Education
UK education statistics
Total number of schools: 32,770
Nurseries or early learning centres: 3,714
Primary schools: 20,832
Middle schools: 19
Secondary schools: 4,188
Independent schools: 2,408
Special schools: 1,257
Pupil referral units: 352
Multi-Academy Trusts in England (two or more schools):
1,170
Further education colleges: 381
Universities: 142
Full- and part-time pupils:
10.3 million
Full-time teachers: 506,400
Students at UK higher
education institutions in
2017/18: 2.3 million
Source: Department
for Education; Welsh
Government; Sco ish
Government; Northern
Ireland Department of
Education (2018/19)
managing campus-wide Wi-Fi service on behalf
of the facility and its operator.”
Wi-Fi vendors have put a lot of e ort into streamlining the
onboarding and authentication process, so it is now a much
slicker experience than it once was. But controlling what devices
come onto the network and what the children can access is a
major concern for schools. “There is quite a wide acceptance
across schools now about the use of personal devices in schools,”
saysWilson.
“Some schools welcome this and if they have appropriate
onboarding and authentication procedures, the kids connect
through the network and the necessary fi lters can be applied
to their BYO device. The teachers can then see what they are
accessing and fi lter content appropriately. Other schools will still
only let children use proscribed devices, but at Aruba we think it is
a missed opportunity to enhance digital learning and experience.”
Capacity issues
But with more bandwidth-hungry devices being deployed,
it is important schools and universities are ready to deal
with potential capacity issues. The latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
standard is designed to allow facilities to connect more devices
simultaneously, and provide a path to 10Gb speeds. “With
Wi-Fi 6, capacity increases four-fold. This means that the
managed services providers will be able to commit and deliver
on tighter SLAs, even in increasingly dense user environments,”
assertsWhite.
But he cautions: “It’s important to remember that Wi-Fi is only
one aspect of the overall network. The facility that has a welldesigned
and specifi ed infrastructure that includes appropriate
physical copper and fi bre connectivity, and ethernet
switching, will gain the most benefi t from provision of
high-quality wireless access to that network, and be
well positioned to support future demands.”
Wi-Fi also adds value by supporting applications
such as asset tagging and location services. “You can
count people into and out of buildings,” says Wilson,
“and see if there is a free seat in the library. Location
services are very useful for the estates team as they
can see the utilisation of facilities.”
White says that the campus environment
is often distributed in nature, and with
a greater numbers of students comes
a greater focus upon the security and
monitoring of facilities and students alike.
“Well-provisioned Wi-Fi enables IP camera
surveillance in those areas that cannot
be serviced by a wired connection and
brings a new dimension to the options for
deployment of security tech.”
There is a lot of interest in the newbuild
student accommodation sector to install
Wi-Fi for applications such as door-locking
systems using your phone, according to
Wilson. “If you can operate that kind of
service over the Wi-Fi then you do not need
to install a separate parallel network. Student
accommodation can work like a hotel. You use
your phone to unlock the door and you don’t have to
worry about keys or door cards.”
“Schools and universities can also make use of
analytical data collected by the Wi-Fi for sustainability
projects,” adds Wilson. “How many people are there;
where are they; when do they go there; how long
do they stay there? You anonymise the data, but it
enables the facility to see what buildings are occupied,
in what densities and when. There is untapped data
that can be harnessed to extract value to make things
more e cient, more productive and safer.”
The other big activity in Wi-Fi is the Internet of
Things. “There is a much wider variety of ‘things’
wanting to connect and they do not all have the
same level of security built in,” says Wilson. “The
network must therefore identify it, create a profi le
for it, recognise what it does and then recognise if it is
behaving abnormally.”
There is clearly plenty of scope for
communications technology in the education sector.
Wi-Fi looks sure to stay, although it is possible
that larger facilities like major universities might
one day look at private 5G networks, especially if
thousands of IoT devices need reliable connectivity
and management. On the voice side, two-way radio
is certainly more e ective than consumer mobile
phones, but PoC may well make inroads here, so long
as cellular coverage is adequate.
20 February 2020 | www.landmobile.co.uk | Twitter:@Land_Mobile
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