Civica clinches Wolverhampton BSF deal

Wolverhampton council plans to spend £370m upgrading schools

IT services company Civica has been signed up by Wolverhampton City Council to supply a centralised ICT learning platform as part of the authority's £370m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

Wolverhampton's BSF programme will see the building and refurbishment of 25 of the city’s secondary schools, including new learning facilities, by 2017. Civica's role in the scheme will be to provide its Civica Learning Suite, which will "provide one of the foundations for dynamic online teaching and learning across the different schools," according to a company spokesman.

Civica Learning Suite is designed to provide a safe and secure environment for the delivery of key resources, such as personalised learning platforms, access to school chat rooms, subject-based blogs, online timetabling and homework setting.

Schools should be able to begin accessing the platform from January 2011.

Simon Downing, Civica chief executive, said, "We’re delighted to be working with Wolverhampton City Council to transform learning and education for students and young people across the city. We look forward to delivering a modern IT-based environment as part of the BSF consortium and to providing the secure and flexible foundation to meet current and future educational needs.”

The Wolverhampton programme is Civica’s fourth BSF ICT integration project for the national Partnership for Schools (PfS) Agency, following programmes at Sheffield, Barnsley and Luton.