Oakbank School

We have had numerous problems with our current supplier and felt that to develop the services we offer our staff and students (at best value), we needed to change ISP. We put our connectivity solution up for tender to various providers and Exa became our preferred partner. Exa have considerable experience working with schools infrastructure and came highly recommended. They are flexible enough to adapt to changing requirements, offer a competitive SLA and are happy to work with Network Box, our current firewall providers. We decided to sign a new 3 years contract with them.

All through these changes, we were very concerned that our plans were acceptable to the DFE, but after talks with the DFE, we found that it was not difficult to change providers, provided that certain criteria were met - for example connection to the NEN (National Education Network) when required. Exa have taken the trouble to ensure that these issues were resolved and so we were happy to change.

We now have a 10Mbps leased line, and a 10Mbps ADSL 2+ connection.

Kevin Allack, Assistant Head Teacher, Oakbank School, Bradford