Northern Grid for Learning - School Broadband, eSafety, Learning Resources and More

To improve cost efficiencies and increase roll-out consistency of broadband in English schools, ten regional broadband consortia were created across England, servicing 139 of the 150 local education authorities which in turn serve over 22,000 schools:

• CLEO: Cumbria Lancashire Education Online
• EMBC: East Midlands Broadband Consortium
• E2BN: East of England Broadband Network
• LGfL: London Grid for Learning
• NG: Northern Grid for Learning
• NWLG: North West Learning Grid
• SEGfL: South East Grid for Learning
• SWGfL: South West Grid for Learning
• WMnet: West Midlands Regional Broadband Consortium
• YHGfL: Yorkshire & Humberside Grid for Learning

If these regional broadband consortia did not exist, each local authority would be forced to replicate much of the organisational infrastructure and resources of a full-scale, regional consortium. Clearly, this would be ineffective in terms of overall:

Deployment and running costs:

with savings on individual projects ranging from 10-60% through economies of scale, RBCs make strong financial sense to stretch limited educational budgets.

Inter-operability and rollout efficiency:

as the nation’s over 25,000 schools work ever more closely together, interoperability has come to the fore. RBCs help schools to do this more quickly and effectively.

Consistency of systems and outcomes facilitating faster, betterapplication rollout:

to meet National Education Network targets, as well as those set out at a regional and LA level, central coordination is essential to success. Now, as these targets are further converging at a national level, cooperation in terms of secure access and consistent data structures are even more essential.

Download the full White Paper which demonstrates how the Regional Broadband Consortia (RBC) as individuals and a group consistently deliver these benefits to educational and local uthority institutions.