Winchester College is a leading UK independent boarding school for 13-18 year-olds. Founded in 1382, it’s home to some 700 pupils, employs more than 600 staff, and prides itself on providing an unrivalled combination of intellect, culture and pastoral care.
“Centrality created confidence from the beginning of our engagement, with their open-minded, consultative approach and relevant experience. They made it clear early on that the people were as important as the technology.
Centrality was introduced to Winchester College via a referral from a previous customer. It was immediately well received, due to the reassurance of its industry-relevant experience and more importantly, its approach to projects of this nature.
Centrality put Winchester’s needs first, and focused on delivering a customised solution to meet them – as opposed to simply trying to sell products. On this basis, the College chose Centrality to carry out its IT transformation
Identifying the issues
Once unearthed, it was able to offer expert advice on appropriate options on the market, and how to best deploy them. Critical challenges were seen as:
• A lack of wifi
• PCs in need of modernisation and security updates
• Complex IT network, with some two hundred hubs/switches
• Not enough machines to meet pupil demand
• Inadequate IT governance
“Most impressive for us, has been Centrality’s ability to keep an eye on the end goal throughout the process. Their focus on delivering our original objective of improving the learning experience for our pupils has been reassuring.”
Before addressing the infrastructure itself, Centrality proposed a new itinerary for IT governance. It explained that because a large-scale IT change was going to happen, with implications for every one of the college’s teachers, pupils and staff, then this must be clearly communicated to a wide group to ensure adequate preparation.
The existing 30-minute weekly meetings were replaced with monthly two-hour ones, and membership was expanded to create a more robust forum for decision-making.
Establishing IT insights
1. Modernise IT
2. Make wifi widely available
This meant that many ended up using their 4G smartphones to access these resources and apps wirelessly - giving teachers no visibility of what content they were looking at, or when. This clearly had security implications, jeopardising their role as parental guardians.
3. Enable flexible teaching
4. Allow worldwide information access
Opening the door to an enhanced education
Now, pupils could work, using their own devices, in their own study areas - without queuing for shared PCs and sharing resources. This was nothing short of a revolutionary development for the College, from an IT education perspective.
The second phase is still ongoing at the time of writing. It involves completing further wifi deployment and modernisation of the College’s core server infrastructure with a move to Microsoft Azure. Ultimately, this will provide the foundation for a fundamental shift in teaching capabilities. This comprehensive campus mobility is being trialled using Microsoft Surface Pro and wireless technology.
The College is satisfied that everything is on target, meeting objectives, and delivering the value it set out to achieve. From September 2018, all fixed PCs will be permanently removed and boys will use a Microsoft Surface Pro when they join the school
“Centrality is an extension of our team, jointly we’ve revamped our IT infrastructure and digitally transformed the college. We trust them as experts to leverage the right solutions, allowing us to focus our own time on creating the finest end user experience.”
Outstanding ROI - and experiences
In fact, a full digital transformation is being delivered for less than the cost of the original proposed wifi implementation.
Both pupils and parents are delighted with the response to the digital challenge, and Winchester is now well-placed to compete with the best educational institutions in virtual learning for 13-18 year-olds. As the Headmaster himself puts it:
“We used to educate the literati. Now we educate the digerati.”
Because IT is now managed as a service, and bought according to demand, users enjoy an up-to-date, reliable and integrated experience which also reduces the burden on IT support staff so they can focus on providing users with improvements rather than being tied up with cumbersome maintenance and equipment issues.
Teaching is now more innovative, forward thinking and fluid, and teachers can use their initiative to create truly outstanding classroom experiences that benefit the entire school community.