Local Authorities 'top slicing' School funds for MIS!

[Alice]

Our bursar says that as a school we are currently having our funds ‘top sliced’ by our Local Authority for our MIS software and maintenance-support. That part of our budget retained by the Local Authority is paying for the software in use which is SIMS. We want to move to away from SIMS and use alternative MIS software but are unable to because the LA will not rebate the 'top sliced' funds (i.e. the part retain by our LA from our budget). I am interested to find out whether other schools are also experiencing similar problems due to this method of ‘top slicing’ by Local Authorities, and if any school succeeded in getting their funds for MIS released. Surely the schools should be able to have free choice in their MIS software. Do you agree??

[apoth0r]

On a similar note, Northamptonshire schools had their Harnessing Technology fund used for the cost of EMBC county wide, although some people may say its not great for independance to quality of service has improved no end because not only are you having a county wide support service but the money is paid by the county so they have a level of involvement too.

 

What are the main reasons you want to move away from SIMS and would it be cost effective in doing so if you have already paid? Have you tried other systems to see if it is any better? Unfortunately no MIS system is perfect and usually the one you have is the best because people have already trained to use it.

[matt40k]

I would image the moneys been spent. What MIS package are you looking at?

[FN-GM]

Our LEA took a cut from some funding all schools (Primary and secondry) got to pay for Uniservity, not one High School in the area uses it.

[GrumbleDook]

On a similar note, Northamptonshire schools had their Harnessing Technology fund used for the cost of EMBC county wide, although some people may say its not great for independance to quality of service has improved no end because not only are you having a county wide support service but the money is paid by the county so they have a level of involvement too.

 

What are the main reasons you want to move away from SIMS and would it be cost effective in doing so if you have already paid? Have you tried other systems to see if it is any better? Unfortunately no MIS system is perfect and usually the one you have is the best because people have already trained to use it.

 

It is worth mentioning that for Northamptonshire to retain the schools portion of the HT grant it went to Schools' Forum (reps of schools including headteachers, bursars and governors) who agreed and supported it.

 

It would be worth the OP finding out if this was the same for them with DSG and what exceptions / options were made available.

 

Steve also makes darn good points about MIS in general.

[apoth0r]

On a side note Tony, did you check you Ning mail? Cheers chap

[Alice]

What are the main reasons you want to move away from SIMS and would it be cost effective in doing so if you have already paid? .

 

Well our ICT Manager wants to move to a Browser based system because he is fed up with SIMS.Net installation on every work station. Browser based would be more cost effective because of a lower cost of ownership. As to having already paid - we want to opt out from having our funds 'top sliced' so that we can buy our choice of MIS.

[matt40k]

It seems rather foolish in my opinion. You'll be making a lot more work for yourselves.

 

Capita are releasing SOLUS3, which although is pretty limited at the moment (IMO), it is still really is powerful. This should allow you to deploy SIMS upgrades internally to your workstations.

 

If you really are going to look at other MIS packages, I would suggust you look at SLG, it'll work out cheaper then moving to a new MIS package. SLG might not be able to do everything, but it'll give the teachers etc the access what they need. Generally this cuts it down to a few workstations in offices that'll be able to done via SOLUS3, which is in the Autumn release (ETA 9th Nov).

 

If you really want to go the other way, look at thin client, either RDP into a central server or using remote apps.

[GrumbleDook]

Pros and Cons ...

 

1 - Server / Client systems are sometimes a pain to update due to frequent patching and trying to do things like pulling down updates on a monday morning, before registration over a saturated wireless network!

2 - Server / Client systems are often more efficient and allow for greater scope of integration with other systems (eg SchoolComs, Groupcall, VLEs, AD, etc)

3 - Web-based solutions reduce technical overhead of management of servers and local devices.

4 - Web-based services lock you into a single supplier for all functions of management of information at this time.

 

Changing MIS does not get rid of problems ... it just gives you a different set of problems, but perhaps ones that your school is better placed to cope with.

[sparkeh]

Northamptonshire schools had their Harnessing Technology fund used for the cost of EMBC county wide, although some people may say its not great for independance to quality of service has improved no end because not only are you having a county wide support service but the money is paid by the county so they have a level of involvement too.

 

Leicestershire too, though I believe the reason the LA retained the grant was to pay for the broadband upgrade. This has caused a fair bit of anger among SMTs of school who are no where near using their bandwidth and had earmarked the money for things that would have an immediate impact.

[kmount]

Leicestershire too, though I believe the reason the LA retained the grant was to pay for the broadband upgrade. This has caused a fair bit of anger among SMTs of school who are no where near using their bandwidth and had earmarked the money for things that would have an immediate impact.

 

Can't please everyone though, and the county would have been slated for leaving 'schools behind' later on when the funds + associated economies of scale weren't available any longer.

[SimpleSi]

It is worth mentioning that for Northamptonshire to retain the schools portion of the HT grant it went to Schools' Forum (reps of schools including headteachers, bursars and governors) who agreed and supported it.

 

Remember - Tony seems like one of us but he's really one of them

 

I had a very similiar answer (just replace the word Northamptonshire with Lancashire) when I asked what had happened to our HT grant this year.

 

@OP

Its just them and us and they usually win.

 

regards

 

Simon

 

PS Pick your battles (and make sure the volunteers who said they'd stand with you haven't taken 1 step back when you wern't looking (e.g headteacher )

[SimpleSi]

This has caused a fair bit of anger among SMTs of school who are no where near using their bandwidth and had earmarked the money for things that would have an immediate impact.

 

Ours decided to increase bandwidth as well to all primaries when IMHO what we need now is improvements in uptime (e.g diverse feeds) not faster speeds.

