just taken out a 200Mb leased line with yourselves and the cost with ADSL failover and filtering was £12,495 per annum. I know the 1Gb bearer is more expensive however the difference between this and the £5K you quoted for the 100Mb line is vast. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as to whether we have been overcharged?

Managed to connect now, had to reinstall the web client.

I can't connect using the web client, the test meeting still works though?

Thanks LosOjos.

Hi All, I have been asked whether we can use our VLE (My Learning) for teachers to store and then remotely access Excel documents containing student information such as grades, SEND information, ethnicity etc. My initial reaction is no and that we should instead setup remote access for teachers onto our main network, however I wondered whether any other schools out there were using VLE's in this manner? My main concerns are with Data Protection and backup strategies, however any comments/thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks All Kevin Byrne