MAT transformation

[JazzFlute]

Just wondering — with multi‑trust setups, what actually happens to schools once everything has been centralised and they then decide to leave a trust and join another one, whether that’s another academy trust or a newly formed local authority trust? How easy is it to “unpick” everything that has been centralised?

Who is responsible for this work?

Would it fall on the current trust, since they originally configured and integrated everything, or would it become the responsibility of the new trust the school is joining?

Schools seem to be moving around more than they used to, and with the new education white paper this is likely to become even more common. But that raises a big question — who is left to do all the unpicking of the IT systems, and at what cost?

 

Has anyone been through this and has an opinion or experience to share?

[Pottsey]

1 hour ago, JazzFlute said:

 

Just wondering — with multi‑trust setups, what actually happens to schools once everything has been centralised and they then decide to leave a trust and join another one, whether that’s another academy trust or a newly formed local authority trust? How easy is it to “unpick” everything that has been centralised?

Who is responsible for this work?

Would it fall on the current trust, since they originally configured and integrated everything, or would it become the responsibility of the new trust the school is joining?

Schools seem to be moving around more than they used to, and with the new education white paper this is likely to become even more common. But that raises a big question — who is left to do all the unpicking of the IT systems, and at what cost?

 

Has anyone been through this and has an opinion or experience to share?

There is no straight forward answer. Depending on the state of the trust the site is leaving and the state of the trust joining this can be a nightmare or simple and relative straight forward or anything in-between. The new trust that takes over ultimately has to unpack and get everything into a working state. Ideally with the help and proper handover from the previous Trusts IT. It all depends how robust the procedures are from both sides.

The new trust is responsible but the old trust where possible is expected to cooperate and help. The thing is very often the school is leaving for a reason.  Very often the cooperation and help isn't there to the expected level. If a school is leaving its usually because something had gone wrong or is being badly managed, which means it more likely not to have proper documentation or proper handovers. Not always some do amazing documentation and handovers. Others you will be lucky to so much as the admin passwords and nothing else.

 

 

[JazzFlute]

1 hour ago, Pottsey said:

There is no straight forward answer. Depending on the state of the trust the site is leaving and the state of the trust joining this can be a nightmare or simple and relative straight forward or anything in-between. The new trust that takes over ultimately has to unpack and get everything into a working state. Ideally with the help and proper handover from the previous Trusts IT. It all depends how robust the procedures are from both sides.

The new trust is responsible but the old trust where possible is expected to cooperate and help. The thing is very often the school is leaving for a reason.  Very often the cooperation and help isn't there to the expected level. If a school is leaving its usually because something had gone wrong or is being badly managed, which means it more likely not to have proper documentation or proper handovers. Not always some do amazing documentation and handovers. Others you will be lucky to so much as the admin passwords and nothing else.

 

 

 

Yeah, I can only imagine it’s a nightmare for a school that’s being off‑loaded or moving trusts for whatever reason, because so much will have been centralised — Office 365 admin policies, Intune, MIS, core systems, online resources, Microsoft licensing, trust‑wide discount/bulk pricing, just to name a few.

[Pottsey]

1 minute ago, JazzFlute said:

 

 

Yeah, I can only imagine it’s a nightmare for a school that’s being off‑loaded or moving trusts for whatever reason, because so much will have been centralised — Office 365 admin policies, Intune, MIS, core systems, online resources, Microsoft licensing, trust‑wide discount/bulk pricing, just to name a few.

There are a number of different ways of doing the transfer options.Some trusts will use software to transfer all data/emails out of one 365 tendency into the new tendency with a name match. Others will start afresh and leave it to the end user to manually backup what they want to keep. Most of the big MIS options have an export/import though I wont pretend its prefect. One can for example export the SIMS database into Bromcom. Last time I went though this process we backed up the Sharepoint/OneDrives and main School Network shares. Then transferred them to the new trusts systems. The entire process is a big job but in theory not that bad if everything is documented and well setup. 

Usually we would do something like set a hard date to make the MIS read only. Ask Admin to do a tidy up of the MIS data. Transfer everything to the new MIS but keep the old MIS running in read only mode for x months. Combined with a full training day for all admin staff on the new MIS.

[armadillo]

We are looking into migrating 6 x of our O365 tenants onto one single Trust tenant, and wondered how things are going if you have already migrated and if you can recommend a company to do the work? we are also looking for someone to take charge and manage the project for the trust. Thanks in advance.