Sustainable IT for Schools 

Eduthing has transformed the IT at our one form entry primary school. A complete overhaul of the infrastructure, hardware and software has meant staff can work far more effectively and efficiently at school and at home; and most importantly, technology is now regularly used across the curriculum to support the children’s learning. The introduction of Chromebooks has transformed the way in which technology is used in lessons. Children engage in their learning through safe, easy and reliable devices and the children absolutely love them! Eduthing has been brilliant at any technical support that the school has needed- either remotely or in school, the service is very friendly, professional and helpful. Any issues are resolved quickly.

Eduthing have managed our IT provision for three years now. They have worked with us to completely re-design our infrastructure from the ground up, ensuring that our network provides reliable coverage across the site and secure access from a wide range of devices. The responsiveness of the support systems in place is excellent, with staff now confident that any issues they come across will be responded to quickly and effectively. Eduthing also work as a strategic partner; informing and supporting us with our plans to develop our IT resources, but also challenging us to be ambitious and achieve more. Throughout lockdown they not only ensured that we were able to provide a reliable online curriculum, they supported us to further evolve and improve that provision so that it is now second to none.

In April 2019, following an extensive tender process, we selected eduthing to deliver a managed IT service at St Matthew’s. With a number of providers in the sector, it was crucial that we partnered with a forward thinking company to help devise a strategy to update our ageing IT infrastructure and classroom technology. Their educational experience and knowledge was key to ensure we invested our budget wisely, with  maximum impact and to best support teaching and learning. The upgrade gave us a solid platform to deploy remote learning quickly and effectively. In partnership with eduthing, we are now able to confidently take a  proactive approach to our IT.

Eduthing had inherited and supported since uptake in April, an archaic server setup. As we are a multi-site primary school (historically 3 independent schools that amalgamated in 2011) there were a number of physical servers and domains across the sites. This meant that we had no easily accessible central storage for all staff as well as meaning that staff who worked across multiple sites had different logins for each site.

The impact this project has had is immeasurable. Staff no longer have to wait 20 minutes for machines to start up and login, have access to data from whichever site they are on and also now have the option of accessing the network remotely if working from home. Where snagging issues were raised following the rebuild, a team of technicians were sent to each of the sites and these were quickly and sufficiently rectified. We now have a network and computers that staff, teachers, support and admin, can rely on and who don’t fear things going wrong with their IT during their lessons. The difference in the support that we continue to have, compared to our previous provider, is immeasurable.

We have been with eduthing from the outset and have always found them to be professional and responsive to our school’s needs. The engineers fit into and understand school life and we consider them part of our team. The helpdesk is friendly and well organised with many issues resolved remotely and promptly. We all appreciate the on-demand visits introduced last year, a fantastic addition to an already excellent service.

During the pandemic eduthing have continued to offer outstanding support and confirmed themselves as the right choice for our school. They ensured our remote education platform was set up and ready to go to ensure our pupils could access everything required for home schooling. This removed a huge burden from the staff and enabled them to focus on teaching. eduthing have helped to shape our future IT programme and provided advice and solutions as requested. We are in a much stronger position knowing we can rely on them and that they deliver.

Having made the decision to roll out a Chromebook 1:1 scheme for September 2020 late into the summer term 2020, eduthing did a brilliant job in supporting the school too implement the scheme in a timely and effective manner. They helped in a range of different ways, producing materials for the promotion of the scheme all the way through to the careful managed handing out of the hardware at the start of the new term.  This was a complex roll out that was fraught with many different challenges; however, eduthing were there to help us at every step of the way, ensuring the project was a great success.

If you want expert, flexible, forward looking support for your IT needs, then I would suggest you look no further than eduthing. On top of the invaluable help desk (where any day to day issues are quickly dealt with) we have had support with: new servers; extending Wi-Fi access; installation of CCTV; roll out of google classroom and Chromebooks; roll out of Office 365; setting up our digital printer network; procurement of interactive  screens, PCs, iPads and Chromebooks (all at very competitive prices) and the benefit of experts who listen to our needs and are proactive in suggesting solutions. Like all schools we are heavily reliant on our IT infrastructure and with eduthing we feel that we are in safe hands.

eduthing have provided us with incredible support, expertise, and resilience when they started working with us in January 2020. They provided a complete review of our IT infrastructure to identify what areas of improvement should be made to enhance teaching and learning. In the last 18 months we have finally got Wi-Fi, a complete infrastructure rebuild, better facilities in classroom, and superfast broadband. Students and staff have been able to use office 365 effectively to deliver live lessons for months. The dedicated helpdesk has acted promptly to resolve issues quickly in the evening or weekends if needed. The advice and service  we received has allowed us to plan financially to make more efficient use of resources and purchase new technology and reasonable prices. I highly recommend eduthing for all your IT needs.

We have been using eduthing for a number of years, they support us with every aspect of our IT from day-to-day problems with software to advising on large scale projects. eduthing helped us during the pandemic by quickly turning around loading software onto new Chromebooks and helping with the endless google suite questions to ensure remote learning was available to all. We have a good working relationship with the field engineers and are always able to get hold of the Primary Schools and Academies Director or Managing Director if the need arises.
When a problem has arisen, eduthing reacted quickly and professionally and are always open to suggestions in the way we work together.

We are delighted with our upgraded CCTV system installed in February 2021 by eduthing. The pictures are crystal clear and we can log in from any computer or via an app on our smart phones. The software is fairly straightforward to navigate and you can look at multiple views at one time or just concentrate on one camera. You can take stills as evidence and it has already been very useful, catching some silly behaviour from some rather red faced pupils.

The actual installation was quick and efficient. The engineers were very pleasant and worked closely with us to ensure we ended up with the best coverage of our site. They also provided and installed all appropriate signage so we had nothing to worry about.