Barclay bank on Parago

Background

Barclay Primary opened in September 2006 after the successful amalgamation of the Barclay Infants and Junior schools. Barclay is a large four-form entry multicultural school for children aged 3 to 11 years old with just under a thousand children on roll. The school buildings are of Victorian design with modern well equipped classrooms, each with their own interactive whiteboard and pods of computers. The school has just invested in a new ICT network, which also consists of two brand new fully equipped ICT suites. The school has around 450 PCs/laptops.

Challenge

Peter Willett, ICT manager comments; we previously used a paper database with no formal documentation. Software was not being monitored correctly with this system and I was never 100% sure if we were fully software compliant. Long drawn out manual audits were carried out once a year or when required. Being the fourth largest primary school in the country we needed to make changes. We are also the victims of regular break-ins and the time taken to prepare detailed insurance claims ran into weeks.

Solution

I had used Parago at my last school in London Borough of Newham and it had proved invaluable. I informed the school bursar of the advantages of Parago and we started using the system in the summer of 2007. Unfortunately, we are still the victims of regular burglaries with four in the last three years. It would have taken me two weeks for each claim to carry out a manual audit on the missing items. I simply cannot afford that amount of time out of my busy schedule when running the IT of such a large primary school. With Parago I was able to discover the information within 15 minutes and report to our insurance company. Schools within Waltham Forest are unable to give paper based reports for insurance claims and as we have been so impressed with Parago I have already shown a representative from the local authority.

The Future

The school can justify the cost of Parago on the time saved alone. However, with recent introductions such as power consumption and CO₂ calculator and the launch of the software usage meter I can envisage Parago drastically reducing our expenditure over the next few years. In these days of budget cuts for schools, a system that can help you forecast and save time and money is a prerequisite.