What Becta's closure means for IT in Schools

The closure of Becta, which was set up in 1998 by Labour to promote learning through the use of technology, is expected to save the Department for Education £80m between 2010 and 2011.
Paul Evans, managing director of Redstor, a backup and data management vendor that works with 85 Local Authorities (LAs), said the government's decision did not come as a shock.

He said: It is terrible news for the people who will lose their jobs, but these are austere times we are living in now and Becta is a luxury we cannot afford.

Evans predicts that removing Becta, and its accompanying IT procurement framework, will be warmly welcomed by niche vendors that have struggled to find favour with the agency.
In order to get on the framework, you had to prove to Becta that you could deliver a full range of IT services, making it difficult for firms that focus on one or two areas to get a look in, he said.
Potentially, this could present smaller, niche vendors with the opportunity to catch the attention of the public sector.

Secondary schools fail off-site backup test

Many secondary schools are failing to heed rules on information storage set out by government agency Becta by not keeping off site backups of their data.

Read more on this key topic by visiting http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2253961/secondary-schools-fail-site

Secondary schools can address this challenge by using Redstor's online backup service for schools - http://www.redstor.com/backupforschools.html

Redstor's online backup service is used by over 75 Local Authorities and service providers in the Education Sector throughout the United Kingdom addressing the backups of over 12,000 schools. The software that powers the service is Capita’s approved backup technology for SIMS, however it also protects every other MIS application in use amongst UK schools.

Redstor's Online Backup Service for Schools Addressing BECTA's guidelines

With the ever growing issues concerning security of school data, Redstor's online backup service for schools addresses these issues by providing secure and encrypted off-site backups of valuable school data.
More importantly, the service complies with BECTA's 2009 guidelines for data encryption and keeping data secure, safe and legal.

To learn more about these guidelines, please visit:

• http://schools.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/data_encryption.pdf
• http://schools.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/information_handling.pdf

Redstor's online backup service is used by over 75 Local Authorities and service providers in the Education Sector throughout the United Kingdom addressing the backups of over 12,000 schools. The software that powers the service is Capita’s approved backup technology for SIMS, however it also protects every other MIS application in use amongst UK schools. RBUSS is protecting school data across a broad mix of Local Authorities in the UK, regardless of size, demographics, location, numbers of school and size of school. Admin and Curriculum bundles are available in differing Gb sized accounts. www.redstor.com/backupforschools.html