Broadening the use of JANET to other communities

Robin Arak

Chief Executive, UKERNAR.Arak@ukerna.ac.uk

Agenda

• Drivers for widening access to JANET

• Barriers for widening access

• Removing the barriers

• Progress so far

Drivers – funding bodiesHigher Education

• Promote and support productive interaction between Higher Education, business and the community (increase partnerships)

• Encourage Higher Education to increase access to support lifelong learning

• Increase effective collaborations and strategic alliances among Higher Education institutions, with other parts of the education sector, and with other users of HE.

Drivers – funding bodiesLSC/Further Education

• Extend participation in education, learning and training

• To increase the demand for learning by adults and improve opportunities through better access to learning

• To raise skill levels for national competitiveness

• Reduce number of working age adults who don’t have qualifications

Drivers – Schools Priorities

• Improving primary education

• Transforming secondary education

• Increasing and broadening participation in Higher Education

• Opening up learning through the use of eLearning

Barriers to broadening JANET

• Connection Policy not broad enough– controlled by current stakeholders

• Potential “misuse” of public funding– Subsidising private companies– Potential cross departmental funding

• Lack of resources leading to potential degradation of support

Solutions to broadening JANET

• New connection policy • Costing and pricing models for JANET

– Full cost recovery for non JISC funded organisations

• Planned not to support large communities directly – working with partners e.g. JISC Regional Support Centre, Local Education Authorities

JANET Connection Policy

• schools, and other colleges• local education authorities, learning centres• libraries, museums, galleries, archives• other organisations promoting learning• local and unitary authorities, NHS (for learning)• professional bodies, science/business park• collaborating organisations• commercial organisations delivering/receiving

services to/from the JANET community.• local and unitary authorities & other public sector

bodies for the benefit of the community

Broadening the use of JANET(progress so far)

• Further Education (complete)• Specialist Colleges (in pilot)• Adult & Community Learning (in pilot)• English Schools networks (5 out of 10)• Lifelong Learning Network for Wales (complete)• Spark (Scottish schools intranet) (in

procurement)• Partners of HE, FE & research

e.g. NHS, Local authorities, businesses etc.

Summary

JANET has become

The UK’s education and research network

– a multi-service network supporting a wide community of learners, teachers and researchers, partnering with public and private collaborators