Saint Patrick’s Voluntary Catholic Academy
Saint Patrick’s Voluntary Catholic Academy is a primary school in Sheffield providing education to over 300 3-11 year olds and employing 39 staff. Saint Patrick’s is a unique learning environment for children and adults welcoming a diverse community to join in learning.
Saint Patrick’s has been an AAG customer since 2015, with AAG providing Managed Services including remote and onsite support, liaising with external partners such as the local authority, website hosts, broadband providers, telephone line suppliers and the supply of Saint Patrick’s IT equipment such as its IT security systems. AAG works closely with the Business Manager and IT Subject Lead to work on the strategic 5 year IT plan.
Kathryn Fox, Business Manager, is responsible for HR, Finance, Health & Safety and Information Management, including Data Protection. “Our IT systems are essential in the day to day running of the school. It’s vital our systems work properly as all of our registers, lunch orders and finance are all done electronically to increase efficiency. Any downtime would cause massive issues for us. Given the nature of our work and the information we hold, it’s also vitally important our systems are secure to make sure our data is protected at all times.
AAG provide us with the experts we need as part of our wider team. My role is very broad, covering many areas and whilst I have a good understanding, it’s really important to us that we have access to a pool of knowledge we can tap into at any time.”
AAG prides itself on its proactive service, which makes them stand out from the crowd.
When our previous supplier uttered the line that ‘IT maintenance is reactive not proactive’ ie you fix it when it breaks, we knew it was time to go. AAG undertakes regular monitoring, testing and updating of our systems to ensure there is limited downtime. If there is any downtime, they are on hand to sort it out immediately either remotely or to send an engineer to site. We took the option to move away from the local authority broadband provision to another company. Unfortunately, that backfired when the company went into administration and we were nearly left with no internet or filtering services. It was a relief to have AAG to be able to pass this over to and be confident that they would deal with it and ensure business continuity. The impact of having no internet doesn’t really bear thinking about as we would have ground to a halt. I’d recommend AAG to anyone without hesitation.
