Boldon School, a comprehensive school in Tyne & Wear, recently moved premises and took the opportunity to update its printer infrastructure to help improve the quality of coursework and administrative efficiency.
‘Our old building had poor printing facilities,’ says Colin Whitfield, head teacher of Boldon School.
‘There was no interconnections between printers, few allocated to departments and no colour printers. Print backlogs were a problem and coursework for subjects such as maths could not be produced in a way that was wanted.’
As part of a £400,000 IT update, the school now has printing facilities to meet the demanding requirements of staff and pupils. It has eight new colour printers and 76 black and white laser printers from Dell. Subjects benefiting from the new colour laser printers include maths, design and technology, art, textiles and information technology, says Whitfield.
‘These subjects are a strength of the school and the colour laser printers can produce the high-quality design and graphics necessary for GCSE coursework which can be added to a student’s portfolio,’ he says.
After reviewing its printer requirements, the school used the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) web site to source the contract.
‘We gave a very high specification for our printer strategy. We wanted all the printers to be compatible with all the equipment in the school, and we wanted them to be robust. They are used by the teaching staff, but pupils will use them as well. For the printers in the main office, speed was of the essence,’ says Whitfield.
Another advantage of the new printers over the old is the fact they are networked.
‘In the old building there was no way to remote print, so printing work was in a queue as it was limited to one machine. Now, a teacher on a PC in a classroom can send several copies for printing to our reprographics department. Also with our virtual learning environment, we can print any information off from the main server,’ says Whitfield.
He says the new printers are a ‘revolution’, but did not come about without planning.
‘You have to get the specification right immediately and ensure that it reflects the needs of the school and the school’s vision. We talked to staff and then put a plan together, and talked to individual companies so that they could understand what our needs were,’ says Whitfield.
Printer maintenance is an important school requirement; it has two full-time technicians who were involved with the Dell implementation.
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