IT Support Packages for Multi-Academy Trusts
Multi-Academy ICT Support
Striking the balance between a managed service that both achieves economies of scale through trust wide efficiencies and delivers a high-quality experience for your teachers and pupils alike can be a difficult balance to achieve.
The following key principles are crucial for consideration when selecting your managed service provider to guarantee the most positive impact on teaching and learning.
Achieving true value for money
Maximising expertise, innovation, process and structure
Training and development for continued progression of staff, teachers and pupils alike for true technology access for all
Managed Service Support Structure
We spend extra time with your Trust and each school within to develop a high level of understanding needs and aspirations. Together we make sure we are developing and delivering an innovative, cost-effective and flexible partnership that will provide each school within your MAT with the level of support currently required whilst simultaneously developing both infrastructure and staff to work towards a more efficient support model in the long-term. The model has been designed specifically for MATs to offer a flexible progression from current technologies to an increasingly Cloud based world, adding additional levels of strategic, technical and practitioner expertise to help your service evolve and develop over time.
1. Foundation package -
This package provides the foundation of our support model and includes unlimited remote support from 1st - 4th Line experts, full Help Desk access and dedicated site visits
2. Pick & Mix - Enhance your onsite presence and enable 24/7 proactive monitoring and 1st line fix of your systems:
Onsite Network Managers (full time or part time), Onsite ICT Technicians (full time or part time), Dedicated Onsite Apprentice, Dedicated Visiting Engineer Days
3. Value Added - Additional optional services to strategic planning, classroom innovation and proactive support
Value Added Packages
Education Impact Consultancy and CPD Assessment
Innovation Space: We will select a suitable teaching space with you, to turn into an IT Innovation Hub and test bed for new technologies and new teaching methods
CPD Funding: Explore how we could invest in your CPD programme and encourage the innovative use of ICT
Cost Savings Audits: IT Financial Audit and Cost Savings exercises led by industry leading educationalist vastly experienced in helping Schools and Trusts cut their costs and achieve best value
Strategic Vision & Strategy Development and OFSTED Support
Zero Carbon, Zero Landfill ICT to develop an increasingly environmentally aware strand to your ICT Vision and strategy
E-safety Training staff, governors, pupils, parents and other stakeholders (find out more on our eSafety offering here)
Raising Aspirations: We will work with you to provide opportunities for young people to meet face-to-face a wide range of role models doing interesting, exciting jobs in technology to inspire and motivate them
Sweethaven’s managed service provides an integrated solution, in which there are no hidden costs;
Support will be provided via a multi-tiered support model and management structure that ensures your school benefits from the full spectrum of Sweethaven’s expertise. This structure is specifically designed to ensure that the highest level of technical knowledge and educationalist experience effectively cascades from the very top level of the company. Performance is carefully measured through well-considered performance metrics and SLAs to ensure continual high-quality service and results.
E-Safety and Security
Compliance
Adherence to safeguarding policies, E-Safety polices and acceptable usage policies is a central keystone in ensuring a safe and secure learning environment, in line with GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act.
Sweethaven will play a key role in ensuring that your ICT adheres to your own safeguarding policy, E – safety policy and acceptable usage policy. Upon starting with you, we will undertake a full audit of the your information systems and submit to you a plan of action that will be reviewed for you at least termly. We will take proactive measures in ensuring you have the appropriate systems (fire walls, filters, anti-virus, passwords etc.) in place in line with DFE/Ofsted expectations.
Security By Design
Sweethaven implements a ‘Security by Design’ policy for both our own internal systems and those of our customers. Sweethaven are a qualified certification body for the UK Government’s CyberEssentials scheme and partnered with the IASME Consortium (a CyberEssentials Accrediting Body) to offer the IASME Standard in Information Governance (mapped closely to ISO27001). This ensures that not only are our solutions conforming to the highest level of information security, but we can work with our clients to ensure that their practices and procedures do too.
