£3 million pilot programme to connect primary schools in rural areas gets green light

More than 100 rural primary schools across England are set to get gigabit-capable broadband connections within the next few months as part of the Government’s commitment to improve internet infrastructure in rural areas.

Under the £3 million pilot programme, 3 schools have already been connected, and 52 have signed contracts with work expected to be completed in the coming weeks. There are also ongoing discussions with another 72 schools who are interested in participating. The trial was originally planned to reach 100 schools, but the project has been delivered under-budget, allowing even more schools to benefit.

Minister for Digital, Margot James said:

This project is a great example of the Government’s new “outside in” approach to rolling out full fibre broadband, which is taking gigabit broadband to the hardest to reach rural areas first. As well as making a dramatic difference for students in the classroom, by using the schools as broadband hubs we are also making ultrafast broadband available to thousands of rural homes and businesses across the country more quickly.

Those schools already connected under the programme have seen their broadband speeds jump from 0.5 Megabits per Second (Mbps) to 100Mbps, and have the capability to be upgraded to 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) in the future should they wish to do so.

These new speeds are enabling whole classes to simultaneously surf the internet on tablets as part of structured lessons, and gives schools easier access to online training and educational learning. Access to cloud services not only means savings as staff go paperless, but it has also enabled the decommissioning of the school’s local servers to reduce hardware, maintenance and IT support costs.