SIMS Learning Gateway

[wing045]

So I have just learned to my surprise that SLG is being discontinued from Jan. Given that we're on SIMS Hosted with only 30 licenses for the desktop application the majority of our staff rely on SLG. The only alternative is the Teacher App, which we do already have and are using but it's simply not a replacement for SLG. Teachers can't use it to view, edit, or report on behaviour data. The registers don't show attendance from earlier in the day on the register. The medical information shown is very limited. I could go on. Moving away from Hosted isn't an option for us as we're a Mac school and if we self-hosted SIMS we'd need Windows. Buying more licenses for the desktop app would double the annual cost and frankly I resent being forced into doubling our outlay for what would essentially be the exact same service we already had.

 

Is anybody else in this position? Or have any thoughts on how to approach this one?

[daturum]

I am not surprised Capita are retiring SLG as it is an increasingly outdated piece of software but like you am unhappy with both the timescale of the announcement (I was first made aware of this in the summer term) and the failure to properly replace it with the Teacher App simply not being up to the job - in our case, we mainly use SLG for report writing in Profiles using comment banks and this is not available in the Teacher App and neither is it on the roadmap.

 

We converted to SIMS from CMIS three years ago and were offered the hosted solution with SLG potentially reducing the cost but did not go down the hosted route due to criticism of its reliability from those who already had it. Hosted SIMS does appear to be the main alternative to Teacher App but as you say it does come at a cost.

 

I would have thought an announcement like this would have given at least a year's notice so that schools could look at alternatives to either processes or software. I can only conclude that this move will accelerate the move away from Capita SIMS to alternative providers who are properly cloud based and eating into their monopolistic market-share.

[theeggmaster]

EduLink One?

[supportman]

SLG is shockingly outdated, I'm not surprised. Their is no way they could continue with the move to cloud from Microsoft with sharepoint.

 

Definitely look into Edulink one or as I said in the other thread, move away from Sims. They are falling massively behind compared to other MIS providers.

[mthomas08]

Funny enough, yes. It was sheer luck that I found out it was bewing discontinued. One person insisted all schools should know about it..

Only received my first email the other day.

 

Anyway.

 

EduLinkOne is what we have purchased and I can't praise it enough.

-Simple and easy system (looks good too)

-Demo available

-Can link up your data to show what a live demo looks like

-Provides a lot of controls

-Works on any device and apps available

 

I looked at the SIMs teacher Apps a while ago and I wasn't impressed. On non touch screen devices it became a pain to use. So I just gave up with it (our PE dept wasn't impressed either).

 

We are now at the stage with EduLinkOne that Parents Evening is working fine. Parents want to use it. Our next steps involve attendance and more data to parents and using the email/message system instead of SMS texts.