Firstly, I would like to apologise on behalf of the Bradford Broadband Project partners for the services that you have been experiencing over recent months. This service has been completely unacceptable.

Secondly, I would like to explain briefly what the issues have been and what Education Bradford, Synetrix and ntl:Telewest have been doing including future plans.

The current filtering solution (Network Box) that the primary schools use is coming to the end of its licence. Mark Chambers and I have been working with Synetrix on the solution to replace this. A product called NetSweeper has been identified as the best solution for primary schools. It has been successfully used in our secondary schools for the past 18 months (and is also used in other authorities that are managed by Synetrix). This has been piloted in a small number of primary schools with very positive results.

Unfortunately, while all this planned change has been happening, the network box hardware and software have been experiencing a number of problems which has been service affecting. This has included intermittent issues with receiving images instead of websites and the Internet sometimes running slowly or not available at all. The solution to these problems has been to bring forward the planned rollout of NetSweeper to all primary schools.

Attached are details on what this change in filtering software will mean to you and a guide on how to use the new software, but the biggest change you will see is a vast improvement in your access to the internet. Mark and I are working continuously with ntl:Telewest and Synetrix to not only ensure that the current issues don't happen again but also to look at further improvements that can be made to the service.

The next big change will be an increase to the internet pipe as this is nearing capacity (100Mb). This increase will also require upgrades to the core switches and firewalls. The move of primary schools on to NetSweeper will make the caching of websites more efficient and we are also looking at the websites visited to make sure they are for educational use. This will enable use to limit or block the amount of bandwidth available to none educational sites so freeing up capacity for teaching and learning.

If you would like to discuss these changes further please call me on 01274 385844.

Best wishes

Jo Dean

Project Coordinator

Click for Filtering information