Changing MIS... our experience

[CyBeRkId2002]

When looking at moving MIS I could find very little information on the process, what was involved and the challenges we were likely to face. As such, now we are just about out the other side, I thought I would share a lengthy post on the subject. [The views below are entirely my own.]

 

For info we are a MAT comprising of 6 primaries and a secondary.

 

Background

The notion that schools are tied to a single MIS provider due to its overwhelming market share, the existing skill set of staff or simply "just because" has always bothered me.

 

As a school with a limited budget (don’t we all!), I have always been particularly frugal with software purchases, avoiding costly packages (Adobe etc.) wherever necessary. This is particularly the case where there are comparable products on the market (we are supposed to be teaching transferrable skills after all), but this did not seem to extend to our MIS. Despite this, until recently I had not seen an MIS system that I had genuinely considered offered enough of an incentive for me to overcome the hurdle of getting the idea past our Leadership Team. For me to even consider broaching the subject, let alone getting to the point of inviting companies along to pitch their offerings, I had to be comfortable with the reasons we were doing it.

 

I visited BETT in January 2018 with a key focus on properly delving into what was out there and following a few short, but extremely informative demonstrations. I came away feeling that our move from the 'status-quo' had just changed from "if" to "when". The key selling points for me were:

 

• The vastly improved behaviour and automation capabilities that some products had over what we had available to us. I could instantly see the time-saving potential (way more important to me than cost saving) if we fully harnessed what was available.
  
• The amount of 3rd party add-ons we could get rid of was exciting, not just from a financial point of view, but an administrative and GDPR stand-point.
  
• Our current MIS provider having very little new to demonstrate
  
• Our current MIS not being very well suited to a MAT structure
  
• On a personal level I wanted to get away from maintaining a server, software updates, patches, backups etc. if at all possible
  

 

Despite all of these pro's, I sat on the idea for several months with a 'let's have another look next year' attitude. It was in October/November last year, mid-way through the move to forming a MAT that I was made aware of two things. Firstly, the significant cost that five of our six primaries were facing to purchase a licence for their existing MIS, as they were not yet academies and they just had the LA licence. Secondly there was a delay to the formation of the MAT meaning we had a further 4 months in which to put things into motion. It was still what I considered a tight turn-around but for cost-saving in doing it now compared with doing it potentially 12/24 months down the line, I felt I had to at least put the suggestion forward.

 

Decision Making Process

 

Our SLT were very receptive to the idea of at least investigating options, as were the heads of the primary schools forming the MAT, so I invited a number of providers who had most excited me at BETT to demonstrate their products in an initial fact finding day. I scheduled them into 4 sessions in a round-robin format with some of the key stakeholders within the school. I believe that to pick the right system, and more importantly make it a success, the people using the system needed to inform the decision-making process and it had to be driven by them. If the day ended with an overwhelming 'I don't like any of them' then that would be that. Our subgroups were:

 

• SLT and Primary Heads
  
• Exams
  
• Assessment
  
• Pastoral
  

 

The results were overwhelmingly positive. Almost all involved could see the potential from the systems over what the existing product offered in terms of features and ease of use. Fortunately all sub-groups had a similar view of products they liked, and those they were less keen on. Ultimately it came down to two products that were very close. We then held a further discussion, a second demo to another group of key individuals, discussions with schools currently using the platforms and a rigorous financial comparison of all providers. As a result, we ended up selecting Bromcom. For us the interface seemed the most intuitive and we liked it's more comprehensive nature, encompassing even more of our third-party add-ons. Having said that, some of the other offerings did look particularly interesting and may suit other schools needs better, so I would urge all schools to investigate all options thoroughly.

 

Migration & Data Checking

 

After placing the order for Bromcom the day before the Christmas break (just scraping in the deadline of when we had to inform Capita of our intention to leave), the enormity of the task in hand hit me and I started to worry about whether the right decision had been made to the point where I really started to panic about it. As soon as we came back there was a data cut and we had our test system back to us within a matter of days! This is when the real work starts and the one thing I would urge anyone switching (to whichever system) to do would be make the absolute best use of this time!

