Grange Primary Academy opened its doors in 1956, the first school built in Kettering after World War II. In 2013, the academy joined the United Learning Academy Trust, the UK’s largest educational charity trust investing in helping children, parents, staff, and community be the very best they can be. A recent £1 million renovation program has supported modern classrooms, an imagination hub, an onsite forest school, and extensive IT facilities.
Current system not making the grade
For six years, Grange Primary had relied on a combination of Skype and Microsoft Teams to support telecommunications. However, this strategy had scored poorly in terms of sound quality, call reliability, and telephony features. Given the importance of parent-teacher communications, something had to change.
“The telephone is often the first point of contact between parents and the school,” recalls Saskia Jackson, Administrative Assistant and Telephony Manager for Grange Primary Academy. “With the problems we were experiencing with the old system, we simply were not projecting the impression we wanted.”
Their telecommunications consultant, UC Advisor, formulated a plan for Grange to easily transition from their existing solution using their transformation funding, making it possible for Grange to refresh their hardware all at no cost to the school.
Graduating to 8x8 Unified Communications
“We were looking for a vendor with robust integration into Microsoft Teams, and experience within the education sector,” Jackson said. “After our conversations with 8x8, we knew we found our match!”
While migrating to 8x8 Work, Jackson and her team were able to get up to speed on the platform within three short weeks.
“We were supported in deployment and building the solution by 8x8, and it was a great experience,” Jackson said. “8x8 organized remote staff training sessions to ensure everyone was comfortable with the new system and that there were no surprises. It was a quick, easy, problem-free installation.”
Switching to 8x8 has enabled staff to use the 8x8 Work app to take work calls from their personal device. There’s no need to give out their personal number; they can stay in touch from anywhere across campus or after hours.
A Lesson in Success
From enhanced call quality to service reliability, Grange Primary Academy has experienced exciting improvements since switching to 8x8 Work. Now parents can enjoy crystal clear communications that reflect the quality and care they have come to expect and appreciate from Grange.
“8x8 has given us confidence that our first point of contact will provide a great first experience for our parents and our community,” said Jackson. “I would recommend 8x8 because, for us as educators, 8x8 has experience in our sector and can serve as a trusted advisor.”
And now that the headache of maintaining a complex telecom system has been cured, Jackson and her team can focus their energies on the school and its students.
