Further education subscription

For every £1 our members invest in us, they receive a return of more than £3 just in terms of savings (Frontier Economics, The economic benefits of Jisc, 2023). From connectivity to cyber security, negotiations and licensing deals to data and digital transformation, we generate high-value benefits for the further education sector – and the UK economy as a whole.

More information about the cost-saving benefits of a Jisc membership is available on our savings and value page. This includes independently-conducted value studies highlighting the money saved by our member organisations.

Your Jisc subscription also provides your college with full access to our catalogue of services for further education.

Services as part of your core Jisc membership

Cyber security

The security threat landscape is always evolving, but so are we. As the sector’s trusted security partner and provider of the UK’s national research and education network (NREN), we make it our business to stay abreast of current challenges and share intelligence and expert advice with our members.

With key services included as part of your secure Janet connection such as foundation DDoS mitigation, cyber threat intelligence and advanced protection to prevent users accessing malicious sites and phishing, we help you to protect your organisation together with the rest of the sector.

Our work to prevent breaches saves the education sector £40m a year in DDoS and ransomware attack incident costs. (The economic benefits of Jisc, 2023)

As a member, you’ll also have access to our cyber security community, a trusted group providing the latest threat intel, workshops and an opportunity to share experiences securely with peers. Read more about how we can help you enhance your cyber security.

Connectivity

We understand that your network connection is fundamental to everything you do. With our world-class Janet Network, rest assured that your users will be reliably and securely connected.

We’ve also added a second, fully-funded 1 Gbit/s connection to the core subscription, providing all members with greater network resilience and business continuity to deliver an even more robust service to users. Find out more about connectivity.

Negotiations and licensing

Jisc’s negotiation and licensing strategic groups set the direction of negotiations and ensure that our member’s requirements are heard. Working in partnership with these groups enables us to negotiate affordable agreements and frameworks to save you time and money.

We negotiate with publishers and vendors at a national level to license and procure affordable digital content and software for the UK education and research community.

In the last year, we have been negotiating licensing agreements to meet members’ needs in augmented and virtual reality, and we are continuing to negotiate other major deals on the sector’s behalf.

Content

E-books for FE is a collection of curriculum-relevant e-books covering A-level, BTEC and vocational courses, plus GCSE English and maths. Funding challenges can make it difficult to provide up-to-date textbooks across a wide range of areas. 98% of our FE and skills members are signed up to this service, which helps solve the problem by offering easy-to-access e-books with no usage limit constraints for students or staff - all included with your Jisc membership.

Data and digital transformation

To accelerate the sector’s drive for data-driven digital transformation, our suite of digital capability services - digital experience insights, building digital capabilities and the digital elevation tool - are all included in your core subscription.

The trio are designed to be used in tandem to assess and map out your digital journey. Digital experience insights helps you to find out from staff and learners how they feel about the digital offer in your college and their experiences, providing useful quantitative and qualitative data for you to consider. The building digital capability discovery tool helps students and staff to think about their personal knowledge and confidence, while the digital elevation tool helps you to build a strategy for improving your digital offering at an organisational level.

Almost two-thirds of the sector are now using the digital elevation tool to help drive their digital transformation.

Advice and guidance

As a Jisc member, we’ll provide you with trusted advice and impactful support – focused around the specific challenges you face. Whether you are looking to inform your digital planning and leadership or improve the quality of delivery of teaching and learning or business operations, we have the latest thinking to get you up to speed and practical guides and tools to inform your actions.

Our report on student perceptions of generative AI in tertiary education is just one example of the kind of topical guidance Jisc members can expect from us. When there’s a trending topic that we think could be of interest to our members, we act quickly to give you the advice and guidance you need – whether it’s in the form of a report, a guide, training or a community.

Events and communities

Jisc members receive an allocation of tickets to each of our main events: Digifest, Networkshop and security conference, some of which are CPD-accredited and all of which provide valuable opportunities to engage, network and hear about key topics from sector-leading experts.

You’ll also have access to other high-profile events throughout the year, such as Connect More, our Data Matters series and multiple community meet-ups.

Our events bring together members and communities to share experiences, uncover best practice and imagine new possibilities.

Over the past year our community managers have supported more than 40 communities and thousands of individuals, actively encouraging each group’s interests and their different ways of gathering and communicating.

Subscription costs

We will contact your college in the spring of each year to confirm the forthcoming year’s membership subscription. The cost of your subscription is based singularly on the amount of public funding a college receives from the Education and Skills Funding Agency for 16 to 19-year-old learners and 19 to 24-year-old trainees.

Invoicing

We will invoice colleges in England for their subscription fee in August of each year.

This information only applies to general further education and sixth form colleges in England.