 

To begin we had prepared a comprehensive data checking programme with individuals responsible for checking 10% of student records, 10% staff members, 10% SEN records etc. I would say this was one of the areas where we probably got it wrong in that such a thorough check is probably not necessary. By all means choose a random sample to look over, but I think switching from Sims to Bromcom is the migration team’s bread and butter and they are very good at it! Our data came over exactly as it was on SIMs. Rather than checking quality across a large sample, I would urge everyone to see what does not come across. There were a couple of minor areas that we expected to be transferred which were not (for logical reasons after to speaking to Bromcom) but knowing about these in advance, helps you evaluate whether these are important to you, whether to push to have them transferred or, if this isn't possible, whether you need a second system in place to deal with this.

 

Training

 

In total we had two days on-site training for our primary schools (attended mostly by heads and key admin staff) which covered pretty much everything they needed to know. I would say documentation is one area that our primaries would like to see improved. The ad-hoc nature of the training, along with no printed 'how-to' guides was a big shock to them particularly moving away from an LA who were very good at this, and something they would certainly like to see more of in the future.

 

The secondary was originally scheduled to have 2 days with some follow-up webinars, but decided to upgrade these to a further 2 days on-site which turned out to be exactly the right amount of time. We created a custom training programme with Bromcom with the aim of training all high level users of the system comprehensively in their specific areas. We wanted this time to be as focused and productive as possible so kept the sessions to a handful of staff so the training could get into the real nitty-gritty of the system. We did not get Bromcom to train teaching staff at all which some found a real surprise. My view was that the time we had with them was precious. Teaching staff how to take a register, enter marksheets and add behaviour events was something we could cover in house in an after school session. I personally felt the training was excellent and gave us a real deep understanding of how the system works. Once again though, others within the school did note the lack of printed guides and said this is something they would have liked. I do know Bromcom have recently taken on another technical author so this is something that could change in the future. Also the system is more intuitive than our previous system so the reliance on following guides is probably not as pronounced.

 

Process Migration

 

For me the biggest part of the planning stage, and the part that can make or break the migration, is thinking about how what you currently do is going to be affected by the new tools you have.

 

For me, if you are not making the most of the automations many of the new MIS providers offer, then you are really missing a trick. We found many, many cases of this and without exaggerating would say that our use of the system saves hours of staff time per week. One example (probably the biggest but could give many more) would be detentions. In the past our processes were:

 

• Staff member logs a behaviour event
  
• Staff member logs a detention
  
• Staff member looks up parent contact details
  
• Staff member emails parent
  
• Staff member enters Communication Log details
  
• Member of admin staff runs a report for daily detentions and emails to staff
  
• If student does not attend a detention then:
  
• Pastoral look up students attendance record and see if they were in school
  
• If they were in school another detention gets logged, more manual comms etc.
  

 

 

Our process now is:

 

• Staff member logs a behaviour event
  
• Behaviour event triggers detention
  
• Detention triggers email/text home
  
• Report scheduled to alert staff of daily detentions
  
• If student does not attend detention:
  
• Pastoral can see on one screen if they were in school previous lesson
  
• If in school escalate in one click which triggers detention, comms etc.
  
• If not in school reschedule in a few clicks which triggers detention, comms etc.
  

 

As you can see this has taken setting a detention from a five step process, to a one step process!

 

The above saves hours of time right across the board but it is important to say this does not happen automatically. You really need to sit down, see what the system is and is not capable of and manipulate it in a way that works best for your school. Bromcom again were great at helping us with this and I would say of our 3 hour behaviour management training session, only about 30 minutes was on the technical how to do things, with the further 2 hours 30 minutes being an in-depth discussion on how we could achieve what we wanted within the confines of the system.

