Personal Development for Children and
Young People in the care of Essex LA.
Peter Featherstone.
Consultant ICT (National Strategies)
Essex County Council – School Improvement & Advisory Service.
1
About Essex.
• A mixture of both rural villages and urban conurbations.
• A mixture of both affluent and poor areas.
• One of the largest Local authorities in England, with over
200,000 FTE pupils aged 4+ in Government funded educational
settings.
2
What were the Computers for Pupils grants
worth to Essex LA?
The LA has 6,700 pupils with an entitlement to free school
Meals (FSM), in secondary education.
The total grant awards to the LA were:
Capital £167,200
Revenue £27,400
This would equate to a total of £29 per pupil on FSM in secondary
education.
3
Why target Children and Young People
Looked After (CYLA)?
From previous grant funded initiatives, CYLA studying GCSEs at
KS3, had been supplied with laptops by the LA’s Corporate
Parenting department.
Based on an estimated total cost of £1,000 per student, combined
grant and LA funding would enable approximately 300 students to
receive a laptop with an expected useful life of 3 years and a
connectivity package for 2 years.
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Why target Children and Young People
Looked After (CYLA)?
But more Importantly.
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To improve the support we give to CYLA and our communication
with them.
To reduce social isolation and allow them to ‘meet’ their peers in
a safe environment.
To improve their chances for obtaining good GCSE examination
results.
To help them to obtain additional qualifications in further and
higher educational settings, and to migrate into quality
employment or vocational training.
Learning from the past. The Government’s
Universal Home Access initiative.
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Only 3 schools in Essex.
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Mainly small low-cost hand-held web books supplied to students.
These have limited use for producing quality course work to
examination standard.
•
No school provided safe filtered Internet access.
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Cost.
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Hardware and software.
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Insurance and maintenance.
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Connectivity.
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Staff.
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Cost.
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Hardware and software - £165*
•
Insurance and maintenance - £45*
•
Connectivity - £250* (Includes contribution to LA’s core network)
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Staff – £60,000 (1.5 FTE)
*£460 = Total annual cost per student, based on a 3 year life model.
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Percentage annual running costs.
36%
Hardware &
Software
Maintenance &
Insurance
Connectivity
54%
10%
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Annual cost for 1,300 students.
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Hardware and software - £273,000
•
Connectivity - £325,000
•
Staff – £60,000 (1.5 FTE)
Total Annual Cost £658,000
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Child safety. What concerns us most?
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The Daily Mail
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Child safety.
“Rounded and capable”
“Trust”
“Overly protective”
“Reluctant to take risk”
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Child safety.
Becta’s three-leg stool for e-safety:
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Infrastructure and Technology
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Education and Training
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Policies and Practices
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Child safety. Infrastructure and
Technology – Connectivity.
•
£75,000 of LA funding invested in two secure dedicated Ethernet
links from T-Mobile’s corporate network to the LA’s two data
centers for the schools broadband network.
•
Internet filtering uses the same profile that young people
encounter in the Essex LA’s schools.
•
Every T-Mobile dongle is tested to ensure that it only connects to
the Essex APN (filtered profile) before it is issued.
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Child safety. Infrastructure and
Technology – Computer Hardware
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Special build locked-down laptop that will only allow Internet
Explorer to connect to the LA’s filtered service.
•
User has no admin rights on the laptop, can not browse Drive C:
and can not install or run programs that could bypass the
Internet filtering.
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ECC logo flash screen set in the laptop’s BIOS to deter theft and
assist with recovery.
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Security tagging of laptop and T-Mobile dongle.
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Child safety – Education, Training and
Monitoring.
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Students must collect laptops in person and receive Think You
Know e-safety awareness training, unless there is a compelling
reason not to. (e.g. medical or witness protection).
•
The student’s adult carer must receive Think You Know e-safety
awareness training either when the T-Mobile dongle is collected,
or at a later date from their case or social worker.
•
All laptops have Securus monitoring software installed.
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Child safety – Policies and Practices.
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Students and the responsible adult attending with them attend a
short presentation to explain why the LA is running the scheme
and to emphasize its links to assisting learning, improving
access to services and for having fun.
Students and the responsible adult attending with them, receive
a one-to-one interview with staff from the LA’s Corporate
Parenting Department to carefully explain the guidance
documentation supplied with the equipment and ensure
awareness of any procedures relating to e-safety, damage,
breakdown or theft.
Students and the responsible adult attending with them are
required to sign and retain a copy of our acceptable use policies.
Added value.
www.MyBase.org.uk
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Can we afford to continue?
Annual cost for 1,300 students.
•
Hardware and software - £273,000
•
Connectivity - £325,000
•
Staff – £60,000 (1.5 FTE)
Total Annual Cost £658,000
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The Business Case. Risk Assessment.
Can we afford to participate in Home
Access to ICT for Targeted Groups?
• No identifiable funding for staff.
• No guarantee of being able to use capital funding for
connectivity.
• No guarantee or business plan to indicate to LAs the
availability of future funding.
• Unrealistic(?) timescale for large LA’s and Becta’s
successful bidder, to roll-out the programme before
31st August 2009.
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