The New Zealand Ministry of Education recently announced that another 350 schools will be able to access wireless technology, thanks to a funding increase for the Ministry’s Wireless School Network Upgrade Project (WSNUP).
Making the announcement, Associate Education Minister, Nikki Kaye said an extra NZ$8.5 million will be spent on WSNUP to retrofit wireless technology into schools.
This announcement comes just two weeks after Kaye announced that $500,000 was being made available to add 40 further schools to the WSNUP program.
“The extra funding for WSNUP comes from savings made from the recently completed School Network Upgrade Project (SNUP),” commented Kaye. “That project provided state and state-integrated schools with upgraded core on-site ICT infrastructure, such as cabling and switching, to enable them to access high-quality internet.
“The advent of wireless technology saw the Government move to ensure this technology was automatically included as part of SNUP, for the almost 1,300 schools that received their SNUP upgrade from June 2013 onwards.
“In 2014, WSNUP was set up to retrofit wireless technology to schools that hadn’t received wireless as part of their SNUP upgrade, and which hadn’t installed wireless technology to an appropriate standard using their ICT operational budgets. WSNUP provides schools with a significant contribution towards the cost of installing wireless technology.
“There are 475 schools already in the process of having wireless retrofitted, and this initiative will increase to about 825 schools throughout the country.
“This additional boost means that through the combination of post June 2013 SNUP upgrades, the WSNUP program and schools’ use of ICT operational budgets, a large majority of New Zealand schools will have access to high-quality wireless connections.”