 

These processes extend right across the MIS, so it is vital to think carefully about what you do now and how that could be improved using the new tools available.

 

Go Live

 

The go-live in primaries was around 2 months ago. For full disclosure, I will say that my role is Network Manager for the secondary school only, not IT Director for the trust and I only provide a few support hours in two of the primaries at present, so I do not see the day to day running of the schools and can only give a brief insight. None the less, I have been the key contact for the implementation of Bromcom and they do contact me from time to time when they have issues. Other than one or two teething problems and adapting to the change, they seem to be getting on well. We are struggling with the assessment side of things at the minute. All but one academy currently uses TargetTracker with the view to moving to Bromcom only ASAP! At present it does not seem tailored particularly well from primaries, but one of their key focus at present is rectifying this and they are developing a new tracker system at present which we are looking forward to working with them on. Anecdotally, a couple of admin staff members at primaries have told me that it is ‘so much simpler than our previous system’.

 

With regards the secondary, all the planning and discussion we did beforehand meant the launch went as well as could have been expected. I will not pretend that the first few days were easy (change is ALWAYS difficult), and we are still in the very early phase (only 2 weeks in) so hard to make a full judgement yet, but within the first couple of days/weeks:

 

• We made some pretty complex timetable changes with relative ease
  
• Had our automations working with very few quirks (usually just a date I have got wrong here or there)
  
• Created some useful BI dashboards
  

 

I am also not going to say we have not faced problems. I do not think any system is perfect and we still have one or two issues to work out (a couple will require some development by Bromcom, so time will tell on how reactive they are to customer feedback/suggestions), but I went from being extremely apprehensive about the switch in the lead-up, to being excited about future possibilities, in only a matter of days.

 

Data Analysis

 

During the sales process, Bromcom placed a lot of emphasis on the analysis that schools were able to obtain from Bromcom using Microsoft PowerBI. I do not have an analytics background and this was really the first time I had come across it. Leadership and primaries loved it. I thought it was a bit pie in the sky and that we would have to pay huge amounts for consultancy to get anything remotely close to what was demoed to creation stage. This worried me a bit as I did not want people feeling we had been oversold.

 

I taught myself the basics of PowerBI in about a day (Udemy has a great course!), and have created some really useful behaviour dashboards in just a couple of hours. For larger MATs/LAs that have a dedicated data analyst, creating really useful actionable data is very achievable.

 

Summary

 

Apologies for the long post, I wanted to give as much info as possible for those currently sitting on the fence and give as accurate a representation of what is involved, so you can make the decision of whether it is right for you. I suppose all of the above could really be summed up in a few lines:

 

• Changing MIS is definitely achievable
  
• Get the real users of the system involved and make it their decision
  
• Think carefully about your processes and how the system can best meet the school’s aims
  
• Using the training time you have wisely
  

 

Of course, if you have any questions on the above, or the process in general, fire away!

[PotNoodleTech]

Thanks for taking the time to write that for us! Really interesting!!!

[ordeology]

Really interesting post!

[Damon]

What a cracking post! I think more and more schools/trusts are coming to the same conclusions. It's so important to look at your options and consider what's best for your establishment. I've been guilty of assuming SIMS was still the leading product without doing proper research so I'm glad we went through a similar review in partnership with our clients (I work for a support team). The points about reviewing your business processes during these changes are also spot on!

 

In terms of the assessment side of things, Bromcom are developing a primary tracker product that looks to provide a flexible, out-of-the-box solution but we've just ported our existing Assessment system over instead. I agree that the current native analysis tools seem to be more secondary focused but there's a couple that are handy for Primaries and they have some new features in the works. However, one thing I'd say is that if you're picking up Power BI, you can just do the top level reporting with that. My thoughts were, whatever they come up with in the MIS, I still like the huge flexibility of Power BI and I assume I'll use it for the majority of top level analysis. On a teacher level, we've setup marksheets with some quick calculations so they can get a quick idea of where pupils are on the curriculum, this is then displayed on their insight homepage and so on.

