Tag: Digital Standards

Digital Standards in schools: Consultation

It was with some interest that I read the DfEs consultation in relation to making some of their digital standards compulsory by 2030.  I think the digital standards are a positive step forward, providing guidance to schools to help in developing processes and procedures around technology use in schools, plus helping to guide technology decision making, however equally they aren’t without some limitation.

You can see and respond to the consultation here.  

It was on a Teams call that I first heard of the consultation which looks at making six of the digital standards compulsory.  So, my first act was to try and guess which standards would be involved, with me going for Leadership and Governance, Cyber, Filtering and Monitoring and Broadband.   These felt like the right ones as technology can be expensive, even if not in terms of hardware and software, it is still expensive in training and staff development, especially where wrong technology decisions are made.   As such it seems only logical that leadership and governance would be covered.    You need to have a direction, a strategy, before you look to make any other decisions.  Next was cyber security and filtering and monitoring as they are both areas widely discussed in relation to education, and like leadership and monitoring, these three are very much about leadership, processes, procedures, policies and risk management, all of which can be explored and examined with minimum cost. My next selection was broadband, as this is something which schools can easily assess and act on as soon as any existing contract is up.

At that point I was a little stuck for the remaining two standards, which as I found out, would be Wi-Fi and Switching.   Now I totally get why these would be selected as these are the basics infrastructure comments of technology use.   We can have plans for fancy AI software or plans related to the most advanced end point devices, but without reliable and robust infrastructure, the network switching and Wi-Fi provision, they are of little use.   The challenge her however is one of cost both in terms of the equipment but also the resources to setup and maintain this post install.   Now some money has been promised to support schools in this area, so I see this as a positive step, however I don’t think there is truly an appreciation of the state of IT infrastructure in schools across England so therefore any funding allocation could only really be a guess.   Whether that guess stands up to be enough is yet to be seen, although it is important to note that any investment will move things forwards, so it is way better than nothing.

There is another challenge or concern I have, and it relates to funding.   I have seen in the past where funding gets allocated to support technology in schools however technology investment is not a “one and done”.    Once you invest and once teachers and students start using technology in lessons and around school, you will need to continue to invest just to maintain the status quo, never mind to advance.   This is due to the fact that Wi-Fi access points and switches will need replaced when they go end of life, as will end point devices and the other components which go together to make up the IT in a school.    Using end of life equipment may introduce cyber security risks or reliability risks which in turn could impact on technology use in lessons and on students.   It is funny that the DfE standards do refer to refresh cycles, so I wonder if said refresh cycles will factor in future funding plans.

Another challenge I see in the standards is the fact that they are trying to guide schools where schools exist in very different contexts.   We have large Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) with strong centralised IT functions, small individual primary schools or large secondary schools with more limited IT resources, and everything in-between and more.   It is therefore difficult for the standards to be uniformly applied to all which would need to be the case if they are to be compulsory, rather than allowing for them to be contextualised and interpreted where they are simply guidance.    There is also the question of why actually will be checking that schools have complied;  I don’t think OFSTED would be able to check this so who would?

Conclusion

I think some schools will have difficulty meeting the digital standards, especially if there is an absence in funding.  That said sometimes what matters is what is measured, and maybe by requiring schools to adhere to the digital standards this will propel Technology up schools’ list of priorities.    

I very much look forward to seeing the results of this consultation although I suspect funding will be the key, particularly around the Wi-Fi and switching standards.  If so maybe the easy solution is simply to apply four standards initially and maybe this could even be done before 2030?

Digital Standards

I have been lucky enough to be able to see some of the draft versions of the Department for Educations (DfE) digital standards and to provide feedback.   In some ways, I am really keen on them but in other ways, there are aspects of them which I am not so happy about.    But that said, I think we should accept them as they are, and that they are a step forward.

For quite some years, there has been a void in relation to guidance on technology for schools with some schools navigating this void well, using networks such as the Association of Network Managers in Education (ANME) for help, however, other schools have not been so fortunate.   Technologies were bought but without plans for replacement, while other technologies were bought which didn’t meet future needs or would have worked well except for basic infrastructure which wasn’t there.    Years ago in Abu Dhabi, I discussed the need for a strong foundation in relation to EdTech before we got to teacher and student confidence and eventual embedding of technology in teaching and learning.   The DfE Standards are not the single solution but they at least provide some guidance and seek to fill this void.

The issue however is that schools and school contexts vary so much across England and across the wider UK so for any single set of standards to fit it needs to be very broad to the point which the resultant standards may have become less useful, especially for those schools without the relevant experience, skills and focus in relation to technology.    In trying to be more useful the standards are a bit more specific which means they don’t fit all contexts or all viewpoints in relation to how technology in schools should look.

If we accept the DfE standards as being imperfect in their inability to cover every school context and school eventuality, then we can make positive use of them.   As an imperfect instrument, we can take what we can from the standards while identifying where some things don’t fit.    One example is Cat 6A cabling;  I get it that we might want to put Cat 6A everywhere in a new building possibly, but in a refit where cabling runs make Cat 6A more difficult, why can’t Cat 5E be good enough?   Isn’t the biggest pinch point likely to be our internet bandwidth rather than having 10Gbps to desktops?   Maybe we can save money on cabling to spend more on bandwidth?  Maybe we might install some Cat 6A for Wireless Access Points (WAPs) but Cat5e elsewhere? 

I don’t think the standards can ever be perfect and black and white, but when is this world ever perfect or black and white, and more importantly when does this ever happen in the messy world of education?    Raising concerns about their imperfections or highlighting issues doesn’t move technology in schools forward.   So, if we accept the standards are imperfect, we might just be able to use them to do what they are meant for, which is to help and provide some guidance.   We might then be able to move technology in schools forward in more and more schools.