BESPOKE CONSULTING 

“Students and teachers say the network is the best it has ever been” 

Ian Rollings, IT Manager, Aberfoyle Park High School

Aberfoyle Park High School is a state school located in southern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. As an Apple Distinguished School, they’re known nationally as a leader in cutting-edge technology, innovation and for providing students with an environment which embraces and supports excellence. The school encourages its students to participate in the Ignite program as the institution is recognised as the official Department of Education and Child Development (DECD) school for gifted students in the southern metropolitan area of Adelaide. For over ten years, Subnet has worked with Aberfoyle Park High School to offer bespoke business and IT solutions.

Concern:

In 2016, the school identified that that they could hit the ceiling with their current infrastructure as over 1000 students - all with at least 1-3 devices, plus teachers and visitors were connected to the school’s network. With the number of devices projected to increase and an infrastructure that couldn’t be stretched to help support all the projects they wanted to undertake, the school were limited in their options for ICT expansion.  

Geographically, the school is located in an area where there previously wasn’t any access to fibre optic cables, thus education outcomes were affected due to limited connectivity options. The school ascertained they needed an ICT backbone to allow them to maintain support for students on the Ignite program and protect their legacy and ICT infrastructure.

The Subnet Solution:

Subnet performed ICT systems and infrastructure audits and revised what the school needed in order to better support the learning outcomes of its students. We consulted with the ICT management team and key staff to ascertain pain points and requirements moving forward, to produce a live ICT Strategic planning document. The document outlined a proposed 5-year strategic direction to propel the school into the future, ensuring the infrastructure could be stretched and tested to meet demands.

Our consultants proposed considerations for disaster recovery sites alongside feasibility and planning recommendations. Our engineers assisted in Aberfoyle Park High School’s implementation of Apple’s caching service, thus allowing the school’s technical team to collectively deliver software updates to all devices. Previously, devices had to be updated individually, which strained the bandwidth.

Result:

Aberfoyle Park High School has strengthened their reputation as a 24/7 school thanks to Subnet’s implementation of Citrix software. Students and teachers can access applications from any location at any time. Teachers can reliably deliver learning outcomes, especially in subjects like Digital technologies, where students have at least 2-3 devices connected to the network. We have since helped facilitate an expansion of the curriculum in this subject to include virtual reality and 3D printing.

Our engineers’ extraordinary foresight coupled with Subnet’s ethos of always working alongside existing staff, enables them to best support the school without constant supervision; this has allowed the on-site technical team time to manage other tasks.

The school now has 80 upgraded access points, extra ram and adequate runtime to graciously manage the environment in the event of outages. This increased efficiency has positively impacted students’ confidence in the school’s network as they now feel they can rely upon it. In the long term, the school and IT department foresee reduced operating costs as a result of the work Subnet has done. 

Mark Johnson 

Business Development Manager

Read our Valley View Secondary School Case Study for more insight into how we were able to help them deliver better curriculum innovation. 

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