 

I realise this is comparably small in the grand scheme of things but I like how the assessments are linked to term and subject lookups. We've been able to produce marksheets where the subject is selected at run-time, so that's less templates to manage and less columns to confuse the end user. The templates are also really easy to build once you understand those links as you can bulk add columns based on selected subject, terms and year group. We're going through a big rethink of our assessment processes anyway but I can see that Bromcom will handle whatever we decide to throw at it.

[CyBeRkId2002]

Cheers all.

 

With regards assessment, Damon is absolutely right. What I put above may come across a little damning and that isn't how I meant it. It is certainly no worse than our previous provider, nor were any of the systems demo'd better in this regard. We were just hoping for a system that provides some nice, out the box charts and analytics like some of the primary trackers on the market and we have found it isn't quite there yet... but it seems like it is coming!

 

Also, PowerBI is great so building on top of some out of the box systems should prove the best of both worlds.

[Damon]

I can understand where you're coming from, that's what makes target tracker (and the like) so popular. As a team, we produced our own assessment setup in SIMS to meet that demand as there wasn't anything out of the box. It's difficult for a supplier to provide a catch all solution to what people are looking for but I'd say a fair majority would be reasonably happy with a defined system that allows for a little customisation. However, the approach to assessment is developing further so there's one or two third party products that are going to shut up shop because they can't afford to rebuild from the ground up. I had a chat with the guy who's developing the Bromcom Primary Tracker a month or so ago and it looks like they're trying to provide an intuitive system that's still flexible. You could define your gradeset, terms and expectations so it was able to generate statistics automatically. There was also a simple chart builder for reports that I can imagine users being able to construct themselves.

 

I think most of us want to keep as much as possible within the MIS, or at least seamlessly integrated with it. So in that sense, I'm glad certain MIS suppliers are now looking to develop decent tools for the job. Ideally, we want to be able to compare any metric to attainment and identify patterns/trends. Once you have everything in one system, you have a lot more flexibility over this process.

 

On the plus side, you have an opportunity to look at your assessment approach and see if it needs any tweaks to take it into the future. I've been working with a few schools that are moving away from the Emerging/Developing/Secure terminology and exploring the idea of every assessment being a point in time, ARE style of assessment. I.e. they should be expected or above at every capture point. This is a further move away from levels and working through steps. It's nice and easy to report on too as you are using the same terminology throughout. For example, the pupil arrived well below and they are now at expected. This is not term/year/subject specific and simplifies everything. Another school is looking at NFER testing and considering standardised score based tests, twice a year. Progress is easily measured from point to point and again, some nice easy metrics to understand. I looked at the Primary Tracker with this in mind (in addition to the E/D/S approach) and it definitely ticked the boxes. However, we'll probably end up doing a nice bespoke thing regardless as we like to nerd out

[SpaceInvader83]

Great to hear such a detailed write up, are you able to provide an update and has anything changed opinion wise on the migration?

[CyBeRkId2002]

Hi spr,

 

Too busy today to write a detailed reply but, in brief, our opinion hasn't changed. Still very happy with the service and software, results day imports seemed to be a doddle to the point where the exams officer was worried she had missed something. Myself and a colleague have also picked up a lot of curriculum management over the summer (allocating students to classes) due to a long-term absence and despite us having no particular training in the area we have been able to muddle through and get it sorted ... not something I am 100% certain I would have been able to do in our previous MIS.

 

It has it's quirks, all software does, but there seems to be a definite want for everyone to improve all aspects... the change-logs always include genuinely useful features and improvements, and having met come of the developers I can only see things getting better. If you want a more detailed response drop me a pm and I will try my hardest to get back to you asap.

 

Cheers.

