East Sussex Education Network

The East Sussex Education Network (ESEN) service enables you to connect to many systems via a secure private network designed for school access.  It includes internet access but offers a lot more as it links all our schools together and allows for private data transfer between them and the County Council.

The service enables schools to connect to the South East Grid for Learning (SEGfL) and National Education Network (NEN).  It also allows access to important systems including SIMS Gateway, AVCO Anycomms and the JANET video conferencing service (JVCS).

Please note: This service is only available to academies in East Sussex that were formerly maintained schools.

Key Benefits

• High-speed internet access
• Safe and secure internet content filtering
• Email services with automatic ‘spam’ filtering
• Annual charge includes maintenance and support of the service.

Service Details

The service includes:

• primary and special academy connectivity up to 6Mb/s (megabits per second) unless otherwise agreed
• secondary academy connectivity up to 30Mb/s unless otherwise agreed
• safe and secure internet content filtering
• email services with automatic filtering (SMTP and POP3 services)
• academy domain name and DNS services and fixed IP addresses
• symmetric network connection - a symmetric connection provides the same speed for uploads as it does for downloads
• low contention ratios.

The ESEN is used by East Sussex schools and academies, the County Council, and other strategic partners within East Sussex. The service is closely monitored and supported by dedicated County Council staff who coordinate all incidents and service requests on schools’ behalf.

The service does not include:

• onsite repair or restoration of the ESEN service or repair of hardware if the fault has been caused by a third party (for example a contractor or ICT technician employed directly by the academy). In this situation, we reserve the right to charge for an onsite visit.
• webmail, additional internet domains and/or website hosting services that are provided as separate chargeable options.

Please note: if you are currently using the Easymail service but wish to migrate to Microsoft Ofiice365 upon its introduction, we advise that you continue to purchase Easymail for 2013-14.  We will be in touch about transferring you to the new service when it is introduced later this year. 

Webmail and other internet domain and/or website services

If your school subscribes to webmail for email, or other internet domain or web-based services, you will also need to buy the appropriate following options:

Pricing

Funded Support

To help us give you the best customer service, it is important to do the following:

• contact the Schools Service Desk by telephone, email or service desk tool (where available) and log all incidents and service requests
• make sure that you respond promptly to requests and notifications from the Service Desk
• inform the Service Desk, at least seven days in advance or as soon as possible, if any planned maintenance work will affect the operation of your broadband service or associated equipment (for example, the communications cabinet where the equipment is installed)
• make sure that suitable accommodation, including electrical power and environmental conditions, is in place to host the equipment we provide
• agree to house additional equipment if your school is acting as a node or hub site
• do not allow third parties to make unauthorised changes to your hardware, software or ICT infrastructure and take all reasonable care to protect the ESEN service from interference by third parties
• inform the Service Desk as soon as possible if you know or suspect that a breach of network security has taken place.

Due to the specialist and sensitive nature of many of the services and systems the ESEN service delivers, your school may not get the same level of access from another supplier’s internet connection or network technology.

If you are considering alternative solutions to the ESEN you should ensure your provider offers complete support for the full range of systems your school will need to access. Download Why do schools choose the ESEN? (Adobe PDF, 130KB) (Adobe PDF, 130KB)

Security

Your school must make sure it has appropriate policies and procedures in place to prevent unauthorised access to its Local Area Network (LAN) and computer systems. This includes any connectivity to other sites or locations, whether owned by the school or not.

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANS or Wi-Fi networks) must have an appropriate level of encryption and security to prevent unauthorised access.

Only permitted users should be able to log on and access the resources provided through the ESEN service.

If a serious breach of security takes place, we reserve the right to temporarily disconnect your school from the ESEN service to protect the integrity of the network and other schools.

Insurance

The standard East Sussex County Council insurance policy for schools covers our ESN service equipment, subject to any policy terms and conditions. If you do not take our standard insurance policy you must ensure your school has an appropriate alternative policy in place.  

If you have to pay an insurance policy excess, and the claim is solely against our ESEN equipment, we will underwrite the value of the excess and deduct the amount from your service subscription for the next financial year.

Getting The Most From Your Service

What Your School Needs To Do

Quality Assurance

Service availability

The ESEN service is provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We will notify you in advance if planned maintenance work will disrupt your network connectivity.

The Schools Service Desk is your first point of contact for any incident or service request. Before you contact us, please ensure the issue is not related to your school’s own local area network (LAN) or ICT infrastructure.

Service Desk operating hours are:

• Term time – 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday
• School holidays – 8:30am to 4:30pm, Monday to Friday (excluding public or bank holidays, County Council holidays or other dates and times as notified).

Performance targets

When you report an incident to us, we will prioritise it according to the impact it has on your school. We aim to resolve logged incidents or requests within the following timescales.

Your school is responsible for notifying the Service Desk if an incident or request needs to be given higher priority.

Terms & Conditions

To cancel this service your school must give us 12 months’ notice in writing.

Where the school is a local authority maintained NGN node or hub site, the equipment will need to remain in position. Academy hub sites should keep the equipment as agreed, in accordance with their terms and conditions.

Any penalty charges East Sussex County Council incurs for on-going liability of installed equipment will, at our discretion, continue to be charged to the school.

Support