Get set up on your digital education platform

The DfE is offering funded support for you to get set up on one of two free-to-use digital education platforms: G Suite for Education or Office 365 Education. Find out exactly what's on offer, whether you're eligible and how to apply.

What is a digital education platform?

It's a place where your pupils' learning experience at home can continue as close to normal as possible. The platforms are purpose-built for remote learning in a way that a school website isn't. 

In short, if you access this scheme and get set up on one of the platforms, you'll be able to:

  • Assign and assess work, providing feedback remotely
  • Communicate with staff, students and parents in real time, using written word, voice and video
  • Facilitate collaboration between groups of pupils and teachers

There’s no statutory requirement to have a platform or sign up to this scheme, but there are plenty of benefits if you do. 

Individual primaries will receive £1,500 and individual secondaries £2,000. Trusts will receive £1,000 per school

What's on offer?

How much funding is available?

G Suite for Education and Office 365 Education are free-to-use platforms, but eligible schools/trusts can now register to receive funded support from an accredited partner to help get set up and trained on their chosen platform. 

Set-up funding for individual schools varies across phase: eligible primaries will receive £1,500 and eligible secondaries £2,000. Funding for academies in trusts is capped at £1,000 per school.

Academies in a trust are only eligible if their pupils don't have G Suite for Education or Office 365 Education accounts

Who gets the funding and who pays partners? 

The DfE will release funds to the school/trust once completion of the work has been confirmed. The school/trust will then pay the partner directly. The DfE will be publishing detailed guidance on the payment process imminently. 

Who's eligible?

This funded support is available to state-funded primary, secondary, special schools and pupil referral units in England that:

  • Don't currently have a digital education platform; or
  • Are already using Office 365 or G Suite, but are not yet set up to assign work and communicate with pupils (and haven't made accounts for their pupils)

Independent schools are not eligible for funding, but can still apply for support as long as they cover the costs themselves.

The DfE scheme only covers schools looking to get set up on G Suite for Education or Office 365 Education. Don’t apply for the scheme if you want to use a different platform.

Does it apply to trusts? 

Yes it does, and the same eligibility criteria applies (see above).

Academy leaders:
As a first step, speak to your central team about applying on your behalf.

Trust leaders:
There are benefits to all your schools being on the same platform under one tenancy, such as instant communication between staff across schools. In this instance, you should apply directly for schools within your trust.

If there's already a mix of usage between G Suite and Office 365 across your trust, then you have two options:

  1. Instruct schools that need support to apply individually, or
  2. Apply for support yourself and speak to a partner about the benefits of consolidating your schools across two separate tenancies, one for G Suite and one for Office 365

How do I apply?

Go to our hub. It links to the forms you'll need to use, and provides feature comparisons and best practice cases studies to help you choose the right platform for your school/trust.

Will these platforms continue to be free to use next year?

Yes.

There are options on both services to upgrade to additional services, but they're not required.

The only thing currently being provided for free that would cost to access later is premium Google Meet, which is currently free until 30 September 2020 – you can find out more about this in our feature comparison.

Please note – the platforms will remain free, but the funded support on offer is for the initial set-up. After that, the platform is yours to manage and any additional support you request from accredited partners will need to be paid for by the school/trust.

Are there child protection systems in place?

Security and privacy settings will be deployed according to Microsoft and Google standards and policies.

You'll still need to adopt sensible precautions when using the platform, as you would in school – see our article on how to build safeguarding into your remote learning. The DfE also has guidance on safeguarding and remote education.

Sources

The information in this article was sourced in discussion with the DfE.

Next steps

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