The Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, is a fully co-educational institution that prides itself on attracting students from across the North East of England, fostering a vibrant and dynamic culture. In 2025, the school celebrates a momentous milestone - its Quincentenary - marking an extraordinary 500-year history that few schools can claim.
Throughout the centuries, RGS Newcastle has continued to flourish as the premier independent school in the North East and one of the country’s leading schools, consistently topping regional tables for academic excellence.
The Challenge
During the years of the pandemic, it was recognised that significant investment in technology was needed to provide increased access to digital technology for all students. This included moving the school’s infrastructure to a cloud-first approach for scalability, accessibility, and cost efficiency while also supporting the school's dedicated internal IT team to help successfully deliver manage this new way of working. The vision was to put a device in the hands of every child. Which would result in the deployment of over 1400 devices to students over a two-year period.
In September 2021 RGS appointed Sarah Buist as their Head of Digital Strategy and in April 2022 partnered with TSG as their Managed Network Provider.
With such a large estate of devices, a resilient infrastructure with clear Digital Governance was needed.
The Solution
Future Proofing Infrastructure:
RGS in partnership with TSG have used the Microsoft 365 platform and Azure subscriptions to drive the school’s digital transformation. The first task was to begin migrating all on-premise file stores to Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, this was then followed by print services and financial SQL servers to the cloud.
Increased agility:
The migration to Azure has increased the school’s flexibility to scale resources as and when they are needed. The infrastructure was made more resilient and capable of handling the increased number of devices and network demands.
Moving to the cloud came with the financial benefit of no longer updating or running the on-premises servers
TSG has also leveraged the school’s Azure environment to support A Level Computing students, by creating new bespoke configured virtual desktop environments for their practical exams. This has streamlined the management of these sessions and reduced the interruption to classes when setting up for the exam sessions.
Deployment and management of Student Devices:
TSG provided on-site engineers to assist with the first deployment of mobile devices to students in the summer of 2022. During the first project TSG worked with the RGS team to design a student device configuration that was robust and met security and safety standards.
With over 600 laptops to be issued in the first wave, TSG advised the use of autopilot (out of the box) deployment. This meant that students arrived at school and set up their devices in just 40 minutes. There was no way the traditional device imaging would allow the school to deploy so many devices so quickly. With this success, a further 750 devices were deployed to students and staff the following year, using the same method.
TSG have supported the internal IT team at RGS throughout the last three years to ensure that all devices are now cloud enrolled and managed through Microsoft Intune.
The Results
Empowered interactive learning thanks to collaborative work with TSG
Increased access to devices across the students has helped support learning for all students. There are many aspects of technology that support the already excellent teaching provided to students at RGS.
Utilising Microsoft Teams for Education and Class Notebook, has allowed teachers to leave rich audio feedback, ensure students always have access to their resources, and ensure every student is supported no matter what their learning need. These have included tools that allow learning to be more interactive and engaging, such as real time GIS mapping in Geography and AI-assisted research in Computing.
Students learning languages have used their devices to connect and collaborate with students abroad, truly extending learning beyond the classroom. and closing the feedback loop with the use of different quizzing sites. Developing key skills that are vital for their future success beyond school.
What’s Next?
TSG is now a trusted managed service provider which works in collaboration with RGS’s innovative IT team. Dedicated TSG engineers provide on-site support twice a week, allowing RGS staff to focus on day-to-day classroom work.
Sarah Buist, Head of Digital Strategy at RGS
