ICL wins PFI schools contract

ICL has won the first private finance initiative contract to supply IT equipment for the UK's national grid for learning.

The £12.5m deal will see the company supply equipment to 58 primary and secondary schools in Moray, Scotland, providing controlled Internet access and individual email accounts for 14,000 children.

Councillor Margo Howe, chairwoman of Moray's education committee, said: "This is a fantastic opportunity for the kids of Moray. Although we are a relatively small council, we have a lot of schools in very remote areas; this system will allow distance learning and will eventually enable all the schools to plug into the national grid for learning." She added that the computers will be used not just for education but also for finance, administration and security.

A spokesman for ICL said the company would train teachers to make them aware of the technology and to get them comfortable with using the machines.

ICL will install 1,200 Fujitsu PCs based on the Celeron 333MHz processor. Local servers will run Microsoft Windows NT4 on dual 400MHZ Pentium II systems with 10GB of disk space, while central servers will contain two or four Xeon chips.

The network will be linked by fixed 2Mbps connections and ISDN cables. The schools will also use I-gear software to control access to the Internet.