 

regards

 

Simon

[GrumbleDook]

Leicestershire too, though I believe the reason the LA retained the grant was to pay for the broadband upgrade. This has caused a fair bit of anger among SMTs of school who are no where near using their bandwidth and had earmarked the money for things that would have an immediate impact.

 

The funny thing about schools saying that they are not using all their bandwidth is that when things are slow and you check the logs you see they are maxing out, but only certain times of the year.

 

You just can't win at times.

[apoth0r]

I don't knock the decision in Northamptonshire, it gave everyone a better service and the problems EMBC had a year or two previous was a disaster area. These appear to have been resolved now, I'd rather have something that works than something new that could work.

[GrumbleDook]

Remember - Tony seems like one of us but he's really one of them

 

I had a very similiar answer (just replace the word Northamptonshire with Lancashire) when I asked what had happened to our HT grant this year.

 

I keep getting called 'poacher turned gamekeeper' ...

[sparkeh]

Can't please everyone though, and the county would have been slated for leaving 'schools behind' later on when the funds + associated economies of scale weren't available any longer.

 

The funny thing about schools saying that they are not using all their bandwidth is that when things are slow and you check the logs you see they are maxing out, but only certain times of the year.

 

You just can't win at times.

 

Sure, both good points, and you may note I didn't say I agreed with people's anger

[User3204]

If you want to stop the County from top slicing then you have to go the whole hog and pull out, it used to be called "Grant Maintained", but it got watered down into Foundation and Trust statuses.

They'll still take some of it though, but you'll be able to reduce the slice. I'm not convinced it is completely worth it, unless you don't get on with the LA.

[PiqueABoo]

It is worth mentioning that for Northamptonshire to retain the schools portion of the HT grant it went to Schools' Forum (reps of schools including headteachers, bursars and governors) who agreed and supported it.

 

It's the same kind of deal around here. AIUI it's mostly a bunch of tech-enthusiastic heads, allegedly representing all the others, who vote the money back for county wide X, Y and Z. That doesn't however include SIMS - schools pay for that themselves and likewise if they want the LA support (most do).

[Tiger]

That doesn't however include SIMS - schools pay for that themselves and likewise if they want the LA support (most do).

 

This sounds fair! Which LA is this then? It should be a model to the others!

[Sylv3r]

Our LA topslice for their VLE solution, as a school we decided it wasn't for us but didn't get our contribution returned - nobody seems to know what percentage it is.

[Tiger]

Our LA topslice for their VLE solution, as a school we decided it wasn't for us but didn't get our contribution returned - nobody seems to know what percentage it is.

 

Interesting ... A matter of interest which VLE did LA go with and which VLE did you choose?

[john]

This is very common place across most LEAs to top slice funds like the HT grant, which is very annoying, as some have said they may top slice for services you don't want or use but you have no say. It is wrong IMHO, and these comittees that make these decisions are usually, again IMHO, staffed by the wrong people that have no idea about what they are talking about. They never seem to have any IT Technical input when looking at IT stuff, its great Heads, Bursars, Governors etc saying yes lets take X% from the HT Grants to pay for EG VLE or Internet or MIS, but what if resourceful IT Managers could actually get it cheaper than what they are offering etc. Its very bad practice IMHO and should be made illegal, the government gives these pots of moneys to the LEA to allow Schools to, in the case of the HT Grant, Harness Technology, but if your grant has been sliced by a large % before you get it, it leaves you with very little funding to Harness the Technology, thus making it semi-useless. Each school has its own priorites for development and harnessing the power of technology, and paying for VLE, MIS, Internet etc isn't always on there list!

[matt40k]

It's a bit harsh, you would hope broadband money would be discuss with the technically people, still it is at the end of the day the "teachers" choice, if they want to use high bandwidth applications in schools, then it should be them demaining it, not us technical people who want to download Windows 7 that bit faster... not that i'm saying no to a 100mb pipe

 

VLE\MIS packages are things we get little say in, because we have little input into the actual system\data. Would any ICT Technican want to say to there bursar that they are moving to Sage because they can support it better then FMS?

[GrumbleDook]

@John

You are sort of right and sort of wrong ... and it is also down to perception.

 

Schools forum is not your typical committee ... they are a vocal group that do everything they can to get the best for the schools. They control themselves and give LA folk a hard time (as they should). The fact that IT is not represented is not always the case but it is down to *your* school's choice about what it takes as a priority. To make a change you have to work on *your* Head.

 

Take eLCs ... devolved out to schools and often regarded as a waste of money in the long term. We can talk about what it would have done if a central put had been pulled in to develop stuff ... and we can then discuss about Open Source too.

 

Yes, you get more value with aggregate purchase, but often less choice and control. It is a balancing act. If a few schools opt out and take the cash it makes it harder to get something decent for the other schools. If schools want to opt out and enough do then fine ... take it to right group and discuss. The fact that your head might *also* decide it is not worth fighting that battle so that they get favourably viewed for other things like more funds for buildings or spending the time discussing allocation of students.

 

Some LAs are more 'controlling' than others and some schools forums are more ready to roll over and accept everything that gets put to them. IT is just a tiny bit of what goes on and if devolved would be a small bit of funding. As for making use of the technology ... that comes down to things like CPD, staff development time (let's mention Rarely Cover in here too) and actually having an ICT Strategy at your school. There are lots of schools that don't have one. Lots. Why would anyone trust a school like that? You would end up with a heap of white elephants and a quick search on the forums shows what people generally think of those.

 

If we are talking about generating a level of trust between LA and school so that when schools have shown they know what they are doing they can get on with it for themselves (a summary of some of the criteria for Foundation and Trust School Statuses) then that is another question which Central Govt are not that interested in answering by any method other than .... Academies!!!!

 

Discuss