Hattie Barham-Colwell, of the Department for Education's Safe and Reliable Technology team, explains how the plan technology for your school service can help you meet government digital and technology standards.
In today’s fast-changing education landscape, technology plays a vital role in how schools operate. It can help to unlock new teaching and learning opportunities, reduce staff workload, and increase inclusivity and support for pupils.
However, knowing how to implement safe and reliable technology can be challenging. You don’t have to do it alone though. You can use the Department for Education’s plan technology for your school service to support you on your digital journey.
Free support for planning, implementing, and using technology
Plan technology for your school is a digital service designed to help every school meet 6 core digital and technology standards and make strategic decisions about what technology to buy and how to implement it effectively.
It supports users to:
- understand their current technology set-up
- identify what to improve next, why, and how
- receive clear recommendations on how to take action
- track progress over time
Increasingly more schools are benefitting from having a digital strategy which includes a vision for how they will use technology in the long-term to meet their needs. The service helps to bring all this together to give schools a clear, actionable plan.
Help to meet the digital and technology standards
Plan technology for your school is built around DfE’s digital and technology standards. The standards are designed to help schools make more informed decisions about technology, leading to safer, more cost-efficient practices and new learning opportunities for students.
All schools and colleges should be aiming to meet the 6 core standards by 2030:
- Filtering and monitoring
- Cyber security
- Broadband internet
- Wireless network
- Network switching
- Digital leadership and governance
Meeting the standards will help users to keep children safe online, prevent cyber incidents, and upgrade and maintain technology in cost-effective ways.
Start planning today
Developed in collaboration with school leaders and technical experts, plan technology for your schools helps users to better understand their current digital status, identify areas for improvement, and implement effective strategies.
The service is designed to be used by anyone involved with improving technology in a school. This includes:
- senior leadership teams
- school business professionals
- IT leads
- IT support and network managers
- governors / trustees
To access plan technology for your school you’ll need a DfE sign-in account, which allows you to save and return to your self-assessment answers and bespoke recommendations. More information about managing a DfE sign-in account can be found on DfE Sign-in.
What’s new on the service this summer
To reflect the latest guidance and developments in technology, DfE has updated the following standards:
We recommend reviewing the updates to ensure you remain compliant.
The plan technology for your school service is being updated to make it quicker and easier for multi-academy trusts (MATs) to use. They’ll be able to do self-assessments for more than one school at once. Later in the year, MATs will also be able to track the progress of more than one school at a time.
For further support with meeting cyber security standards, the DfE has now launched the Cyber Security Hub. This new service provides schools in England with trusted, practical guidance to help strengthen cyber resilience, reduce cyber risk, and respond effectively to cyber incidents.
Help us improve the service
We are committed to continually improving the plan technology for your school service. New features and content are regularly added to help schools plan and manage more aspects of their technology needs.
We value user feedback and encourage schools to participate in our user research by completing this form to help shape the future of our services.
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