Stanton St Quintin Community Primary School — 'Future proofing' their ICT

Stanton St Quintin Community Primary School, in rural Wiltshire, is a small, popular, primary school with a roll of around 110 pupils age 4—11. Despite its size, it faces all the same challenges as the larger primary schools, particularly when bringing up to date ICT to suit all age groups. It is essential that pupils and teachers have access to the same technology to enhance the learning experience as they would have in larger schools. And as the classes are multi-age, it is essential that each user should be able to have individual access to programs to allow for tailored learning.

The school believes in providing a complete learning experience for the children; its motto is " to motivate, to educate, to nurture", and providing the right environment and technology support is one of the key elements to facilitating that.

Providing ICT which costs less to buy, less to run, less to replace, and lasts longer—perfect!

"The children love to use computers to support their learning," said Anita Druce, Business Manager of Stanton St Quintin School "but inevitably, with this age group, laptops endure unusually high wear and tear, and get dropped and broken. We're a small school, and the repair, maintenance and replacement costs were eating into our budget so much, we were keen to find a different solution."

Anita went on to say, "Virtual desktops are the ideal solution for us. The initial capital cost is a fraction of the equivalent provision from laptops—around £6,000 instead of nearly £20,000, and because there is so little which can be broken, we shouldn't need to replace anything for about 5 years, whereas we would anticipate the laptops lasting less than 2 years!" she added, "Virtual desktops are providing ICT which costs less to buy, less to run, less to replace, and lasts longer—perfect!"
Anita was also impressed by the small amount of space needed, "Because we are a small school, space is at a premium. We have been able to install two 'towers' (Very PC single host with 3 X550 cards) to run 16 workstations, and they fit into a 'micro suite' in the corner of the classroom. Instead of the technical headache of laptops, they have become a real asset in supporting the curriculum." Needless to say, teachers in our other classes are now keen to have this equipment installed!"

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