Trusted Advice & Direction
As an internet supplier to Schools, a Crown Commercial Services supplier and a CyberEssentials & IASME certification body, Sweethaven keep up-to-date with the latest technology and threats through our industry associations, information-sharing frameworks and our close contact with the many schools that we work with. In doing so, we provide up-to-date advice and warnings (alongside advice from CEOP and others) to school communities to ensure that everybody stays protected.
Training
E-Safety training and information sessions is also imperative for staff, governors, pupils, parents and other stakeholders alike. Sweethaven can host training sessions and even be present at parents’ evenings if desired.
Cloud Technology
Adoption of cloud-based technologies and new ways of hybrid cloud working to challenge the status quo are now high on Multi-Academy Trust’s agendas. Embracing enterprise and new cloud technologies can provide a high quality, easy to manage ICT service that will be accessible from anywhere and costs up to 25% less per user than current services.
Fully embracing that Cloud will mean your teachers and pupils can move from site to site seamlessly, work from school or home easily, with IT that just simply works whilst achieving trust-wide cost efficiencies.
Together we can transform your ICT Service by developing a strategy that respects the investments already made whilst gradually moving towards to a Hybrid Cloud solution that can combine versatile, always-available cloud infrastructure with speed & reliability of locally-based servers.
Already fully adopted Cloud working? Sweethaven are both Google for Education Partners and Microsoft Gold Partners – so our team of experts are well equipped to take your cloud innovation to the next level.
Click here to find out more on Sweethaven’s work as official Google & Microsoft Partners for the Department of Education’s platform provisioning programme to better enable remote teaching and learning for all English schools and Multi-Academy Trusts. – Add let us help you claim your grant of up to £10,000 from the DFE
As the Cloud can be a new way of working, Sweethaven will work with you on a cloud adoption strategy, utilising our experts in deployment and use of Cloud Technologies to best assist you in facilitating Trust-wide adoption of cloud working and maximise opportunities offered through this.
Broadband & Internet Services
Enabling safe and secure online learning environments across your Trust, with effective content filtering and network security is more important than ever for your schools.
Your broadband and internet services need to enable you to both achieve peace of mind that your students are safe online and ensure a reliable, high speed connection that can properly equip your teachers to work productively. Centralised control of your Trust’s IT will further ensure you drive down costs and increase operational efficiencies.
Sweethaven are approved suppliers on the Department for Education Crown Commercial Services framework. As an internet supplier to Schools, a Crown Commercial Services supplier and a CyberEssentials & IASME certification body, Sweethaven keep up-to-date with the latest technology and threats through our industry associations, information-sharing frameworks and our close
contact with the many schools that we work with. Our broadband and internet services therefore ensure:
Exceptional, customised content filtering to protect your students from harmful or unacceptable content
Full compliance with Internet Watch Foundation requirements and proactive monitoring of what they do and the URL list they provide to Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
Resilient, high speed network connections
Ongoing provision of up-to-date advice and warnings (alongside advice from CEOP and others) to school communities to ensure that everybody stays protected
Holistic incorporation of security, data protection and safeguarding focusses within all solution designs
Sweethaven are a qualified certification body for the UK Government’s CyberEssentials scheme and are partnered with the IASME Consortium (a CyberEssentials Accrediting Body).
Offering the IASME Standard in Information Governance (mapped closely to ISO27001). This ensures that not only are our solutions conforming to the highest level of information security, but we can work with our clients to ensure that their practices and procedures do too
Green IT & Corporate Social Responsibility
We are all becoming acutely aware of the responsibilities we all have in addressing the environmental challenges that are facing the world. It is now our duty to ensure all endeavours to best protect the future environment for the next generation.
Sustainable IT, also known as Green IT, as defined by International Federation of Global & Green ICT ""IFGICT"", covers the manufacturing, use, management and disposal of information technology in a way that minimises its impact on the environment.
