Case Studies

Stephen Hawking School

Stephen Hawking School is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and is a special school for around 75 two to 11 year olds. The majority of the school’s pupils have profound and multiple learning difficulties and a significant number of them also have additional sensory and physical impairments.

The school is supported by members of the local Primary Care Trust who provide nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy for the pupils. In addition, many of the staff at Stephen Hawking School have specialist qualifications in the education of children with learning difficulties. All of these people work incredibly hard to help pupils reach their potential - and also to ensure that the school offers a safe, positive and challenging environment for them.

A safe and secure learning environment
Safety is of course a key requirement with an education establishment of this type, which is why the school’s communication system has some very specific and somewhat unusual requirements, as School Business Manager Berl Goldbart outlines:

“It is vital that our staff can alert other people in the case of an emergency. If they need assistance with a pupil, or if there are any other concerns, then the ability to quickly and easily send out a request for assistance or to raise a ‘Code Blue’ alarm is essential. Our existing communication system could do this to a point but it was not providing everything that we needed and in that respect it was no longer fit for purpose.”

In late 2008 Berl started to look around for a new telephone system which could also offer all of the additional features that the school required – and with no particular provider in mind it was very much an ‘open canvas’. Over time, various companies had approached the school and Berl had kept a bank of information for when the time came to upgrade. Corporate ICT had been one of those companies whose approach had come in recently - as Berl puts it, they were ‘in the right place at the right time’!

Professionalism and clarity win the day
Based on the information provided Berl decided that Corporate could potentially deliver what the school was looking for and added them to the list. Three companies were invited to tender in total, one of which was the school’s existing provider. This company proposed an upgrade to the existing Panasonic system and the third supplier proposed an Alcatel Lucent solution, whilst Corporate ICT recommended the Samsung OfficeServ 7200 IP Communications Platform. When it came down to it, the decision was made as much on the company as it was on the make of system. Berl continues:

“We were very impressed with Corporate ICT’s professionalism, which was reflected in the quality of their quote. Before submitting the tender proposal an engineer came to see us to carry out a full site survey and to fully understand our requirements. Other suppliers did this also, but the results of the surveys were not carried through to the tender documents and our specifications were not addressed, which just ended up confusing us! Corporate, on the other hand, listened to us and then prepared a very clear and detailed proposal, which was clearly laid out and which showed us exactly what would be provided and why it would be right for our needs. We were impressed by the way Corporate addressed the specification. In fact, it was the best addressed by far.”

On the basis of the tender process, Corporate ICT was selected to implement the new communications system which Stephen Hawking School required, and this was installed during the Easter break in 2009.

Complete school-wide communications
The Samsung OfficeServ 7200 included 46 handsets, plus nine wireless access points and ten wi-fi handsets, as well as providing a nine-location tannoy system. The wi-fi capability and the tannoy system were the two vital components in this solution as they provided the premises-wide communications capability which Berl originally requested and which is so essential for a school of this type, as he explains:

“We have peculiar complications and the other systems which we considered could not meet our requirements. It’s not just about outside voice calls coming in, there is so much more to it than that. Communication within the school is extremely important also. We needed to extend and improve what we had already. We also needed to adhere to ‘best value’ methodology, it’s about quality as well as price and about choosing the best system for the nature of the school. We had to take an overall assessment and the Samsung solution was the right one for our needs.”

The wired handsets which form part of the overall solution are placed in numerous locations around the school including offices, classrooms and even in the changing rooms of the school’s hydrotherapy pool. These all have loudspeakers and can be used to communicate throughout the school, for example to issue Code Blue warnings or to page a nurse for assistance. In addition, the wi-fi system enables Berl and key staff members from the premises team to be contactable at any time, wherever they are on the premises.

The other key element of this solution is the tannoy system, with horns being located in key locations around the school where handsets would not be present. For example in corridors or in the playground where a Code Blue on a phone’s loudspeaker might not be heard.

Drivers for change
“There were three key reasons behind the need to change our communications system”, Berl elaborates. “We needed to add the tannoy and wi-fi functionality, but we also needed to improve the broadcast functionality. Our old Panasonic system had been extended by ‘piggy backing’ another system onto the original one, which meant that all emergency broadcasts had to be made twice to ensure that the alert went to all phones. Not very practical in a crisis situation if you’re in a panic and have to remember to make the call again!

Another issue which we had with the old system was that the loudspeakers were too quiet and alerts were not always heard. It was essential therefore that with the new system, the messages would be broadcast loud and clear. Corporate were great, they came to site with a demo system and tested it for us right here, so that we could be sure it would be loud enough. This really gave us peace of mind as we couldn’t have gone ahead without knowing this.”

The Samsung system has been set up to route all calls through main reception as this is the way the school prefers to operate, with calls being answered by a real person rather than by an auto attendant. There is also an overflow facility which enables staff from the admin office to log in to the reception group and to take calls as well during peaks of activity. This ensures that all incoming calls are handled swiftly and efficiently, although Berl does not rule out using some of the OfficeServ’s more advanced features in the future, as he explains:

“The new system has a lot of functionality which we were not really expecting, such as the auto-attendant. We prefer the old fashioned way, but it’s good to know that the capability is there if we need it in the future. Likewise, we only have a few voicemail boxes set up so far, but again, we have the facility to add voicemail to any extension easily if we want to. We also do not currently use DDIs as we prefer all calls to go via reception, but we might want to change this in the future. The potential is there to do all of these things, and the overall system is certainly far more sophisticated than what we had before.”

Additional benefits
Once the normal school day ends and pupils go home for the evening, the phone system automatically switches into ‘out of hours’ mode and any incoming calls which do come in will divert to the reception voicemail box after 30 seconds. Prior to this though, the call will ring at 15 different extensions throughout the premises, meaning that there is usually someone nearby who can answer it! If the person who answers the phone doesn’t know where the required staff member is, then they can simply ‘park’ the call and put out a page to say, for example, that there is a ‘call for John on Park 1’ - and then that person can simply pick up the parked call when they hear the message.

All in all, the school’s ability to communicate effectively at any time of the day or evening has certainly been enhanced thanks to the Samsung solution from Corporate, as Berl concludes:

“Everything was handled very professionally. For example, our senior leadership team was very keen to avoid having too many visible wires around the premises, but with the wi-fi and tannoy systems this was going to be difficult to achieve. Corporate managed to hide all of the wiring to our satisfaction, which wasn’t easy. Their engineers were very good while we were sorting out some of the other finer detail of the solution, they made a number of visits and tried different options to make things work the way we wanted them and to sort any issues as quickly as possible.