Microsoft Renewed Schools' Agreement with the Ministry of Education

[Lydia Kronawetter]

Kia ora koutou, 

Long time reader, first time poster.

On behalf of Microsoft Aotearoa, I am delighted to announce the renewal of the Microsoft Schools’ Agreement with the Ministry of Education.

The agreement will provide all state schools, state-integrated schools and kura kuapapa with free A3 licences for core Microsoft software such as Microsoft 365, Minecraft: Education Edition, and Windows 10 and above. Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Forms and other applications allow teachers to build a collaborative, hybrid classroom. The agreement also includes a ramp up model for a number of M365 A5 licences and Defender for Endpoint per year for all school-owned devices that are utilising A3 licences. The agreement takes effect from 1 January 2022 and runs until 31 December 2024.

More details can be found on the Ministry’s website, our Microsoft website and our recent press release.

New additions to this Agreement include:

1. M365 A5 Licences offers everything in A3, plus more intensive security management, additional analytics tools (through Power BI), and advanced compliance. A5 makes security a priority with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, a cloud-based solution that helps protect your school identities from multiple types of advanced targeted cyberattacks.
   
   
2. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a product feature of A5 and provides an enterprise endpoint security platform designed to help school networks prevent, detect, investigate, and respond to advanced threats. For those users that have A3, the Ministry of Education is also licensing them with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

Support available to you:

1. Attached is a Microsoft Schools’ Agreement Overview Guide which provides links to resources, deployment guides and outlines the steps you need to take based on your school’s current M365 licensing. This is an introductory guide, so if you have specific technical query not covered in the linked resource, then you can log a ticket here and one of our Education Support Team will reach out. 
   
   
2. To further support our school IT managers, we will be offering free virtual training events to empower school IT managers, with a focus on our security solutions included in A5 licences. These boot camps will be aligned to Microsoft certifications, with examination vouchers provided on completion. Find out more and express your interest for this offer, please visit here.  
   
   
3. Dedicated online sessions in conjunction with the Ministry are planned for after the Term Three school holidays, likely during the week commencing the 25th October (noting, Monday is a public holiday). The Ministry will be sharing more information on these session over the coming weeks. The above training will be made available after these sessions.
   
   
4. For more information about Microsoft products, please reach out to me via kronaw...@microsoft.com. For more information about licensing, please reach out Datacom via nzsc...@datacom.co.nz.

 

This Agreement paves the way for all state and state-integrated schools and kura across the motu to enjoy world-class, enterprise-level security on every device.

And as more schools and kura across Aotearoa embrace secure cloud platforms and new technologies, we’re confident this will foster an environment of safe and inclusive learning for all ākonga - and ultimately, innovative, world-leading practice.

Questions welcome, as always.

Ngā mihi nui,

Lydia

Lydia Kronawetter (aka Sam McNeill's colleague)
Primary and Secondary Education (K-12) Industry Executive
Microsoft Aotearoa  

[Lydia Kronawetter]

Included in the attachment but for ease of reference:


Ngā mihi, 

Lydia

[Caroline Curtis]

Thanks for this Lydia.

Question who just has MS defender with this on school pcs? Or do you all get additional software as well, ESET for example.  Just trying to reduce my spends.

Thanks 

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[Lydia Kronawetter]

Kia ora Catherine,

While you canvas responses from the group, this article on Defender Anti-Virus (available with A3 and A5) may be helpful. 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender-endpoint/why-use-microsoft-defender-antivirus?view=o365-worldwide

Ngā mihi,

Lydia 

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[Kevin Campbell]

When you get the approiate M5 license it opens up more capabilities for Defender, so that it becomes much more capable. Not sure about the licensing yet as the license is per user not per device...

[James Andrewartha]

On 29/9/21 5:02 pm, Lydia Kronawetter wrote:
> Kia ora Catherine,
>
> While you canvas responses from the group, this article on Defender
> Anti-Virus (available with A3 and A5) may be helpful.

Does MDE have a student-use benefit in this agreement though? In
Australia (and I realise this is an NZ list) we've been told it doesn't.

