IT services for schools and academies

DfE laptop scheme update

5 January 2021

For school closures, or where more than 15 children are self-isolating, schools can order a pre-determined allocation of computers from the DfE. This is triggered through the daily DfE educational setting status form. You can log on here to see your school's allocation.

Suffolk County Council have distributed over 1000 computers via the DfE scheme for children with a social worker. If you are supporting a young person who has a social worker and you feel they do not have sufficient access to a computer, please contact the young person’s social worker or personal adviser directly so that they can request one from this scheme. There are only a limited number of computers remaining, but SCC are exploring how this can be sustained.

In addition to these schemes:

We aware that schools have been using the Pupil Premium Grant to secure additional devices to support remote learning.

We are also aware that Vodaphone’s schools connected scheme is providing 30GB free data only SIMs connectivity for 90 days for schools and colleges. This is intended for disadvantaged young people to support remote learning. Our understanding of the scheme is that all SIMs are pre-configured to block age-restricted content when using the Vodaphone network. Please contact Vodaphone directly to find out more.

Capita's webinar programme

2 June 2020

The Capita SIMS and Capita Reading Cloud Customer Success Team run regular webinar sessions. These cover a range of SIMS, Reading Cloud and education related topics. 

Read the latest schedule and how to register or check out previous webinars at support.capitasoftware.com.

To access recordings of previous webinars instantly, you'll need to provide your name and some school details. These will not be shared or used for marketing purposes.

Capita update

19 May 2020

DfE has announced schools will benefit from a ground-breaking partnership to gain access to education platforms. (PDF, 68KB)

DfE laptop scheme

5 May 2020

You will have heard that the DfE scheme is now live and that Directors of Children's Services and CEOs of Academies are being written to by the DfE with indicative allocations of laptops and devices. The communication from the DfE does not mention dongles (4G for use where no internet connection is available) but it is our understanding that these are also included in the offer.

Suffolk County Council has been given its indicative allocation for both children with social workers and for Year 10 pupils in LA maintained schools who are in need of this resource. Like many of you, we are not certain of timescales but have been given an indicative delivery time frame of late May/ Early June, which gives some time to work out the logistics involved in safely distributing these items to our children who need them most.

Task group

We will be forming a task group next week to ensure that the delivery is joined up and we will be inviting colleagues from across the sector to ensure that there is as much co-ordination around this as possible. We want to share learning around how safeguarding is ensured; how individual children are prioritised and share the agreements and contracts that are being used between school and family in relation to their use. If you or a member of your team would like to be a part of this task group, please contact Matthew Cooke (matthew.cooke@suffolk.gov.uk) for further information.

DfE update in relation to COVID-19

21 April 2020

Dear colleague

It is vital, at this time, that all education and care settings including local authorities are able to focus on the impact of COVID-19, providing for the young people in their care and looking after the wellbeing of their staff. To help reduce burdens, the Department have reviewed all data collection activity planned for the remainder of the current academic year to ensure that any requests for data and/or information remain essential, justified and feasible.

With regards to the 2020 summer school census, the Department have concluded that this data collection will be cancelled and will not take place this year. Please note that this decision has been taken for the upcoming 2020 summer census only and the Department remains committed to the summer census taking place in future years.

We will be in touch with further details on future iterations of the school census in due course.

Regards Data Collections Service Desk.