Update on Superfast Broadband Coverage for Schools in Wales

The Welsh Government‘s Cabinet Secretary for Education, Kirsty Williams AM, has issued a useful update on the work of expanding “superfast broadband” into schools. Overall all but 6 maintained schools (i.e. those run by local authorities) in Wales now have “access” to such speeds, but quite a few aren’t benefiting.

In response to a question from Janet Finch-Saunders AM (Welsh Conservative Party), Kirsty noted that work is progressing at five of the six remaining schools, with an estimated completion date of 31st January 2019 and this is dependent upon Openreach’s (BT) contractors.

Meanwhile one remaining school, Ysgol Llanychllwydog (Pembrokeshire), continues to “present logistical challenges for our suppliers, primarily due to the school’s location within the boundaries of the Pembrokeshire National Park“. Officials are said to be working with the local authority and BT to investigate options to provide improvements to the school’s connectivity, and potentially the wider community.

However Kirsty noted that “for schools to fully benefit from the superfast broadband service, additional in-school activities now need to be completed, such as upgrading the network cabinets in schools or the removal of rate limits from in-school routers.” The table below represents the number of schools, by local authority, who are “not currently benefitting from superfast speeds.”

A programme of work is said to be “already underway“, in conjunction with the BT Public Service Broadband Aggregation (PSBA) team, local authorities and schools to “ensure the full benefits of superfast connectivity can be realised.” This programme is expected to be delivered by 31st March 2019.

A couple of years ago the WG announced that it had committed an additional £5m to help upgrade the broadband connectivity for around 400 schools (here). This was on top of an announcement in 2013, which saw the WG launch a new grant scheme (Learning in Digital Wales) that offered £39m to help ensure that all of the country’s “participating” Schools would have access to “world-class broadband services” (here). Back then the eventual goal was to get all schools, participating or not, upgraded by 2020.