Sexey's School

Sexey's School is the community secondary school for the children of the Bruton area, a leading provider of state boarding education and the principal provider of post -16 education for the students of East Somerset.

Sexey’s has over 270 boarders, which makes them a major boarding school. In September 2008 the school became a Humanities College as part of the government’s specialist schools program. They are the Sixth Form College for this area of Somerset. In 2009, 85% of pupils gained 5 or more A* - C grades at GCSE, placing the school high up in the league tables nationally and locally.

Sexey’s School, like many other schools, had persevered with an old telephone system, in this case a Toshiba DK280 analogue system.

“Annual maintenance costs with our Toshiba suppliers were very high and added to that they also charged us for additional works including programming which equated to a combined cost of over £2000 per annum on average” said Facilities manager Pete Prescott.

Due to an extensive new building, Sexey’s knew that additional phones would be required and had the option to expand the existing Toshiba or purchase a new system entirely.

“We had quotations from our existing suppliers as well as a number of other Telecoms companies but we decided to select the Avaya IP Office system through IP Office Ltd due to the lower total cost of ownership, the additional functionality an IP based system provides and the possibilities for further expansion across the site in the near future” said Dave Hill, IT Manager.

Sexey’s school also make use of the free ‘Phone Manager’ PC Software application to ensure the School is working as efficiently as possible as well as the free integration of voice mail to email.

From initial contact and pre-installation meetings with the engineers of IP Office Ltd, through to completion of training, Dave Hill said “we have established a good early working relationship with IP office and they are totally aware of our needs and expectations. They have been on site numerous times to ensure the transition went smoothly and have provided superb backup support both remotely and by phone when required. I would have no hesitation in recommending them.”