[sonofsanta]

We've had a new Head start this week (external appointment) just as the assistant head and I have started discussing an MIS change, as we've been on CMIS/ePortal a loooong time now, and it's getting very old hat. New Head is keen to go to SIMS as that's what he had before, which I think is a massive mistake and a sideways step at best (I'd say backwards...), so seeing this post detail your thinking so thoroughly has been very useful. And y'know, Bromcom keeps on coming up as a name...

 

Which others did you look at, out of interest? We'll be going through all this over the next few months, and it's likely to be a decision we're stuck with for ten years, so I want to do it right.

[CyBeRkId2002]

We had Arbor, iSAMS, Capita and Bromcom in to present. Best thing you could do is get as many in as you can initially with senior leaders, key stakeholders and create a shortlist of who may fit the schools needs. Then the real work starts in drilling down to exactly what each systems strengths and weaknesses are!

[Ditto]

We've had a new Head start this week (external appointment) just as the assistant head and I have started discussing an MIS change, as we've been on CMIS/ePortal a loooong time now, and it's getting very old hat. New Head is keen to go to SIMS as that's what he had before, which I think is a massive mistake and a sideways step at best (I'd say backwards...), so seeing this post detail your thinking so thoroughly has been very useful. And y'know, Bromcom keeps on coming up as a name...

 

Which others did you look at, out of interest? We'll be going through all this over the next few months, and it's likely to be a decision we're stuck with for ten years, so I want to do it right.

 

Are you primary, secondary or all-through?

[DODICT]

We had Arbor, iSAMS, Capita and Bromcom in to present. Best thing you could do is get as many in as you can initially with senior leaders, key stakeholders and create a shortlist of who may fit the schools needs. Then the real work starts in drilling down to exactly what each systems strengths and weaknesses are!

yes and get sims in too and compare and contrast - from the demos I have had it would be very hard to sit them side by side and make and argument for that solution at this time.

 

If you didnt realise before how behind the times it is you will after you have seen the efficiencies any product that has been developed in the last decade can offer to a school and all the modern cloud focus on how to get information and insight out of the MIS (with varying degrees of success IMO)but they recognise thats the value of the system. SIMS seems to have outsourced getting value out of their system to 'partners' for a long time so their product in isolation is familiar old friend for many to put data in but severely limiting in getting the information out. As soon as you want to get value from your data the solution comes up short, well short.

 

Depends on your need though- some schools dont use information, or dont use it well, to support decision making so having an MIS that cant readily provide intelligence isnt a hindrance so I'm not going to say every school should change as for some it would offer no benefit but there are numerous systems now that can support schools more readily in being efficient and effective, in my opinion.

[XiJ]

Sims is dead. It might be a slow one but they haven’t / cant adapt - and their legacy software is creaking.

[sonofsanta]

Are you primary, secondary or all-through?

 

Secondary, and a single-academy trust with--as far as I'm aware--no plans, needs nor desire to go MAT with anyone. Currently still on FacilityCMIS/ePortal and getting bored of it and its nonsense, tbh. About time we moved away from a product literally written last century. (Which is why I don't want to jump out of the CMIS frying pan and into the SIMS fire...)

Edited September 5, 2019 by sonofsanta

[djrscally]

Secondary, and a single-academy trust with--as far as I'm aware--no plans, needs nor desire to go MAT with anyone. Currently still on FacilityCMIS/ePortal and getting bored of it and its nonsense, tbh. About time we moved away from a product literally written last century. (Which is why I don't want to jump out of the CMIS frying pan and into the SIMS fire...)

 

What's wrong with Facility these days? I always quite liked it

[sonofsanta]

What's wrong with Facility these days? I always quite liked it

 

Well I mean, the Data Server crashed again this morning for no apparent reason, password resets keep not sticking and sometimes require me to restart services and knock the whole thing over for ten minutes, everyone is having trouble with their passwords anyway because brilliantly user accounts are tied to dataset and so when the Head created the 2019/20 dataset back in March to start timetabling it took a snapshot of the passwords then... and that's just this morning, without digging into the troubles the Assistant Head has with the reports and getting data out, all of which is over my head (I'm not so daft as to get involved in any admin work involving Facility). Plus our account manager won't commit to saying it'll be supported in three years from now.

