Planning for ICT in new and re-furbished buildings Nina Woodcock, Senior Managing Consultant, Academies, Becta BETT 08 Thursday, 10 January 2008

Bectas vision A world where technology and innovation enable learners to achieve their potential. There are currently several capital building programmes providing us with unprecedented levels of investment to renew and refurbish school buildings: we must make the most of this opportunity and ensure that the use of ICT to transform learning is fully embedded.

Major Capital Building Programmes Building Schools for the Future Primary Capital Programme Academies One School Pathfinders Whichever programme you are involved in you need to think about ICT at the earliest opportunity.

Developing the vision What is your overall vision/ethos for education? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? How can technology help you to achieve those outcomes? These should be the starting points for your vision NOT specific technologies. They need to be considered well before any detailed building designs are produced.

Learner Organisational Design Building Design ICT

Why do you need to consider ICT early? We are transforming learning not just putting up buildings. ICT has the potential to: change the way we learn (and teach) enable personalisation allow learning to take place off-site and outside school hours. New ways of learning and teaching can have a profound effect on the design of spaces in the school and the way we use technology in those spaces. Changing the design later can be very expensive.

Defining the vision: further questions to ask How will ICT contribute towards: personalising learning creating a flexible learning environment supporting and developing staff enabling secure and reliable communications parental engagement environmental sustainability.

What other drivers need to be considered? Every Child Matters Inclusion Curriculum developments entitlement E-safety Workforce reform Extended schools Community access.

Consulting the stakeholders Staff (teaching and non-teaching) Parents Students Governors Local authority Sponsors Local community and businesses Other local schools and education providers.

Resources to support vision development Becta self-review framework: help schools review and develop their use of technology in every area of learning, teaching and management say all schools should make use of the self-review framework (if possible) before they enter a building programme. ICT Quality Indicators: helps explore stakeholders expectations of how technology will be used in new school buildings. Exemplar practice eg winners of ICT Excellence Awards.

Additional support Bectas Capital Buildings Programme team can provide some direct support. For Building Schools for the Future, Partnerships for Schools have a team Education ICT Advisers. For many projects additional ICT consultancy may be required: depending on existing resources/capacity of the local authority or sponsor this can be procured from Bectas Consultancy Services Framework Agreement.

Specifications Detailed specifications of the system should be developed only once the vision is established. Bectas functional specifications should be the minimum standard for any implementation: for Building Schools for the Future these are embedded in the Buidling Schools for the Future ICT output specification. Detailed technical specifications should only be developed after functional/output requirements have been specified: for some programmes (not Building Schools for the Future) these more detailed requirements are needed to run the procurement.

Procurement For Building Schools for the Future procurement of an area-wide managed service is usually via a Local Education Partnership (LEP). For other capital programmes the recommended option is to procure via Bectas frameworks unless there are already other suitable (OJEU compliant) aggregated procurement arrangements in place.

Further information Capital building programmes Self-review framework Procurement Technical standards