We area Birmingham Primary School who currently use CMIS.
Was originally looking at migrating to Progresso but I am a bit less certain now
due to their recent sale.
We would like a cloud based solution, which of the many MIS's out there
would you say is more geared towards a primary school.
Also our school might become an academy so does the effect the choice
of MIS.
Whatever you get, make sure the licenses can be transferred with minimal cost (preferably none) if you convert to academy status. Get it in writing!Originally Posted by owen1978
The actual MIS isn't an issue with academy status, though if you are to be part of an academy group it would be worth talking to other schools in the group. Running the same platform across schools in the group is good for reporting.
The finance software is an issue with academy status, especially if you become multi-school academy. FMS (the finance part of SIMS) doesn't provide everything that academy bursars need. My governor school is a SIMS school, but is dropping FMS in favour of PS Financials.
Last edited by elsiegee40; 28th February 2013 at 03:08 PM.
I thought the finance part was FMS?
elsiegee40 (28th February 2013)
Typo caused by CMISCorrected
We had to do this as well!My governor school is a SIMS school, but is dropping FMS in favour of PS Financials.
FYI - FMS will work for academy's, you can record all the required information and get the data out. You can't however just use your existing LA setup, you need a fresh new academy fms database. Getting the data into the correct format can be, well lets just say capita need to do some work - the last time heard about the bits they done, they weren't fit for purpose and was pulled. We have academies that use PS Financials, it works ok, just no sims integration, yet, sure enough people wanted it, it would happen - its not difficult.
As for licensing, you can transfer SIMS direct licenses for a fee, you can't do it for LA licenses. So if you buy direct, your ok. Reason being basically the LA license was purchased for a lot less then what you'll pay capita direct and it had a clause that prevent transferring the license - I guess this stops other LA nicking the other local LA schools support contract once they'd bought the license - not that we'd do such a things
Understood about the Academy side of things...
I believe SIMS is not cloud based, so it rules that out
ASPEN looks more for secondary, HE establishments
"Could based solution" - for a Primary - is this really [I]necessary? If your internet goes down, you have no data!
If their server fails (with no 2 hours SLA fix support in place) then they have no data either
SImon
Plus the school sec knows all their names and where they live
GREED (5th March 2013)
If the server controlling your gateway goes down, you've still got access to the data with no internet.
If the server with the data goes down, restore from backup to a different workstation and away you go. If the internet goes down, you're in the hands of (more often than not) BT
Said it again and again, if your mission critical stuff is up in the clouds make sure you have another means of getting to it! Namely redundant Internet connections.
That's the most important piece of any cloud infrastructure but it gets dismissed as a "waste of money!"
You can put in redundant (and relatively cost-effective) broadband by using small routers which allow you to plug in mobile dongles. For those odd times you really need a connection, a £25 TP-link box with a £25 O2 dongle and £5 worth of data on it is a really small price to pay to ensure at least a couple of megabits of connection! We've suggested that to a few schools who've asked - it's rough, and certainly not ideal, but it means that the 0.1% of time your internet connection goes down, you can just flick a switch and maintain mission critical stuff until your main connection comes back online.
What ever cloud based system we choose... I would have redundancy in place... otherwise i wouldn't be doing my job
What is it about the MIS that you have seen so far that makes you feel that they are not for Primary Schools?
SIMS for example has a large number of Primary users... so do most, if not all, of the other big players.
@DavKellyPro
I'd love to have such a system in my schools but its one of the downsides of having RBC t'internet - they just don't seem to understand the necessity of such a setup
1st thing that will be done if any of my schools goes academy is to ditch CLEO
Simon
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