Ormskirk School, Lancashire

Ormskirk School is a voluntary controlled secondary school with sixth form, holding over 1,500 pupils from age 11 to 18. It is a specialist school for the visual and performing arts.

Over the last four years, the school has merged from two sites into one, involving demolition of the old Wigan Road buildings, sale of the Ruff Lane site, and construction of a purpose-designed new school build which was ready for the staff and pupils to move into in September 2004. The sale of the Ruff Lane buildings provided the fortune of surplus funds that were invested into much needed ICT resources for the new school. This has resulted in a fantastic modern teaching environment from which the staff and pupils are now reaping the benefits.

"Our priorities had to be the teaching and learning within the school and pupil performance. RM was hugely supportive of this. The wonderful thing is that we've had everything from scratch - integrated ICT across the whole school system, covering administration, managerial and curriculum levels." Reay Illingworth, Assistant Head

The old sites had limited ICT resources. In 1999 the Ruff Lane site started with 16 RM computers running on an RM Connect™ Foundation 2.2 network, and had 20 old Acorns around the school. Gradually they built on this, moving to a Connect 2.4 network in 2001 and adding more PCs as they could afford to. The Wigan Road site started with an RM Net LM network of 40 machines then moved to a "vanilla" Windows 95/NT4 network and again added more PC's as funds became available.

The unexpected funds resulting from the sale of the Ruff Lane site opened up the perfect opportunity to furnish the new school building with the ICT that was drastically needed.

"We made the decision to stay with RM because we had a good experience with our existing relationship. We knew RM, knew the support was good, and knew RM could deliver what we wanted. We did look at other suppliers but were not impressed." Jacqui Dunderdale, Network Manager.

The task of installing all the new equipment was a long and complicated process, Jacqui and her team worked throughout the summer holiday to make sure everything was ready for the start of the autumn term, with the help and guidance of an RM project manager. They managed to complete the installation on time despite delays in the building project that of course had a knock on effect.

"We really needed the RM project management support - it was invaluable in helping us to keep everything on track."

They have installed over 400 PCs and 20 administration PCs (running on a separate network), with 120 staff laptops, and 375 pupil laptops that are currently kept in school.

Ormskirk School now has the benefit of a projector in each and every classroom, and every department has access to an RM ClassBoard™ (interactive whiteboard), two RM NoteBuses with a host of laptops for mobile ICT, and new PCs running on a schoolwide Community Connect 3™ network. This has allowed the teaching staff to embrace ICT across all areas of the curriculum and to really enhance the teaching and learning in their lessons.

"I can't imagine teaching without ICT now. Every lesson I have got the projector on, even if it is just to show an image - it just makes it so easy to find resources. Being an RE teacher, it is really useful to be able to show images of artefacts in my lessons." Chris Stewart, Head of RE.

"The pupils are really motivated by the technology and are using it all the time. They're even putting their own PowerPoint presentations up on the network now." Chris Stewart, Head of RE.

Each member of staff has their own individual laptop, and each department has its own staff room where they can work and prepare lessons in peace and quiet. There is now no need for TVs and videos to be brought into school as a whole variety of resources can now be accessed over the network and shown to pupils through the projectors and interactive whiteboards that are readily available.

"The staff have surprised and thrilled me with the way they have responded. The new technology has transformed the way they are teaching on an individual and school level. They have gone from being anxious and concerned to demanding more training as they are keen to be able to use it even more effectively." Reay Illingworth, Assistant Head.

To further develop their use of ICT, the school has recently invested in a Kaleidos® site licence. The staff are just beginning to see the huge impact that this is going to have for them in enabling them to share and access an expansive range of resources, not only while at school but also from home. They believe that Kaleidos is the key to fully integrating ICT across the whole school.

"Even this time last year we knew Kaleidos was going to be really good. It's not just a filing system, it is a whole new way of handling work. It is going to be a really big success looking at it long term. We're starting out with it across Year 7 and then we're rolling it out through Year 8 and 9 rather than trying to get everyone on board all at once." Chris Stewart, Head of RE.

As Network Manager, Jacqui Dunderdale is very involved in introducing Kaleidos to the teaching staff. She has gathered a group of seven teachers from maths, humanities and science - "Kaleidos champions" - who are piloting the project and attending training with their RM Educational Specialist Ralph before they expand it to the whole school.

The staff that are not yet using Kaleidos have heard about the benefits it can provide and are keen to have access to it.

"The other staff can't wait to get started, I have to keep telling them we're not quite ready yet, we want to get the Kaleidos champions fully trained up before we roll it out across the whole school!" Jacqui Dunderdale, Network Manager.

The pupils have seen many improvements. They are now using ICT in a variety of lessons, including music, French and science, and they find this makes the lessons more fun and interesting.

Most of them have PCs at home, so they can remotely access email, learning resources, and homework by logging in to the school network. They will soon also have access to the resources available within Kaleidos.

They have seen time savings as instead of having to print work out they can now save it on the network and quickly access it again later at home. They are using the Internet a lot to research their work.

"We use interactive whiteboards in most lessons. Our French teacher can't draw so it really helps now that he can get a picture up on the board!" David, Year 8 pupil.

"I can email things from home which is dead good. We use interactive whiteboards in science to do activities." Jamie, Year 9 pupil.

It is not just the teaching staff and pupils that have benefited from the new technology. At Ormskirk School, even the caretakers have now got their own networked PCs, connected to surveillance cameras and CCTV, so that at all times they can monitor security around and within the school, and can spot any activities that shouldn't be going on.

The classrooms can also be monitored by CCTV accessed through the network from the IT staff room, and the canteen has moved to a cashless system.

The Learning Resource Centre has seen advances too, despite having always had a computerised library system in place.

"Email is now our main communication channel. I'm quite isolated as I always have to be here in breaks and never get a chance to interact with other staff, so having access to email makes it much easier for me to know what is going on. Also I can now access SIMS on the central network." Milly Casey, Learning Resource Centre Manager.

Things will not stop here - Ormskirk School has plenty of plans for the future. These include to:

• Implement a site-wide wireless network with 500 laptops for staff and pupils, to provide even more flexible access to ICT. The staff often move class location which causes a lot of stress on cable network points, so wireless will really help here.
• Move fast to roll out Kaleidos, as some staff are very quickly gathering resources that they want to use with it.
• Investigate new content for Kaleidos, including DiscoverAlive.
• Introduce an electronic reporting system.

Reay Illingworth sums it up: "The key element is that the new system is increasingly evolving from below and not being imposed from above. Classroom teachers are developing their own expertise and sharing it with others. Staff are encouraged to buy in as they can see it enhancing their teaching and learning."

We'll be sharing more news from Ormskirk School as they progress.