The province is investing up to $50 million dollars into improving high-speed broadband Internet access for schools.

And the first roll out will see two local schools involved.

École Catholique St. Jude and École Catholique St. Gérard, both part of CSD catholique des Grandes Rivières, are two of 182 schools that the government says “will meet the 1 Mbps per student connectivity by the 2017-18 school year.”

The investment—titled the Broadband Access for All Students initiative—will see three waves in the next four years.

This first wave will impact roughly 73,000 students.

In a release by the province, they say “improving broadband connectivity and access ensures that students from every region of the province have equitable access to online information, courses and resources needed for 21st century learning.”

More specifically, infrastructure upgrades for this initiative—depending on the school—will include investing in new fibre optic infrastructure to connect schools to an internet service provider, improving network capacity to handle large amounts of data required to use new technologies in the classroom and updating the network design to be more student-friendly.

“Meeting the global standard for broadband speeds of 1 Megabit per second per student is a priority of our government,” says Minister of Education Mitzie Hunter.

“It is our goal to ensure all students in Ontario are provided with the tools necessary to reach their full potential.”

The second wave will begin in 2017-18 and will include more than 1,000 schools across Ontario.

Filed under: broadband internet, internet, Local News