TL;DR: The DfE core standard expects full-fibre broadband and a backup connection. The practical test is simple: do you know what connection the school has, and if it failed this morning, would critical online services keep working?
Full fibre means the broadband connection reaches the premises using fibre rather than relying on copper for part of the route. A backup connection is a second route to the internet. ‘Failover’ simply means the school switches to that backup when the main connection fails.
A fast connection is little comfort while it is unavailable. If the main line is a single point of failure, one external fault can interrupt cloud systems, phones, payments, teaching resources and other services the school relies on. Knowing the backup works turns broadband resilience from an assumption into something the school can rely on.
Broadband conversations often start with speed.
For compliance, there is another question that matters just as much: what happens when the connection stops?
First, what have you actually got?
First, establish what the school actually has. The DfE core standard says schools and colleges should use full-fibre broadband. If nobody can confidently tell you whether the current connection is full fibre, ask the provider or IT support to confirm it in writing.
Then, what happens when it stops?
Then ask about backup.
The DfE standard expects schools to have a backup broadband connection so an outage on the main service does not automatically remove internet access from the school.
You may hear the word ‘failover’. It simply means that when the main connection fails, the network can move to the backup connection. Ideally that happens automatically rather than somebody discovering the problem and scrambling for a workaround.
Why does that matter?
Think about everything in the school that now depends on internet access: cloud-based systems, teaching resources, phones, payments and potentially safeguarding-related services. The exact list will vary, but the principle is the same. One fault outside the school should not be able to stop everything at once.
And who owns the security around it?
There is a third question too: who is responsible for the firewall, filtering and other security or safeguarding controls around the connection? If broadband and IT security are supplied by different organisations, the school needs to know exactly where one responsibility ends and the other begins.
For schools that have moved away from emPSN, this is a useful time to check the new arrangement rather than simply confirm that the new line is live.
Our approach
If the existing connection is suitable, we’ll say so. The aim is not to replace broadband for the sake of it. It is to know what you have, what protects it and what keeps the school working when something goes wrong.
Ask your provider or IT support to confirm three things in writing: Is our main connection full fibre? What backup connection do we have and does it switch over automatically? Who is responsible for the firewall, filtering and safeguarding controls?
