Something to keep an eye on from DfE

[matt40k]

Yer, that's why I like the export routine idea

[penfold_99]

With MIS systems I suspect the "answer" will be schools Interoperability Framework, Systems Interoperability Framework (UK), or SIF. However I'm not likely the idea, it's too over complicated in some regards, regardless, this will be the main turning point in the MIS market in the UK when a solution is agreed upon.

 

When was the last time you looked at SIF? A lot has changed with the release of SIF 3.0. Its now REST based and very straight forward to get data. Have a look at the sand box here (SIF REST API)

 

I'm hoping the DfE will step forward and publish an open standard

It has, its called the ISB Business Data Architecture and will eventually cover data items for every data collection.

 

Going forward would be a solution with a more module approach, so you could interconnect individual modules between different suppliers - so you could have a ScolarPack as the core, Bromcom as the e-reg, SIMS as the assessments suite and be able to inter-swap each part. But that's along way off personally - it's kinda what SIF is trying to do.

 

It's not a long way off, as SIF is doing this type of thing now with suppliers that are SIF enabled. Currently about 40% of England & Wales have SIF 2.X implementations.

 

As more MIS providers are entering the market a common api will be very important for vendors (cashless catering, library etc) wishing to integrate, as the cost to maintain 5+ different apis is going to be huge.

[matt40k]

I knew saying SIF isn't the answer would get you posting Until I hear of a school migrating their MIS system purely using SIF, I don't think it's the final answer. You point about vendors like cashless catering using SIF is a brilliant example.

 

ISB Business Data Architecture and will eventually cover data items for every data collection.

 

This is my point... eventually.

[GREED]

I knew saying SIF isn't the answer would get you posting Until I hear of a school migrating their MIS system purely using SIF, I don't think it's the final answer. You point about vendors like cashless catering using SIF is a brilliant example.

 

 

 

This is my point... eventually.[/color]

 

I'd like to keep this post highlighted somewhere for about 2 years time, when the Data Exchange project is complete and all data movement is actuated though it including CTF and Census... and why not supplier migration.

 

CTF follows no common standards, other than the major suppliers follow it. It is not ISB complient by a long way, which is what the Data Exchange is being built to out of interest (and the Exams A2C project, and any future government education standard). It is and always will be limited in scope, which is why it will disappear in a couple of years (see above). SIF will be the way forward (finally) when all of this is online.

[CAM]

I'd just like to say congrats to all who have managed to increase their numbers or even just stay in the market . It's great to see a wider spread in the field and the competition can only be good for schools as a whole.

 

It's no small undertaking to get a school to change MIS.

 

What the figures don't show is the flow, because I know from having spoken to some suppliers that their is movement in both directions, though for most the net result is positive. Where it is a reduction it's with the suppliers we'd have expected.

@CAM - stats is all down to interpretation, Capita is a given, but i'd have said Scholarpack and Arbor are worth looking into seeing as they are increasing their numbers so quickly.

 

But when you take into account the totals, the big three are still over 1000 (Capita waaaaay in the lead on top of that!). The others far less. It also sounds amazing for Arbor's growth being an 1800% rise, I congratulate them on that, but when they only have 19 known schools in that list I can only conclude they had 1 school and gained 18 since the last count making that figure somewhat of an anomaly.

[matt40k]

It's still positive. OK Capita only lost 1% of its customers this year, but that's about 200 schools (I think?) in England, add in the fact the market grow by 50 odd schools from last year, now lets say it's £1k per school, that's £200k lost from a possible £50k profit before taking into account one of the big 3 pulling out and another being sold, they shouldn't be dropping. Just proves what a little forum can do to the big corporate machine.

[bringmoredata]

It's still positive. OK Capita only lost 1% of its customers this year, but that's about 200 schools (I think?) in England, add in the fact the market grow by 50 odd schools from last year, now lets say it's £1k per school, that's £200k lost from a possible £50k profit before taking into account one of the big 3 pulling out and another being sold, they shouldn't be dropping. Just proves what a little forum can do to the big corporate machine.