 

It is working for us, but I have a nagging feeling that's just because we're used to it, and once we start looking at new options built around modern needs and principles we'll realise how much we're actually missing out on.

[Ditto]

Secondary, and a single-academy trust with--as far as I'm aware--no plans, needs nor desire to go MAT with anyone. Currently still on FacilityCMIS/ePortal and getting bored of it and its nonsense, tbh. About time we moved away from a product literally written last century. (Which is why I don't want to jump out of the CMIS frying pan and into the SIMS fire...)

In this case, I think you have the main ones. As an outsider, you might want to look at SchoolPod. I would add Progresso, but as you are CMIS, I presume you have considered that and decided against? I do fear however your heads "SIMS 'cos that's what I know" could be the biggest hurdle to jump.

[XiJ]

Indeed. Hopefully the head is open minded and arbor, bromcom etc can show how much things have moved on.

[djrscally]

Well I mean, the Data Server crashed again this morning for no apparent reason, password resets keep not sticking and sometimes require me to restart services and knock the whole thing over for ten minutes, everyone is having trouble with their passwords anyway because brilliantly user accounts are tied to dataset and so when the Head created the 2019/20 dataset back in March to start timetabling it took a snapshot of the passwords then... and that's just this morning, without digging into the troubles the Assistant Head has with the reports and getting data out, all of which is over my head (I'm not so daft as to get involved in any admin work involving Facility). Plus our account manager won't commit to saying it'll be supported in three years from now.

 

It is working for us, but I have a nagging feeling that's just because we're used to it, and once we start looking at new options built around modern needs and principles we'll realise how much we're actually missing out on.

 

Fair enough. Yeah I'd be concerned about support for Facility too, it can't survive Progresso being around forever; at some point it's just gonna be too uneconomical to keep supporting it. I think you're right about modern systems opening your eyes too; Facility was a solid system, I liked it a lot, but there are many benefits in the newer stuff.

[Damon]

yes and get sims in too and compare and contrast - from the demos I have had it would be very hard to sit them side by side and make and argument for that solution at this time.

 

If you didnt realise before how behind the times it is you will after you have seen the efficiencies any product that has been developed in the last decade can offer to a school and all the modern cloud focus on how to get information and insight out of the MIS (with varying degrees of success IMO)but they recognise thats the value of the system. SIMS seems to have outsourced getting value out of their system to 'partners' for a long time so their product in isolation is familiar old friend for many to put data in but severely limiting in getting the information out. As soon as you want to get value from your data the solution comes up short, well short.

 

Depends on your need though- some schools dont use information, or dont use it well, to support decision making so having an MIS that cant readily provide intelligence isnt a hindrance so I'm not going to say every school should change as for some it would offer no benefit but there are numerous systems now that can support schools more readily in being efficient and effective, in my opinion.

 

This is a really good point. I think it also demonstrates due diligence when looking to procure an MIS. Did they dangle the SIMS 8 carrot though?

[deshills]

Fair enough. Yeah I'd be concerned about support for Facility too, it can't survive Progresso being around forever; at some point it's just gonna be too uneconomical to keep supporting it. I think you're right about modern systems opening your eyes too; Facility was a solid system, I liked it a lot, but there are many benefits in the newer stuff.

 

Always thought that they should have concentrated on CMIS - it was a fab MIS in my view, but many years ago they mistakenly admitted to us that CMIS was not going to be invested in and run into the ground, so we also decided to move and chose Bromcom.

We haven't looked back since and has transformed how we do things here!

I think the comment above about people choosing SIMS because they are comfortable with it is so accurate yet so sad, there are so many better and more efficient products out there that are not only better in their core functionality, but from a cost perspective.