--
James Andrewartha
Network & Projects Engineer
Christ Church Grammar School
Claremont, Western Australia
Ph. (08) 9442 1757
Mob. 0424 160 877

[Paul Stephen]

James our agreement doesn't include student use benefits for MDE.

Paul Stephen

IT Commercial Manager

Ministry of Education.

[Paul Stephen]

There is both user and device licensing for Defender for endpoint.  User for Faculty and device for school owned devices.

Paul Stephen

IT Commercial Manager

Ministry of Education.

[Sue Way]

Awesome thanks very much.

Will school still have access to Microsoft Server licences?

Regards

Sue Way | IT Services Director (she, her)

Wellington Girls' College | Pipitea Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 | 

[Jeffrey B]

Looks like they will for 2022 but they are renegotiating each year.  I hope they do continue as we still have services that do not make sense to run on the cloud. If forced to, Azure VMs are still very expensive and still have to come over a shared, limited speed internet link.

Get Outlook for Android

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From: techies-f...@googlegroups.com <techies-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Sue Way <sue...@wgc.school.nz>
Sent: Friday, October 1, 2021 10:02:38 AM
To: Techies for schools <techies-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [techies-for-schools] Re: Microsoft Renewed Schools' Agreement with the Ministry of Education

 

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[Paul Stephen]

I am confirm the Microsoft server is included in the new agreement, but will be looking at removing support for server in the future.  We understand there are requirements for on premise servers in some cases for applications like printer servers and school management systems.  Any removal of server licenses will be will communicated with a reasonable time period.  

Regards

Paul

Paul Stephen | Commercial Manager | 

TPHM IT Commercial Management

[Sam McNeill]

Hi all,

So cool to see this new agreement announcement! I was on holiday last week so have not had a chance to comment.

Alongside the advanced security features with Defender for Endpoint, those A5 licenses also include powerBI for teachers (I have already had some schools reaching out asking about this) and I know Jake Wills has run some PowerBI training sessions for schools recently through his NZ Data Analytics group so that's awesome.

The other workload is the Teams Telephony service - I know a number of schools that have migrated to Teams Telephony so this A5 licensing should be helpful for those interested in going down that route (or upgrading from Skype for Business on premise PBX).

Trust you all get a break over the coming two weeks!

Cheers

Sam

[Matt Strickland]

And also downloads are available in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (vs that clunky VLSC page). Probably once its connected to your tenant, if like me were still using an old Microsoft Account.

Billing > Your Products > Volume Licensing

Matt

[Simon Wright]

Has anyone got their A5 licences yet?

Got this response from Datacom nearly a month ago now...

We are still working with Microsoft and the Ministry of education around A5 licensing for next year. 
We will be able to provide more information around this in the coming weeks.

I wanted to start playing around with MS Defender for Endpoint, but when attempting to set up the connection to endpoint manager it says I have no subscriptions, which of course I don't.

Would like to have got something working on some new laptops this side of xmas.

Regards,

Simon Wright

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[Rafal Janaszkiewicz]

Hi Simon,

I followed this up yesterday and this is the response I got from Datacom:

Kia Ora Team, 

Thank you for your patience. We are still finilising the last details. 

I will be in touch by the end of the week. 


Thank you,

Rafal Janaszkiewicz

ICT Manager

Wellington High School

E-mail: Rafal.Jan...@whs.school.nz

DDI: 028 2550 8784

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[Simon Wright]

Sounds promising...

Regards,

Simon Wright

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[Paul Stephen]

A5 licensing is not available until 1 January when the agreement comes into effect.  The Ministry will share a request form shortly for the upgrade license.  

If you defender for endpoint licensing there is a request form available:  https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=THpshlmK00utn4USpYHvwNQd0I1bAAJGu1TztRfFdgJUNU5GRkIwWkxXMDA2NkhNWEwyN0daR1IxNS4u&web=1&wdLOR=cD927C90A-C61F-45B7-94B2-E0C820DE1692
 

Paul Stephen | Commercial Manager 

Te Puna Hanganga, Matihiko | Infrastructure & Digital

Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga |  Ministry of Education

[Simon Wright]

Thanks Paul, form has been completed.

Regards,

Simon Wright

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