This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Top Tech for Schools
Connecting Wales gives schools the same advantages as the rest of the public sector in Wales. Speedy access to the very latest technology. Simple procurement process through our shared communications platform. Easily scaled up or down depending on your school’s requirements. A highly cost effective, future proofed platform from a global market leader.
Challenges Facing Schools
Schools educate the youngest and brightest, but the admin is often conducted using crackly telephone systems which are reaching, or have reached, their end of life. They may become increasingly unreliable and costly to use and support. Updating, expanding or changing these legacy telephony systems can be complex, costly or impossible.
School systems often lack the modern features we’ve all come to expect – Microsoft Teams, video calls, instant messaging and collaboration tools. This can affect productivity and caller satisfaction and reflect badly on the school, and the council responsible.
Historically, schools have sourced and procured systems individually, often without internal expertise or market knowledge. That’s meant they haven’t always achieved the best commercial deal or technical fit. For local authorities, multiple contracts with multiple vendors often makes procurement complicated and overall expenditure difficult to track and manage.
For environments where internal technical knowhow is limited, systems administration and privileges may not be available, meaning the inability to self-serve adds delay, and often incurs third-party costs, even for simple changes such as updating a username, ring group or announcement message. In the event of an urgent change request due to staff shortages, adverse weather or other emergency, any delays in making the change could adversely affect the schools’ image and reputation.
With the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and ISDN networks due to be switched off in 2025, a significant number of systems that rely on the old analogue network will have to be replaced or upgraded.
Connecting Wales removes each of these challenges, with one solution, easily procured, simple to upgrade, supported 24/7, complete with the very latest technology. Allowing schools to get on with teaching, and not worrying about tech.
Developed for Schools
Connecting Wales for Schools has been designed and developed specifically for the education sector.
All the telephony and Unified Communications (UC) features commonly utilised within schools are included in a simple price per user model – such as reception console, auto attendant, voicemail, call recording and paging, plus many more!
The service supports and can supply more than 250 different devices from more than 20 manufacturers – from low cost everyday handsets to high-end devices.
UK national and mobile calls are included in the package to help schools manage tight budgets and reduce costs.
Connecting Wales for Schools can also offer call centre capability with comprehensive reporting and analytics, ideal for larger schools and colleges where peak calling periods often occur, such as clearing or during seasonal events.
Benefits for Schools
Mobility
Connecting Wales for Schools offers a unified experience on desktop, tablet or mobile device.
In line with Welsh government targets allowing more people to work from home, Connecting Wales allows you to “take the office with you” using our Mobile App on any smart device (Android or iOS).
You can move calls between desktop, deskphone or mobile device, and place or receive business calls using VOIP calling.
You can even launch audio and video calls with a single click from Your Chat.
Enterprise Grade
Connecting Wales for Schools is a Secure Carrier Grade Platform with Geo-Redundant reliability. The platform incorporates all the functions and features you would expect from an established enterprise UC platform, plus much more.
Connecting Wales natively integrates with messaging, team collaboration, meetings and even a contact centre, if required for larger schools, offering the full suite of mobility across desk phone, desktop, tablet or smartphone. Connecting Wales for Schools fully integrates with Microsoft Teams.
The platform is built with multi-instance environments in mind, using a single pane of glass top-down administration and roles-based structure.
Connecting Wales for Schools can grow and scale to provide each local authority with its own managed platform, partitioned for all its supported schools.
Simple Procurement
Using the Connecting Wales framework for their schools, councils can take advantage of a simple, pre-approved procurement route with fixed pricing, helping them to save both time and money by avoiding lengthy procurement exercises. All schools in a local authority area could be provisioned under a single contract making supplier and contract management easy.