Your Multi-Academy Trust IT services can aid sustainable IT through:
Ensuring a service provision that encompasses sustainable IT specialisms to help provide zero carbon devices and low energy technologies
Making Green IT disposal as easy as possible for customer whilst ensuring compliance with EU GDPR
Setting CSR targets together with you to maximise the positive impact on society and make the most of the opportunity to contribute towards young people’s life chances around the world
At Sweethaven, we have a young workforce who are clearly concerned and passionate about stopping Climate Change and so we have recently committed as a business to review all our processes, policies and purchasing decisions to ensure we are doing as much as we possibly can to reduce our carbon footprint and impact on the world’s resources.
We are now building this thinking into our product and service offerings by ensuring that sustainability, energy efficiency, zero carbon manufacturing and end of life re-use are all considered as part of our product selection criteria. We therefore ensure we offer our customers a range of Green ICT products, services and value-added partnerships so we can help move everyone more quickly towards a Zero Carbon Future.
Our passionate team would work with you to add another design principle, namely Sustainable IT into your user device choices, so that together we can reduce your school’s environmental footprint.
Curriculum
Ensuring teachers and staff are confident in using your solutions in the classroom is central to achieving optimal teaching and learning outcomes from your IT investments.
Often transition and leadership through innovative changes and progressions can be difficult to achieved if not planned and implemented effectively.
Value added elements of your managed service provision can:
Help prepare staff and students for the new technologies and teaching and learning opportunities that will be available
Help make the best use of the current ICT technologies and resources to maximise teaching and learning benefits
Support your SLT, support and teaching staff to ensure best practice and max uptake of new technologies and moves towards online resources and tutorials for education
Encourage more CPD and IT focussed training and innovation
Sweethaven's network of education specialists will work with you to aid successfully delivery of your ICT curriculum.
Our team will work alongside your Senior Leadership Team at the Trust as well as the ICT Leads/Coordinators to ensure the Trust’s delivery plan identifies curriculum and teaching & learning priorities and requirements for a diverse range of students within each year level.
As well as providing the technology itself, the team will work with you on a transition plan and also provide training to teachers and staff to ensure they best placed to inspire students to excel within the digital environment.
Audio Visual
As a crucial cornerstone of classroom teaching and learning, your audio-visual strategy needs to encompass technologies that are fit for purpose within your specific school context.
Investments into these technologies are fully maximised through effective teacher use and adoption. The education impact of the right audio-visual can be profound if well-considered and implemented, through truly enhancing the level of collaboration and engagement in the classroom.
When considering your audio-visual choices, the following factors are important to bear in mind:
What do the products offer in terms of pedagogy, efficiency and cost?
From a teaching and learning perspective, does your technology provider of choice invest in teachers, their software and the future development of their products, to ensure that the end result is an enriched learning experience?
Does the technology enable pupils to explore and discover for themselves, working independently and as groups for true collaborative learning?
Can the teacher easily and spontaneously begin an interactive activity/game and present the work to the entire group?
Does the technology enable a classroom experience that allows teachers to quickly engage the entire room and capture pupils’ imaginations?
The Sweethaven team of passionate experts will work with you and your SLT to talk through your school’s vision and goals for the classroom and subsequent learning outcomes.
Based on these discussions, we will then determine a strategy in conjunction with our audio-visual partners that accounts for these outcomes and is accompanied by a comprehensive training programme so that teachers feel confident using the technologies and you glean maximum return on your investment.
The education impact of the right audio-visual can be profound if well-considered and implemented, through truly enhancing the level of collaboration and engagement in the classroom.
The Sweethaven team of passionate experts will work with you and your SLT to talk through your school’s vision and goals for the classroom and subsequent learning outcomes. Based on these discussions, we will then determine a strategy in conjunction with our audio-visual partners that accounts for these outcomes and is accompanied by a comprehensive training programme so that teachers feel confident using the technologies and you glean maximum return on your investment.
