Eight local schools without high speed broadband

The Department of Education (DE) says the schools’ distances from exchanges mean they cannot be connected to the standard broadband network and are therefore reliant on serial or ADSL connections.

Education Minister Caitrona Ruane advised her Department’s Classroom 2000 (C2k) service provides all grant-aided schools with ICT services including a local network in each school and an allocation of PCs based on pupil numbers.

Schools are also provided with a broadband connection to a private wide area network (WAN) connecting all schools and providing filtered access to the internet.

The standard C2k provision makes broadband available to post-primary and special schools at a speed of at least 2MBs on dedicated private lines. Primary school lines also have a default speed of 2MB, though up to four sites may share a single private line.

Equally, all schools benefit from WAN optimisation services that help utilize the available bandwidth most efficiently.

However, a range of schools across Londonderry, Limavady and Strabane do not have high speed broadband access.

Listress Primary School, Craigbrack Primary School, Ballougry Primary School and Gaelscoil na Daroige in Londonderry, Roe Valley Integrated Primary School, St Finlough's Primary School and Gaelscoil Lim an Mhadaidh in Limavady and Evish Primary School in Strabane currently do not have access to high speed broadband.

The Minister explained: “Exceptions to this provision exist for a number of primary schools which, as a result of their locations and distance from exchanges, cannot be connected to the standard broadband network.

“Some have satellite broadband with download speeds of over 1MB. Others are served by Serial Circuit and ADSL connections, which are not classed as broadband.”