The Harbour School was founded in 2007 as a maintained Special School and Alternative Provision (AP).  Its mission is to support every learner to develop the skills and opportunities to succeed in their time at the school and in their life beyond. They strive to help learners feel they matter and belong, enabling them to improve their social, emotional and academic skills to be the best that they can be.

With no investment in technology for over five years, the Harbour School was struggling with an ageing server, PC and network estate that frequently failed them. Following an outage which lasted for over three weeks, they were unable to issue new log on credentials for new staff and pupils.

With only one member of staff looking after the support of servers, PCs, network and Cyber Security,  the Headmaster recognised the need for additional capability and guidance to assist their school in recovering the current position and urgently upgrading their unsupported and out of date systems.

Leading Resolutions were engaged and recognising the amazing work that the school does for the local community and children, agreed to carry out the work at cost.

The Challenge

With no investment in technology for over five years, the Harbour School was struggling with an ageing server, PC and network estate that frequently failed them. Following an outage which lasted for over three weeks, they were unable to issue new log on credentials for new staff and pupils.

With only one member of staff looking after the support of servers, PCs, network and Cyber Security,  the Headmaster recognised the need for additional capability and guidance to assist their school in recovering the current position and urgently upgrading their unsupported and out of date systems.

Leading Resolutions were engaged and recognising the amazing work that the school does for the local community and children, agreed to carry out the work at cost.

The Solution
We deployed specialist capability to undertake the following:

Gain a rapid understanding of the current technology including networks, PCs, Operating systems and applications

Capture the needs of staff and pupils

Assess the severity of the problem including a cyber security assessment

Lead a short / sharp tender process including stabilisation, replacement and outsourcing support in order to select a third party

Created and delivered a presentation for the funding committee at Portsmouth City Council, recommending a local Technology supplier of services, support and hardware. resulting in immediate approval to commence

Commence implementation

The Results

The Harbour School are currently going through a complete technology refresh having fully stabilised their environments. This will include school hours server and PC support, patching and security updates and will allow 80 staff and 100 pupils across 4 different campuses to work efficiently and securely. The work will complete in January and will be delivered under their £100K budget.

The IT Manager will be able to focus on growing  their Digital Services and start to migrate some services to the cloud as part of our documented 5 step approach. This foundation has been critical to supporting remote education throughout the pandemic, significantly increasing the ability for digital pupil/teacher interaction at a time when it is so sorely needed.