Ross Nicol, the project manager of the Schools Wide Area Network project, has given me permission to post the following email that he has sent out to all schools. 

As most of you will be aware, back in February Education and IT began a project to upgrade the network links to all East Lothian schools during the 2006/07 school year. Following a tendering exercise BT were selected to deliver the new network. The new network will provide 100Mb circuits to each of the secondary schools. Each primary school will then connect to their nearest (geographic not cluster) secondary school with a circuit capable of running at up to 10Mb. 

Things have progressed over the last month and we now have dates for the installation of the secondary school circuits. 

The completion dates for these BT circuits are as follows: 

Knox Academy 22nd November 2006 

Dunbar Grammar 22nd November 2006 

Musselburgh Grammar 22nd November 2006 

Ross High School 29th November 2006 

Preston Lodge High School 29th November 2006 

North Berwick High School 29th November 2006 

While these are the completion dates BT have supplied we would anticipate one or more visits to each school by BT personnel prior to this date. 

Once the circuits have been installed IT will need to change the network addresses of every device in the school. We are currently working on the plans for this and will be in touch with individual schools to agree dates for this change over when the plans are ready. All the secondary schools will be converted to use the new network by Christmas 2006. 

We are working with BT at the moment to get dates for the primary school circuits. They will be carried out on the basis of circuits connecting back to the secondary schools and will be done in the following provisional order: 

Dunbar Grammar 

Musselburgh Grammar 

Ross High School 

Knox Academy 

Preston Lodge 

North Berwick. 

This is based on the number of schools attaching to each school, the number with dire connectivity and the number with ISDN lines at present. Dates for these will be circulated when we have them. The project is still on target for all schools will be connected to the new network by Easter 2007. 

  

Ross Nicol 

Project Manager 

SWAN Project