Belated congratulations to Brian Lockwood and the rest of the team at Egglescliffe school for winning the national award for best whole school (secondary) in the last Becta ICT Excellence Awards.

Here's what Becta had to say about their entry:

In the best whole school category, schools must demonstrate that their strategy and vision for ICT stretches across the whole school and beyond and is having clear impact on the outcomes for pupils, staff, parents and the wider community. This award recognises schools that are at the very forefront of transformational use of ICT, who are keen to share this practice and continue to find new ways of working.
Winner: Egglescliffe School, Stockton-on-Tees
Egglescliffe School has an outstanding model of distributed leadership and management which has empowered all staff to deliver the effective and innovative use of ICT.  This 11-18 school in Stockton-on-Tees has been rated ‘Outstanding’ in its last two Ofsted inspections and has developed a strong community ethos which was immediately apparent to the judges.
ICT is used as a natural tool to enhance and enrich learning and teaching, and to improve and develop communication within and beyond the school.  A wide range of mobile technologies are in regular use. For example, the pupils are encouraged to bring in their mobile phones which can be synchronised with the school’s calendar.
The headteacher describes the school’s approach where, “Everything is driven by teaching and learning”. This is exemplified by all students being both confident and competent users of ICT who can identify when and how to use ICT. The strong focus on the use of ICT to develop personalised and independent learning ensure that the pupils can achieve their potential.
The impact of all these developments are carefully measured to ensure that value for money is achieved. All this outstanding practice is supported by the technical team who provide excellent standards of service for all users across multiple technology platforms.
Find out more about this school at: www.egglescliffe.org.uk

There's a case study about Egglescliffe's use of Linux powered Eee PCs at http://opensourceschools.org.uk/asus-eee-pcs-egglescliffe-school.html for those who'd like to learn more about this aspect of their outstanding provision.