Elected members agreed today to fast-forward investment in Connected Falkirk.

The move will see a total of  £8.4m allocated to Year 1 of the ambitious Council of the Future project to speed up rollout.

The decision was taken at the Emergency Executive after councillors acknowledged the need to increase pupil access to learning devices in line with the Council’s priorities.

They were also told of revised plans to upgrade school connectivity, which meant a next generation cloud-based Wi-Fi solution had to be implemented earlier in the project timeline.

As a result, a larger chunk of the £9.6m conditionally allocated to the first five years of project in May’s budget needed to be invested early.

The move to frontload the funding does not alter the overall cost of the project to the Council. 

Blueprint for the future

Last May, a range of Council of the Future projects were launched to transform education and learning across the Falkirk Council area. 

Under the Succeed Today, Excel Tomorrow banner, the projects aim to create a blueprint for the future that includes investment in primaries and additional support needs learning.

Connected Falkirk – the first of these projects to come to fruition – will help to digitally transform how young people learn and give them the digital skills needed for the workplace of the future. 

For more information on Connected Falkirk read our FAQs.