HL Deb 24 October 2002 vol 639 cc117-8WA
The Earl of Northesk

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What plans they have for increasing the bandwidth (for high-speed Internet access) to the United Kingdom education sector; and what proposals they have for rolling out adequate broadband support to the teaching professions. [HL5958]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland)

The devolved administrations have responsibility for their respective countries' education departments; therefore this Answer refers to England only. The DfES has set up 10 regional broadband consortia (RBCs) to help LEAs deliver broadband access to schools. The RBCs are initially providing co-ordinated and cost-effective connectivity between schools and access to the Internet for schools, including those in rural areas, at a minimum bandwidth of 2 megabits per second (2Mbps). At present 23 per cent of schools have a managed educational broadband service, including 85 per cent of secondary and 14 per cent of primary schools.

The Joint Academic Network (JANet) is an established network providing facilities for the higher education (HE) and further education (FE) sectors, with all colleges now having guaranteed minimum 2Mbps connectivity and most HE institutions have at least 155Mpbs connection. SuperJANet offers a high capacity (10Gbps) national backbone.

Support provided to teachers includes: General and specific advice on broadband and other ICT in education issues through our lead agency Becta; technical advice and funding for possible technical support through Standards Fund 601A grant for infrastructures and services.