[Timetable]

Its been an interesting read this post and i should have read it earlier as we are now in the process of moving from SIMS to Bromcom.

 

Our reasons are that we don't really use the core of SIMS enough and were investing in add-ons. We have (soon had) CPOMS, EDUKEY, Schoolcomms, CMIS, Show my homework and were going to be looking at attendance and seating by satchel.

 

This was crazy, buying all these add-ons as SIMS wasn't doing what we wanted in the first place. So, i went to BETT last year and looked at Schoolpod, Arbor, Bromcom, Progresso and iSAMS, ths was to get one MIS that covered all the task we needed in one place.

 

All very good products, but Bromcom just seemed to tick all the boxes and the move from SIMS looked the easiest due to the familiarity.

 

Due to not having all the add-ons it also works out cheaper for us too, which is always a bonus in this environment, although i suspect that saving wont be added back to my pot.

 

We have now cancelled SIMS just before Christmas (again that 3 months notice has to be watched) and we are embarking on the move to Bromcom. SO far the staff have been excellent and they have kept me informed and worked with me to provide many demos to various different staff groups and to keep me informed are where we are at the moment.

 

So, our journey is just beginning, exciting and i am sure erwardign with an MIS that does what we want within itself. If people want me to keep updating as we go through each process i am more than happy to. We go live after Easter with eveything except schoolmoney, that's waiting till the summer..

[supportman]

So, our journey is just beginning, exciting and i am sure erwardign with an MIS that does what we want within itself. If people want me to keep updating as we go through each process i am more than happy to. We go live after Easter with eveything except schoolmoney, that's waiting till the summer..

 

Please do, we are in a similar position of being just about ready to cancel Sims and migrate to a new cloud platform. I'm really interested in your plan for migration and how admin staff and teachers get on with it. Parents as well if you have them using a current system.

[Timetable]

Please do, we are in a similar position of being just about ready to cancel Sims and migrate to a new cloud platform. I'm really interested in your plan for migration and how admin staff and teachers get on with it. Parents as well if you have them using a current system.

 

No problem, so far the demo to quote to ordering process has been brilliant. Our account manager has kept me informed at all stages and arranged quite a few demo's and a reference site we can go to if we want. I was informed i was passed to implementation yesterday afternoon, so will be able to respond with the time it takes.

 

Most of our staff have fallen out of favour with SIMS so will be interesting how they receive this.

 

Well at the moment our parents use the schoolgateway app which is very limited so it will be interesting for us too.

 

SIMS hold you to the three months before contract ending, so keep an eye on that date. Ours like most schools was the 31st of December...

[DODICT]

Please do, we are in a similar position of being just about ready to cancel Sims and migrate to a new cloud platform. I'm really interested in your plan for migration and how admin staff and teachers get on with it. Parents as well if you have them using a current system.

 

I think people fear launching to teaching staff more than they need to - I did an hour session (30 mins demo/30 mins play) and was largely well received and staff were up and running . Once we had assessment info in there for them they were v positive about what they had available - *because we didn't migrate any assessment info as we wanted a clean start we didn't quite have targets etc easily available immediately . That was the one thing that they initially missed - but now there as a perpetual assessment sheet and they can access it easier than the 'marksheets' they all seemed so attached to.

 

What I would say with admin/office staff is its and ongoing process and you need to ensure you processes fit the system. Dont try and replicate everything you previously did - explore the intended outcome and then work out how you can best use Bromcom to achieve that. You wont be experts on day 1 so best will in the world you'll start some things that will need to be revisited once you know the system a little better so just insure you make time and keep engaged with the various teams to ensure its working as intended and no one is doing anything silly !

 

As an example we had staff who spent hour(s) a day running off attendance and behaviour reports and then emailed them round to specific teams - they are now scheduled and happen completely passively which did create an element of fear for staff who asked well what do I do now ?! But they quickly found better uses for their time but its teasing out these easy wins over time that is hard to capture and solve all in one go at launch.