IT & Microsoft cloud for education
Safeguarding, device fleets, Microsoft 365 and budget-conscious IT for schools and colleges.
Checked 4 October 2026. Built from the full sector page.
In short: The DfE digital and technology standards, KCSIE safeguarding duties, and a budget that goes further through the right purchasing route. Baseline honestly against all twelve standards, the six core ones first, including the ones you fail: a documented gap with a dated plan is a stronger position than an unevidenced claim of compliance.
What changes in this sector
Education providers manage large numbers of staff and student devices and hold personal data about children, which brings safeguarding responsibilities under Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) and data-protection duties under UK GDPR. The DfE's cyber security standards for schools and colleges now set clear expectations, MFA, protection from malware, understanding your data and taking regular backups among them, and Ofsted increasingly probes how well the digital estate supports safe teaching.
What we would do
Baseline honestly against the DfE digital and technology standards, the six core ones the DfE says every school should be working towards by 2030 first, including the ones you fail, then build a dated plan against each. A documented gap with a plan is a stronger position than an unevidenced claim of compliance.
- If a grant condition or framework bid is driving it, establish whether you need Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus before starting. Assuming the wrong one costs weeks you may not have.
- If you are a trust, baseline per school before writing a trust-wide plan. A single compliance statement is rarely true on day one across inherited estates.
When we are not the answer: If you have a current baseline, a roadmap governors have seen, and filtering and monitoring alerts somebody actually reviews, you are further along than most. Use the time on the standard you know is weakest instead.
What we do for education
- Manage large staff and student device fleets efficiently with Microsoft Intune, applying different, appropriate policies to each without touching machines one by one
- Microsoft 365 for education deployed, governed and supported for teaching, assignments and collaboration
- Alignment with the DfE cyber security standards for schools and colleges: MFA, malware protection, patching, account and access control, and regular tested backups
- Cyber Essentials to evidence the basics and help protect student and staff data
- Technical support for safeguarding duties under KCSIE, filtering and monitoring considerations, secure access control and well-governed systems
- Licence right-sizing and Azure cost optimisation, making the most of education pricing to make tight budgets go further
- Major changes and migrations planned into holidays, with a service desk that keeps classrooms running through term time
- Reliable, monitored backup of Microsoft 365 and critical systems
What the last 12 months looked like
Three questions people ask
Can you manage large numbers of student and staff devices?
Yes. Microsoft Intune lets us enrol, configure, secure and patch large device fleets efficiently, applying the right policies to staff and student devices without touching each one by hand.
Can you help us meet the DfE cyber security standards for schools?
Yes. The DfE standards, things like multi-factor authentication, protection from malware, keeping software patched, controlling accounts and access, and taking regular tested backups, map directly onto what we do.
How do you help education providers on tight budgets?
By right-sizing Microsoft 365 licences, making the most of the education-specific pricing and donated or discounted licensing schools are eligible for, optimising Azure spend and delivering managed IT at a predictable cost.
Ready to talk about your education IT?
A short call about how your IT works today and what your sector asks of it. We will tell you plainly where we would start.
Prefer to talk now? Call us on +44 (0)1482 770583.