London Grid for Learning

The London Grid for Learning commonly referred to as LGfL is a British not for profit technology company with headquarters in central London. The charity founded in 2001 procures, develops and delivers technology and educational content including broadband connections, filtering and safeguarding services, devices and software and licences. LGfL started in London but is now a nationwide organisation winning multiple awards such as ERA Education Supplier of the Year (not for profit).

LGfL’s origins can be traced to the late 1990s when local authorities in London combined to access government grants to provide broadband and digital services for schools.The chairman of the LGfL consortium Paul Robinson with the support of the Association of London Chief Education Officers created the LGfL Charitable Trust in 2001, turning the company into what would become the largest not for profit technology organisation operating commercially in the UK.

LGfL's initial purpose was to leverage purchasing power in the provision of broadband and related digital services for all member schools. By aggregating the procurement of infrastructure, e-learning platforms and educational content, London education authorities had by 2010 accrued savings in excess of £390m, compared to the cost of securing those services individually.

The London Grid for Learning was, along with twelve other regional grid bodies across the country, one of the founder members of the UK government's National Education Network (NEN). The network aimed to provide schools and libraries with high-speed connectivity, online learning platforms and access to a range of online educational content. Other NEN grid bodies include the West Midlands Regional Broadband Consortium (WMnet) and the East of England Regional Broadband Network.

History
LGfL was one of 8 local authority led consortium formed across the country in the late 1990s to access government grants with the aim of providing every school with broadband as part of the National Grid for Learning. It was part of the government's Broadband in Schools Programme, a five-year project with the aim of providing every school with broadband by 2006.

The consortium was driven by the Association of London Chief Education Officers (subsequently the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services)with both Havering and Hackney councils playing a part in the early planning. Paul Robinson, the then Director of Education for the Wandsworth Borough Council became Chairman of the LGfL Consortium. Brian Durrant was appointed as CEO.

Though a local authority led approach proved useful in the early planning stages by 2000 it became clear that a corporate body in the form of a charitable trust would better serve the children and schools in London and in particular the roll out of the broadband and digital services. The Trust was therefore created in 2001 with the appointment to the Board of Trustees mainly with a  mixed of local authority, educational and technological experience.

A ten-year contract to supply broadband connection to all schools worth £40m was awarded to Equinox Converged Solutions. To fund the project, Chief Executive Brian Durrant announced that surplus bandwidth would be sold off to other organisations, including non-educational ones.

In April 2001, LGfL created a special purpose entity named the London Grid for Learning Trust with the purpose of enabling LEAs to act jointly in the procurement of services and letting of contracts.

The project was officially unveiled in an event hosted by Digitalbrain PLC, LGFL's portal partner, at London's IMAX cinema in June 2001, and the network went live for the first 350 schools on 1 September 2001. At the time it was the fourth largest metropolitan area network in the world.

Dennis Stevenson, who had outlined a vision the use of IT in schools in his 1997 report 'Connecting the Learning Society', described the launch of the LGfL as a 'defining moment' in realising that dream.

The initial strategic goal of LGfL of connecting every member school was achieved in 2005, thus fully meeting Tony Blair's challenge of 'every school on broadband' a year early.

In January 2011, following the end of the ten-year broadband deal with Equinox, LGfL signed a contract with Virgin Media. In 2014, LGfL extended its deal with Virgin for £1 billion, with the new contract expected to run until 2028.

Objectives
LGfL was founded in 2001 to advance education in particular by providing and assisting in the provision of information and communications to London schools for the benefit of the children attending those schools. LGfL's remit has been extended following approval by the Charities Commission in August 2022:


 * 1) to advance education, in particular, by providing and assisting in the provision of information and communications technology (including broadband) for the benefit of children attending schools; and
 * 2) to advance health by assisting in the provision of broadband and other communications technology to encourage the better integration of services between local authorities and the national health service in the provision of adult social and other care; and
 * 3) to advance community development by assisting local authorities to integrate services through broadband and other communications technology to provide services more efficiently and at lower cost to the recipients of services particularly the elderly, vulnerable individuals and the disabled.

The Trust aims to realise these objectives by:


 * energising teaching and learning through LGfL’s content portfolio
 * keeping schools and children safe online
 * tackling educational inequality through its resources for children with disabilities and special educational needs
 * promoting well-being

Today around 1.2 million children and 250,000 teachers across thousands of UK schools and public sector bodies are served by the Trust.

Broadband connection
The original network laid in 2000 across the 2,600 schools, colleges and libraries was designed and delivered by Equinox Converged Solutions.

Instead of a distributed 'star' system of connections, Equinox proposed the use of two central 'core' locations and a series of nodal loops – running across a combination of 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s devices – providing broadband access at every connection point. It used dual 9.6 Gbit/s Ethernet fibre connections between hubs in Park Royal and Earl's Court.

A third 'core' was set up in London's Docklands area to provide a local switching point for the eastern LEAs. Ten million metres of fibreoptic cable were laid to create the core rings of the network.

Transition to LGfL 2.0
In 2011, the contract with Equinox ended and LGfL agreed a deal with Virgin Media. Virgin replaced the old legacy network with a new 40 Gbit/s network known as LGfL 2.0. The new deal reduced the cost of a 100 Mbit/s connection to just a third of the former price tag.

