School ICT News Bulletin No. 210 - 05/10/2012
Published by ICT Shared Services
Changes to Broadband funding and charging for 2013-14
Broadband Charging for 2013-14
The Children’s Services Fair Funding Consultation 2012 includes proposed changes to Broadband funding for 2013-14. These are shown at the bottom of this document.
ICT Shared Services has reviewed the Broadband charging mechanism to reflect the funding changes and assuming that the proposal is approved will apply the following charging formula for 2013-14:
Primary and special schools £5500
Secondary schools £5500 + £12 per pupil.
This means that based on current pupil numbers the smallest secondary schools would pay approximately £10300 and the largest secondary schools would pay approximately £22640.
For Academies and schools converting to Academies during the September 12- August 13 contract year this means:
The current published price for 12- 13 contract year is £29890 for secondary and £3680 for primary. Funding for September to March 13 reflects this charging model.
We will pro rata the revised charging model from April 2013 so that Academies are not disadvantaged by the changes in funding if the proposals accepted.
Changes to Broadband funding for 2013-14 detail from the Children’s Services Fair Funding Consultation 2012:
Broadband
Schools currently receive funding for broadband, providing that they are on the Norfolk network and have broadband installed for at least one year, at the following rates:
Primary = £3,680 fixed sum
Secondary = £29,890 fixed sum
The total allocation for mainstream schools and academies is £2.7m.
The current broadband charges equal the funded amounts allocated.
Under the new arrangements the use of a broadband factor is not permitted, and there is an added complication of not being able to add broadband funding into the main ‘Lump Sum’ factor at different rates for primary and secondary schools because all mainstream schools and academies must receive the same level of lump sum from April 2013.
Therefore, a new formula is required to ensure that appropriate funding reaches schools and reflects broadband charges for 2013/14.
Conclusion
The Formula Review Project Board concluded that the funding for broadband should be allocated via the new ‘Lump Sum’ factor at an appropriate rate for primary schools, with a per-pupil top-up for secondary schools via the ‘Basic Per-Pupil Entitlement’ factor.
The broadband charge for primary schools will be set at £5,500 for 2013/14, and so it is proposed to include this amount within the ‘Lump Sum’ factor for all schools. This would leave approximately £442k of funding to be targeted towards secondary schools via per-pupil amounts. Secondary schools would then be charged the £5,500 lump sum plus a per-pupil top-up to buy into the service. The total broadband charge for secondary schools will be guaranteed not to exceed the current charge of £29,890.
Proposal
An allocation of £5,500 per school should be added to the ‘Lump Sum’ factor, with an additional top-up for the secondary sector via the ‘Basic Per-Pupil Entitlement’ factor. (Proposal 23)”
The full Fair Funding Consultation document is available here
Author: Lynn Parvin
Email Boxes for School Based Staff
The generic email accounts provided for schools are all sized at 300mb. A number of schools have asked whether these can be increased, this particularly applies to the Head@ account.
Potential Solutions
The following solutions were identified and discussed with the Schools ICT Steering Group on 19th September 2012:
Option 1 - Increase in Size
BT has confirmed, under Change Request NSIX1455, that 50 mail boxes can be increased to 1Gb at a cost of £3,900 within the limits of the current hardware (Limited to only 50 email accounts across all Norfolk schools, and chargeable to individual schools).
Option 2 - Auto-Forward to NSIX
All Norfolk teachers have a NSIX id which provides a 25Gb space per email account. School generic accounts could have their email forwarded to their allocated NSIX id (NSIX Google email address). The risks and implications of forwarding emails from an individual’s secure generic email account to their unsecure NSIX accounts are potential unauthorised access of emails, and if a user of a generic account leaves the school, the generic email account must be un- forwarded from that individual’s generic UCC address.
Option 3 – Harvest and Reallocate unused Generic email accounts
Each school has approximately 6 generic email accounts with some being used more than others. It is possible, on a school by school basis, to either reduce the available space of less used accounts or completely remove accounts and reallocate to more heavily used accounts. There would be a cost to carry this out and would be on an individual school basis dependent on requirements. This has the limitation of a total of 1.8Gb of total email storage per school (6 x 300mb), so overall gains in harvesting long term are minimal.
Schools ICT steering Group decision
The Schools ICT Steering Group discussed these options and the associated risks, merits and limitations of each option.
The Group decided that there was no short-term easy fix for a problem which is affecting a relatively small number of schools therefore managing the available email space was the recommended solution.
This was based on the generic emails being safe and secure to transfer sensitive data between generic accounts and other Norfolk county council employees. Whilst the Google email accounts are safe they do not have the same level of security to transfer sensitive information.
More information on the guidance related to the generic email accounts is available here as well as the Norfolk Generic Email Policy which included guidance on forwarding email accounts.
ICT Shared Service will review solutions for this service as part of the Broadband contract procurement. The new contract will commence in April 2014.
Author: Lynn Parvin
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Generic email services essential maintenance 8th October 2012 from 16:00
We will be performing essential maintenance to the email service which may affect you.
Services Affected:
Generic email accounts such as Head@, Office@, ICT@ including Web based mail and pop3/IMAP protocols
Services Not Affected:
All other services
When:
Monday 8th October from 16:00 – Work is anticipated to take approximately 1 hour
What you need to do:
Please ensure that you do not attempt to use any generic email accounts during this time. If access is attempted data may be lost.
For more Information:
Contact the ICT Shared Services Service Desk via email at ict@norfolk.gov.uk or telephone 0845 3033003
Created on: 03/10/2012 16:31:00
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