“Outsourcing the management of our IT services to Medhurst has been a great decision for the school. Schools now require the same level of IT infrastructure and services as most enterprise size businesses and we have found their expertise and experience to be invaluable. Working in collaboration with Medhurst, we have been able to enhance the learning experience for our students and our teachers have been able to focus on delivering the best lessons for our students. Our next step is to move towards cloud collaboration platforms using Microsoft SharePoint and Teams to deliver the curriculum and ensure that teaching resources are available on all devices.”
Sandra Davis, Director of Digital Strategy at Godolphin School
Customer Profile
Godolphin School is an independent girls’ school in Wiltshire, England. The school aims to create a modern teaching environment where the girls can develop the knowledge, qualifications and character needed to thrive in a modern, fast paced global society. To support these comprehensive plans, Godolphin approached education IT specialist Medhurst, to discuss outsourcing its ICT services to the company in the summer of 2018.
School Needs
Sandra Davis, Director of Digital Strategy, at Godolphin School says, “Like many other schools, technology underpins a lot of what we do at Godolphin. Our teaching environments must be both innovative and engaging to ensure that our girls leave Godolphin confident in their abilities and open to new ideas and global opportunities. To deliver this technology, we decided to outsource our requirements to experienced IT in education experts, Medhurst.”
Sandra continues, “Using specialist outsourced IT services, means that we can focus on the learning environment for our students, happy in the knowledge that the supporting technology infrastructure will always be available, secure and of a high standard across the school for all staff and students.”
Medhurst was already working with Godolphin, having installed a new network and wireless solution from Aruba in 2017. Sandra explains, “The wireless solution enables Godolphin students to use a favourite device and connect to school resources anywhere and at any time to suit their individual learning requirements. But this also means that consideration must be given to the availability of systems and that solutions have to provide the flexibility to use either a school or personal device and ensure that working between both is as seamless as possible.”
Solution
In June 2018, the Medhurst Managed Services team successfully tendered for the Godolphin outsourced technology contract and over the summer of the same year, the team took over the technology services provision across the school.
The Medhurst Managed IT Services team is made up of expert education IT specialists with many years’ experience of designing and supporting pioneering and cost-effective teaching environments and back office support services across all education establishments. The group provides a complete managed IT service provision across schools with onsite technical staff to provide day-to-day support for all users.
Result
The Medhurst Managed Services team now manages all of Godolphin’s core IT services, meaning that the school’s technology provision is consistent and reliable. Dedicated onsite and remote account management ensure the smooth delivery of IT services with regular reporting, accountability for the quality of service and assistance with budgeting. It also means that the Medhurst team can tackle any re-installation, hardware or software configuration tasks to ensure network stability and efficiency.
All the Medhurst engineers and support team are enhanced DBS checked, all in line with ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and GDPR (Information Security) as standard and adhere to the school’s confidentiality agreements. The onsite Medhurst staff have also attended the school’s induction, safeguarding, health and safety, and data security training.
The onsite team, comprising Medhurst senior and level one technicians, also takes care of all the documentation of the school’s entire IT infrastructure and can offer access to specialist technical expertise from the wider Medhurst technical team, as and when required for additional ad-hoc projects. The team also supports the school staff with the development of future IT provision strategies across both curriculum and administration functions.