 

Having looked at the data in more detail, by my calculations Capita lost 138 schools... but I also think that only 373 schools switched... so the net loss equates to 37% of the total number of switchers! That makes me think that, as soon as one of the cloud insurgents make data migration so simple that people stop fearing switching, the transformation of the market could be dramatic.

 

I've just blogged on the subject, including a Tableau visualisation which you can use to analyse the underlying data:

 

Bring more data: The School Information System market is changing faster than you think

 

Thanks matt40k for liberating the data from the DfE - I had great fun looking at it!

[matt40k]

I believe @GREED has requested previous years data, I'm submitting a FOI for latest numbers at the end of the month. I've also asked if they can make it a data set so you can just get at it rather then someone having to request it. I've been working on combining with other data sources - such as ICT expenditure, geo location (so you can overlay it onto the map), performance data and social data. Idea is you'll be able to connect Excel\PowerBI to the data and do your own analysis, such as finding out what other schools of your "type" are selecting and rather than schools in your local area.

 

Yes, defo be interesting, have spoke to @GREED about it a lot, I mean it's ok saying you can migrate from x to y system, but when you've got a tool that you install with a few clicks then leave running for few hours later, you've loaded another MIS and it's ready to go. That will be the day we'll see a lot more changes in the MIS market.

[vikpaw]

...but when you've got a tool that you install with a few clicks then leave running for few hours later, you've loaded another MIS and it's ready to go. That will be the day we'll see a lot more changes in the MIS market.

 

That is what Arbor purports to do from SIMS - using a RasPI - but i haven't seen or heard of it working yet.

If you're listening Arbor Gods - send me a RasPI with that funky case ....

 

If that works surely it will be the start of ArborGeddon

[matt40k]

Quick!!! Get on the phone to the EduSolicitor to get that trademarked before they use it!!

 

I would say why, why, why would you use a rpi, but clearly it's working as a marketing gimmick (at least on @vikpaw) and who am I to deny a company dishing out free rpi

Edited March 5, 2014 by matt40k
removed excess "le"

[vikpaw]

@bringmoredata - i like what you've done with that tool. very nice.

 

Is it possible to have a system of tweaking the underlying data so we could project a hypothesis forwards, e.g. what if all the pearson went to RM, and see the results.?

I know i've seen a system, can't think what it was, where you get the table next to the graph and can fiddle the numbers for analysis.

 

givehimmoredata ...

@matt40k - i believe the point was that if a RasPI can do it, then it is very simple to do, all it needs is for you to plug it in, point it at SIMS, log in, and it will create a working demo with real data. I don't want to sidetrack down the route of safety of sending off your data, contracts, etc. The main point is if it's that simple to do, and you can get a live demo - then that is awesome, and not many people offer you a working sample.

 

Unfortunately, i didn't even get to see a live demo at BETT due to bad internetz

[GREED]

I believe @GREED has requested previous years data, I'm submitting a FOI for latest numbers at the end of the month. I've also asked if they can make it a data set so you can just get at it rather then someone having to request it. I've been working on combining with other data sources - such as ICT expenditure, geo location (so you can overlay it onto the map), performance data and social data. Idea is you'll be able to connect Excel\PowerBI to the data and do your own analysis, such as finding out what other schools of your "type" are selecting and rather than schools in your local area.

 

Yes, defo be interesting, have spoke to @GREED about it a lot, I mean it's ok saying you can migrate from x to y system, but when you've got a tool that you install with a few clicks then leave running for few hours later, you've loaded another MIS and it's ready to go. That will be the day we'll see a lot more changes in the MIS market.

 

 

I have requested census 2010 and 2011 data to combine with 2012 and 2013 I already have to publicise the changes over 4 years, particularly given most contracts are 3 years. I'll put some pretty charts together too.

@matt40k maybe something to work on together then and share, I was looking at the phases of schools to analyse too, you seem to be going one stage further

 

I want to combine it with the MIS survey result, would be a good publication.

