Northgate-is - News Item 1178

Northgate awarded £4.5M education contracts in Leicester

Northgate Managed Services (Northgate) has reinforced its reputation as one of the UK's leading providers of education ICT services and solutions with the award of two contracts totalling £4.5m to design, implement and manage new and sustainable ICT environments in the City of Leicester College and Crown Hills Community College.

The contracts which are part of Leicester's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will see Northgate work closely with both colleges to deliver a flexible, robust and scalable ICT service. The infrastructure has been designed to support a range of desktop and mobile devices; including user owned web-enabled devices and has the ability to accommodate future changes in technology. The colleges will have wireless coverage that will support a high concentration of users who will be able to access Northgate's 'cloud based' learning environment, My-School. This online learning portal allows students and teachers to access school's on-line systems and applications 24 x 7 from any device with internet access.

Each college will avail itself of specific technologies and curriculum software that meet their needs. Specialist Sports College, Crown Hills will use software to enable the analysis of personal fitness data and performance in sport. City of Leicester College will use a number of thin client devices, which increases the student to device ratio.

Once the colleges open next Autumn, they will benefit from central support services from Northgate's Operational Centre of Excellence in Belfast, such as service desk and remote management helping to provide cost effective services. This will be supported by onsite technical teams that will further enhance the user experience.

When completed, the new £47.5m colleges will also present the local community with venues and ICT facilities that offer multi-purpose use and promote adult learning and development.

Councillor Vi Dempster, Assistant City Mayor, with responsibility for Children and Schools said : "This is an exciting time for the City of Leicester and Crown Hill Colleges, as both will be moving into new purpose built schools early next year, increasing the number of schools within our BSF programme, that have received ICT improvements to 8, with a further 13 coming on line very soon. With ICT playing such a key role in education, it was vital we could deploy a state-of-the-art ICT solution that could work in tandem with teaching staff to improve education standards. I feel Northgate's solutions will do just that and help us achieve high educational standards.

The technologies that will be installed are without question hi-tech in design. They will offer our teaching staff an array of delivery tools and will do much to enthuse and encourage students to excel in their studies.

Andy Ross, Chief Executive, Northgate Managed Services said, "We are delighted to be working with the City of Leicester College and the Crown Hills Community College. Our remit was clear - to create an ICT environment that could support educational excellence and be flexible in its deployment. I believe that we have provided a blueprint that will do just that, and I know the team are excited about implementing the new service.

As a company we have extensive experience of the education sector and of its unique ICT needs. I feel this experience has set us apart, and has given each college confidence in our ability to delivery robust and impactful ICT solutions capable of assisting teaching staff and pupils to achieve their education targets."

Northgate already supplies ICT services and solutions to over 1,250 schools, colleges and academies across the UK including every school in Northern Ireland through Classroom 2000 (C2k).