Liss Infants & Junior Schools

Liss Junior School installed its first Thin Client network back in 1998 which, at that time, consisted of one server and ten Thin Clients. Over the years they have expanded their system and now have 40 machines, of which some are Fat Clients (ordinary PCs).

In that time not a single Thin Client machine has been taken out of action due to its age, the original machines supplied in 1998 are still in action running the latest Microsoft Windows software at Intel Xeon speeds thanks to their IBM Server with Dual Intel Xeon 2.67GHz processors running Windows 2000 Terminal Services and Citrix MetaFrame XP Feature Release 3.

The installed system provides them with web-based e-mail, each and every pupil has filtered e-mail access, staff can enable and disable external e-mail access on a per pupil or group basis providing the teaching staff with complete control to ensure the pupils are protected from unwanted spam, abusive e-mails and so on.

The e-mail system also filters all e-mails for a predefined selection of words, and known nuisance addresses can be blocked at the server.

Liss has made good use of their e-mail facilities, the school operates a monthly newsletter which is both e-mailed and handed out to parents. Plus there is an e-mailing list for each year group, the newsletter is e-mailed to the parents via this mailing list.

Liss Junior also pioneered the linking of two shared sites in Hampshire with Liss Infants, allowing both schools to share the same server resources thus halving the cost to each school.

Time and effort was put into configuring the server to allow both schools to use the same servers without clashing, even though the server accepts mail from both school’s Internet domains, where each school has a common mailbox name, for instance headteacher@domain the e-mail is then specifically routed to the correct headteacher.

The linking of both sites has some other advantages, pupils don’t need to learn how to use a new system when moving from the Infant to the Junior school, the Infant school no longer needs to delete users from the system, only add them, and the Junior school no longer needs to add users but only delete them when they move on to secondary education.

Liss Infant School had an installed base of machines and slowly migrated to Thin Clients as and when they were able. This particular school loved their old Acorn software, so they have been supplied with special Thin Clients that can run both Acorn and Windows software.

The Infant School also suffered from the common issue of having printing problems with many different types of inkjet printer in each classroom. Not only is it troublesome but it is also costly having to stock many different types of consumable.

The radical solution, as suggested by Surftec, was to get rid of all the inkjet printers tied into individual machines and replace them with just one fast, reliable, high capacity colour laser printer in a central location.

One of the major issues was that it required young children to leave their classroom to collect work. But it was agreed that this would be the approach and the inkjet printers disappeared to be replaced one colour laser printer.

The results have been startling: The new printing system is absolutely bomb-proof; with only one printer to look after the costs of consumables and support have dropped dramatically; the quality and speed of the print has increased; and there has been no problem with the children collecting their work.