Edited March 5, 2014 by GREED

[matt40k]

i believe the point was that if a RasPI can do it, then it is very simple to do, all it needs is for you to plug it in, point it at SIMS, log in, and it will create a working demo with real data. I don't want to sidetrack down the route of safety of sending off your data, contracts, etc. The main point is if it's that simple to do, and you can get a live demo - then that is awesome, and not many people offer you a working sample.

 

 

I don't think it would be simple, the rpi that is. First, lets assume the company(ies) has been approved by DfE, LA, loads of security folks and everyone is happy, even I'm happy. OK, so they ship the rpi to you, now you need to plug it in, give it a static ip, configure the ip, errr... how? Oh you need a keyboard and a mouse, so you're assuming you have a spare keyboard and mouse (ok secondary school defo, primary, maybe not), then you need a hdmi monitor or at least a dvi and adapter, things start to come unstuck now. Then for a secondary school, its defo not going to be able to crunch that data so it's going to use the cloud, fair enough, but now we need configure the proxy (then we run into proxy issues). Not even before we look at the extra dev time to actually build it on linux - not impossible but defo harder.

 

My point is, it's a sales gimmick, the practical solution is to give you a bit of software to install. Personally, from a LA perspective, I'd like that software to exist and do it's job REALLY well. I mean can you image when it comes to MIS revaluation, bosh the software on, pool a list of MIS systems, get the schools to filter the list down, do the checks like security, then point the software at the one they want to evaluate. If it was really good, and I mean really good, you could keep the two sync'd, so you could have some classes using one system and others using another. So yes, really would like something like that to exist - demo with actual data would be awesome, but it doesn't, you get stuck doing eval on demo data which of course is going to work then you spend mega bucks getting your data migrated only for bits to get dropped of. Be interested to see how many people migrate to a system, then back a few years later because of such decides and the cost of doing so.

[matt40k]

I was looking at the phases of schools to analyse too, you seem to be going one stage further

 

Blame those pesky MS Power BI demos for inspiring me!!

[GREED]

Blame those pesky MS Power BI demos for inspiring me!!

 

Hey if you got the time go right ahead I wish I had the time to be able to do and publish the in depth analysis. Regardless of the output it would be good to keep it live or as live as possible for all to see year on year.

[matt40k]

Haha, haven't got the time, that's my current problem!!! I just need to sit down for a evening and finish it. I don't think I'll do any analysis, just data model it and publish it as a public data set. I'll let you lot draw the conclusions from the data. I'm sure we'll see a lot of spin on the data too!

[scholarpack]

Wait til the Oct 14 data if you thought this was interesting...

[matt40k]

Figures won't be available till Dec. Guess it'll be a nice xmas present for you guys - so what you getting us lot?

[scholarpack]

Well, we know throughout the year how many schools we are adding so we don't have to wait until Dec to know that BUT these figures are extremely interesting to us to see the movement of the other suppliers. We have already done our own internal analysis of the previous 3 years data but we don't have time to sort anything out public facing.

[matt40k]

What is it they say about counting chickens haha!!! I'm sure your track record will continue and no one will leave, only your numbers will increase by then. I think it's good that you haven't published anything - I suspect it might get you into a sticky situation if you did.

[scholarpack]

What is it they say about counting chickens haha!!! I'm sure your track record will continue and no one will leave, only your numbers will increase by then. I think it's good that you haven't published anything - I suspect it might get you into a sticky situation if you did.

 

Not really, it's publicly available data. It's facts and figures that can't really be debated.

 

As far as counting chickens goes, of course one should be conservative. So let's just wait and see !

[matt40k]

Where you getting the data from out of interest - could always do with more public data sources

[GREED]

Just let us do it for you

[scholarpack]

When I say publicly available you might have to request it but in theory I believe the DfE have no problem giving access to historical census stats.

[GREED]

That is what I and @matt40k have been doing...