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Could someone help me with the BIOS Password for the Dell 3190's. No one at the school knows it. Feel free to message. Thanks

I'm working through the DfE standards for servers and storage, and one standard says: "Your senior leadership team will need to decide the maximum downtime it is willing to accept. This should be based on your specific needs, including the sensitivity of the system and data, and the importance of the system and data to running your school or college". What do you do in your schools regarding allowed periods of network downtime? Do you 'budget' for a certain amount of downtime for unplanned/planned?

We just got our response back today from the DFE for two of our secondary schools, they have both been granted less than half of what we submitted on the Doc3 cost matrix. Not meaning to seem ungrateful here but what am i supposed do I do with that!? fit half the school with Meraki Wi-Fi and leave the other half on a 15 year old ruckus system The criteria for the CTC program is: - an education investment area and have an Ofsted rating of ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. - a priority education investment area One of our secondary’s fits both of these plus it fails on all the current standards for Wi-Fi that the CTC program is set out to achieve. The catchment area for pupils is one of the most deprived in Bradford a lot of students only have access to the internet when they are at school (not to mention it’s a time when some of them are only fed on FSM) I have been informed that other participating schools in the program, were provided full funding even when their existing Wi-Fi standards still passed the criteria prior to the CTC install, which raises concerns about their resource allocation. Our vendor says they never seen anything like this before, with some of their clients receiving triple the amount of what we were granted. My initial impression is that there could be potential bias against our identity as a Catholic Multi Academy Trust With less than half the requested funding granted, I'm at a loss regarding our options moving forward, given that we completely lack the extra capital required to cover the remaining amount needed to complete the install Has anyone else here in the CTC program experience this? Any advice on how to tackle this, I’ve already sent an email to CTC expressing the above points.

Hi I have downloaded the 2018 KS4 Ready Reckoner spreadsheet from the DFE website that lets you enter KS2 fine scores to get the point score. Does anyone know of a bulk tool that will do this? At the moment we have to enter each student score one by one to get the point scores. Any help is much appreciated. GC

I think everyone would agree we would like the DfE to provide us guidance and clarity on GDPR. I have found someone who is genuinely listening to our concerns about GDPR. I would like to co-ordinate a 'voice' into DfE about the areas where that guidance is most needed. Here’s my top 3 issues…what are yours? The more replies we get the more compelling our cry for help. The DPO - who is the best person to take this role in school and how will this person be funded? Legal basis for processing - when can't a public funded school use 'Public interest' as a legal basis for processing? SARs - what data should and shouldn't be included in a SAR? Keep them coming please. I'd like to get back to the DfE as soon as I can.

I am trying to reinstall Windows on some of the little Geobook 1E ****books given to school for free by the DfE last year as they have all sorts of issues but the BIOS passwords they provided are not working. Apparently they all have the same password (4e3xact11*****) but it does not work on any of them. Anyone else had a similar issue with these?

Hi guys, I hope everyone is well and slowly returning to whatever normality is As I'm sure many of you know, back in April the DfE launched an initiative to provide schools and MATs with grants to implement a 'Digital Education Platform’. Whilst this was a great scheme in enabling access to online learning for schools and their pupils, we were aware that the funding was subject to eligibility criteria and many of your pupils may not have qualified. At Stone we passionately believe that every child should have access to technology, ensuring that your pupils do not miss out on their education, no matter how long lockdown measures continue for. That's why from today, I'm delighted to share with you that we have launched our new E-Learning Technology Hub, which enables schools to access affordable technology for ALL pupils, with packages to match whatever stage you’re at in your digital journey. You can find out more at the link below or feel free to drop me a message to discuss this further. https://www.stonegroup.co.uk/stone-e-learning-hub/ Stay safe!

Hello all, Awhile back we got DFE HP Laptops for our Primary & Infant school, however the BIOS is locked and we do not have the Passwords to them! Does anyone know how to retrieive the Passwords back? Or some other ideas, such as Unlocking the BIOS or working around it, we would like to network boot them. They need Network boot enabled in the BIOS though. Many thanks! Jona

School is currently trying to launch some reports, but the pages are showing as unavailable or we're getting errors like the below. Anyone else getting this?

Hi all, Does anybody have any opinions about which partner to use for the DfE Digital Learning Platform grant for Office 365? Any really good / bad experiences? What I'm trying to do is pick a partner that can deliver staff training for Office 365 / Teams that ticks our boxes and not theirs. I've heard of a couple of schools where the training was whizzed through and left staff totally confused and that's what I'm trying to avoid! Has anybody had any outstanding Office 365 / teams training as part of their set up? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Glenn

The DfE has published the first of a series of videos. I think its very good. Look forward to the next which covers SARs and retention.

Hi all, Got a bunch of GeoBooks from the DfE last year that I now want to InTune into our schools enrolment. However, I can't seem to get it to boot to USB image? I've tried secure boot on/off. Legacy mode. Setting boot order manually. Booting into boot options. Holding shift and restart within Windows 10 to manually select USB from boot options. However, it either keeps looping to the BIOS or just continues to boot the current Windows 10 image. Has anyone had any joy with these things? TIA!

BBC News - Department for Education cuts 1,000 jobs

Hi all, I've been getting some expressions of concern re: the use of Creative Cloud to store data, particularly student work. They're not one of the suppliers listed on the DfE guidance doc, which was my first port of call. Has anyone else been through this w/ their SLT before as regards Adobe? Did you decide Adobe was a safe provider, and if so what justification did you use to sell it to senior leaders?