Information for members
Membership of North West Learning Grid is through your Local Authority. For 2010/11 the average cost of membership works out at around £300 per school. By working together Local Authorities in the North West are able to aggregate costs and bring in several services which schools will not associate with membership, yet are key components to ICT delivery in their classroom. These services are:
Provision of Internet Transit.
Most Internet access in North West schools is provided by North West Learning Grid. Through national procurement the cost of Internet provision is around a tenth of the cost of purchasing as individual Authorities - saving the average North West Authority around £80,000 per year. As North West Authorities pay less than that for ALL North West Learning Grid Services, then before the reamining benefits are delivered their cost of membership has already been saved twice over!
The National Digital Resource Bank (ndrb)
ndrb is the largest collection of publicy funded resources in the UK. As an initiative of NWLG every Local Authority member can use it to populate their learning platforms with digital resources covering the whole curriculum. Regionally, schools in the North West buy around £8M of digital resources per year. The use of ndrb will reduced this figure by at least £2M in 2010 and a further £2M in 2011 saving the average Local Authority and their schools at least £100,000 during 2010.
Premium Digital Resources
North West Learning Grid develops digital resources for specific curriculum needs, makes these available for all member schools and then sells these resources to schools outside of the NW region. Through commercial sales it recovers most of the cost of development. It's OCR Nationals, Functional Skills and Skills Gym products are able to save each NW secondary school around £10,000 per year against commercial equivalent purchases. Schools outside of the North West benefit too. They can purchase excellent resources at a very low cost - not just saving money but being able to get some of the best interactive resources available to UK schools.
e-safety support
North West Learning Grid provides support to its members in developing e-safety strategy. Over 2010 it is expected to extend these services as this really important agenda gains even more prominence in schools.
MembersIf you are a school under Local Authority membership you enjoy all of the benefits of NWLG. The current members are:
