The Vision

We see children and young people, teachers, support staff, parents, carers and the wider community as learners who will be able to use schools as a hub for access to Information and Communication Technology.

ICT in Leeds

Alongside the procurement of the LEP, we are in the process of engaging a strategic partner for schools, Education Leeds and the Council to ensure that the best possible use is made of ICT. This partner will be focussed on the delivery of ICT services to the BSF schools and in ensuring that all Leeds schools benefit from the exciting opportunities for transformation that ICT can bring. The partner, which we hope to appoint by September this year, will be delivering a range of services to the BSF schools - from a single helpdesk for all ICT support (whether technical or curriculum-related) through to professional development and support for strategic and curriculum planning. The partner will also be working alongside Education Leeds and the Council to ensure that all schools have the information they need to make their own decisions on how to integrate ICT into their school development planning, and how the use of ICT can help transform their schools and deliver truly personalised learning.

A full European tender was issued and we are currently working with two short listed bidders in making sure we have the best possible offer of services to take forward. These are:

• Research Machines
• Serco

The evaluation is being carried out by colleagues from BSF secondary schools, primary schools, Education Leeds and Leeds City Council, with expert advice being provided on legal, financial and technical issues from specialist companies outside the Council. The bidders presented some information to schools and other colleagues, and as a result of that meeting we have extended the time we will take to appoint the partner and are taking extra steps to ensure that we have clear propositions from both bidders. The strategic partner will very much be a partner for schools as well as the Council and we are determined to ensure that the contract and the services offered are what is needed by schools. Successful delivery of transformed learning experiences and different schools in the future needs to be led by schools, working in partnership with service and support providers and the strategic partner for ICT will be in a position to provide support, challenge and inspiration to 'think big' about the possibilities opened up by innovative use of ICT across education.

As we are proposing to take additional time to appoint the strategic partner we have retained the services of PTS Consulting in the interim to work with schools, Education Leeds and the Council to ensure that the best possible start is made in developing ICT across the BSF programme. PTS have a wide range of experience across all areas of ICT and have worked with a number of authorities in education-specific projects, including on BSF, and are able to bring this experience to bear in Leeds in support of our development

In Leeds we are fortunate that we have been granted £24 million to spend on ICT across the BSF Programme. We are very proud of the fact that we can offer our schools access to the most innovative and modern technologies on the market today. The Leeds approach will be to work in partnership with an ICT company until 2013 (possibly extending this to 2018) giving the opportunity for the whole of Leeds to access the resources as well as the BSF Programme.

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