On 31 March 2011, after the ten-year contract with the 2,600 schools ended, institutions were free to negotiate IT contracts individually. It was reported that over 1,000 schools signed up to LGfL 2.0 shortly afterwards. By 2014 over 2,000 schools across London had been connected to LGfL 2.0

Bundled services and value-for-money
LGfL has adopted a "value-added" approach, bundling a wide range of additional services, product licences and content alongside Internet access. By contrast, many other service providers focus on connectivity and compete primarily on price for this core service.

However, controversy erupted in October 2015 after it emerged that LGfL's spam filtering system had blocked marketing emails from a competitor. LGfL advised that these emails had been automatically flagged as junk mail, however this was disputed by the competing firm.

The competitor also stated that they believed unfair pressure had been applied to encourage schools to remain with LGfL. LGfL subsequently wrote to schools apologising for having conveyed this impression.

Cyber-bullying prevention
In October 2007, LGfL rolled out software to tackle cyber-bullying across all London schools it connected. The software monitored computer activity on the internet, instant messaging, e-mail and other applications for inappropriate behaviour. If improper activity was detected, the programme stored details of the offending material for review.

Online filtering
LGfL provides intelligent web-filtering technology for its 2,600 schools, which enables administrators and management to protect pupils from objectionable content whilst monitoring and regulating internet usage throughout the schools. The filtering service is provided by NetSweeper Inc., whose Enterprise Filtering solution was chosen by broadband provider Equinox in 2002 because of its scalability, ease of use and administration capabilities. The contract was renewed in August 2005 for a further three years.

Besides blocking inappropriate web content, schools use NetSweeper as a productivity tool to restrict access to non-work related sites, which consequently reduces legal liabilities.

Spam protection
A project to analyse and filter email travelling across the LGfL network was initiated in August 2004. This established that on average 75% of the email messages being sent to LGfL schools were spam, with peaks as high as 95%. LGfL's research found that there were also serious issues around the content of junk mail, with around half of the blocked messages advertising drugs, and 20% containing pornographic content. 3.4% of messages included malware such as viruses or trojan horses. After the implementation of improved email filtering, LGfL found that 98.2% of junk mail messages were now blocked

Identity management and authentication
In 2006, LGfL developed a Unified Sign-On (USO) system to provide schools with a cross-domain single log-in system to access disparate educational content from diverse institutions and providers. The solution, developed on open-source authentication system Shibboleth, allowed users to access any online learning content, regardless of the server it was stored in or the provider sourcing it, using a single username and password. The project won the Computing Awards for Excellence 2006 "Public Sector Project of the Year" award.

Counter-extremism
In May 2015, LGfL upgraded its email filtering system in response to school staff concerns about radicalisation, building a system that checks emails for grooming and radicalisation signs and allows suitable staff to access flagged messages so that appropriate interventions can be made. In June 2015, LGfL released a series of videos in partnership with anti-extremism charity Inspire with the aim of challenging Islamist extremism as well as anti-Muslim beliefs, by exploring topics such as the narrative used by Isis, messages in Islam that oppose it, and the role played by social media in radicalisation.

London Schools Admissions Service
In July 2006, the computerised Pan London Co-ordinated Schools Admissions Scheme, which helped thousands of parents and pupils find the secondary school of their choice, was merged with the online London e-Admissions Project to form the new London Schools Admissions Service within the London Grid for Learning. The new online admissions service for both secondary and primary school pupils allowed parents to apply online, increasing peace of mind as an instant email confirmation was sent upon receiving an application, and minimising the possibility of an error as information provided was quickly validated.

Managed learning environment
An MLE network was set up in June 2001, enabling more than a million pupils to do their schoolwork from anywhere. It was the result of a public-private partnership between LGfL and Digitalbrain, an online education platform. At the time, the portal was said to be the most extensive learning network in the world with collaboration and interaction between students, teachers and parents throughout the capital.

As of 2015, there are over 100 resource libraries available to pupils, such as the entire Guardian and Observer newspaper archives, the British Pathé News film library, and over 50,000 professionally recorded music tracks. The learning platform can be accessed from a computer, at school or at home, thus creating learning opportunities outside the classroom.

Online polling
The LGfL offers all London schools an online polling resource, which schools can use to nominate students and carry out elections for their year councils. The results are instantly available after voting takes place.

Computer access for deprived communities
In October 2007, LGfL began rolling out a project to provide more than 10,000 computers, chiefly wireless-enabled laptops, to poorer children in London, as part of a two-year £60m Government initiative to provide computers for children in the poorest 10 per cent of households.

Videoconferencing
In January 2010, LGfL set up the Videoconferencing Development Group (VDG) with the aim to 'enhance learning attainment and the development of key skills by promoting and facilitating the creative and effective use of videoconferencing'. The group's functions were to offer guidance and support to local authorities to promote videoconferencing, with resources such as examples of good practice, a guide to usage, instructional videos and case studies.

Governance
The Trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee, and all 33 London Councils collectively own and share in its governance. The executive board of trustees is composed of representative directors of children's services and local authority officers responsible for the implementation of ICT in schools.

Local authorities are closely engaged in the work of the LGfL through regular meetings attended by representatives from all member authorities. The various decisions and activities undertaken by the Trust are guided by the work of nine groups made up of representatives from the LEAs, most notably the executive, editorial and E-safety board, and the technical steering group.

The day-to-day operation of the company is the responsibility of the Chief Executive who is accountable to the executive board and other boards.

The inaugural Chief Executive of LGfL is Brian Durrant, who in July 2015 announced he would retire the following year.