Toshiba and Kewvisum deliver outstanding service for Redhill school
St Bede’s School is a comprehensive secondary school located in Redhill, Surrey. The school has almost 1,800 pupils aged 11 to 18, with around 330 of these students in the sixth form. In its most recent Ofsted inspection, the school was graded as “outstanding” in all areas. Acheiving the highest level of Ofsted rating requires the schools auxillary functions to facilitate the exceptional education offered at St Bede’s. To ensure that its printing systems perform efficiently and cost effectively, St Bede’s started working with Toshiba Authorised Business Partner, Kewvisum.
A long-standing relationship
Kewvisum specialises in supplying schools with IT components and print solutions tailored to their individual needs. In particular, the company prides itself on providing educational institutions with straightforward, transparent and affordable agreements for their solutions.
With the help of Toshiba, Kewvisum have been providing exceptional solutions, support and service to St Bede’s for 15 years. So when it came to the end of the existing agreement in 2020, the school were confident in continuing the partnership with their print supplier. Kewvisum carried out a review on how the school’s staff and students managed their files and documents. They selected a fleet of Toshiba’s latest line of A3 and A4 multifunction printers to refresh the existing infrastructure.
A structure to support an outstanding education
The school had a requirement for devices that are easy to use and robust, and which come with excellent service and minimal down time. Toshiba’s high-speed colour series of multifunction printers were chosen for the science laboratory and art facility because of their ability to produce high volumes of complex documents to an exceptional standard.
The e-STUDIO range of multifunctional colour systems are ideal for an education environment because of their fully customisable user interface and the integration of cloud and mobile printing through Google apps – making these machines simple to use for both pupils and staff. Other Toshiba multifunction printers were installed in the library, photography studio, ITC department, main reception and in the reprographics rooms.
“When we first audited the printing and document handling requirements at St Bede’s School, we discovered that it was using 50 printers, but after investigating further, we found that this could be reduced to a much more manageable fleet of just 15 multifunction printers, while actually improving flexibility and capacity”, explained Peter Gilmour, Director at Kewvisum.
“One of the big factors that made the reduction possible is the tandem print queue protocol, which is a standard feature on Toshiba devices. This allows the school’s reprographics department to split large print jobs across multiple devices and enables print speeds up to 170 sheets per minute, which means that we could get more throughput with fewer machines. Another benefit is that the school administration now has full control over the usage of the printers. Further, resource-saving actions such double-sided printing and grayscale-as-default increase cost savings and support the school’s sustainability goals.”
Print as a teaching aid
PaperCut MF software underpins the new print and document management systems allowing the school to easily manage their print assets, collect usage data by location and device, identify inefficiencies, and utilise resource allocation strategies to maximise system productivity.
In addition, the use of individual student quotas is also being used as a teaching aid. Each student is given a prepaid print budget which decreases as the students use the printers. If a student runs out of budget they need to understand and explain why they’ve gone over budget before their budget can be increased or replenished. Through this the school aims to teach pupils valuable budget management, whilst at the same time managing the school’s resources effectively.
Simple and safe operation
Now, thanks to the combination of Toshiba devices and PaperCut, St Bede’s employees and pupils can print directly from their PCs, laptops and mobile devices, and create complex documents like booklets and leaflets quickly and easily. And, when printing is needed for art or photography classes, the new systems allow students to realise their creativity without being hampered by complicated processes.
St Bede’s is a Google Apps school and as such KPIs for print queues that aimed to reduce waiting times were implemented from the very beginning. Thanks to the Google Apps functionality, staff and students can work from anywhere and are able to access the system even from home. This feature was particularly useful at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when all learning was moved to the digital environment.
Additional safety features were later added when pupils physically returned to the school. Stylus pens were issued for using the device’s touch screen. Both the pens and touch screen are easy and convenient for users to clean with wipes and antibacterial gel after use.
Proactive service
To keep the school running effectively, Kewvisum offer an excellent response time of four hours or less to any printers which give Kewvisum’s service engineers comprehensive performance and diagnostic information before they even attend the school. This reduces the number of trips needed to fix any issue as engineers are able to bring the correct parts and consumables on their first visit.
The printers also notify Kewvisum automatically when toner levels are running low or when components need servicing, allowing Kewvisum to proactively service machines at a time which suits the schools busy schedule. This ensures maximum capacity at peak usage times (such as at break times or in the busy exam seasons).
As an outstanding school, St Bede’s promotes excellence at all levels. Partnering with Kewvisum and Toshiba supports our commitment to an outstanding education. In addition to the yearly cost savings we’ve achieved, we are confident that our new printing system is robust, yet flexible enough to support any changes and remote learning requirements that we may encounter. We are extremely pleased that Toshiba and Kewvisum have enabled us to futureproof our print systems for many years to come.” Samuel Alexander-Omoh, IT Manager at St Bede's School
