IA76 Posted October 2, 2011 Posted October 2, 2011 Hi We are considering using Pricing | QuickSchools.com - QuickSchools.com Online School Management System for a small independant secondary school which has around 130 pupils. Are there any other products we should be considering?
vikpaw Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 A few that we know of here: ISAMs - purports to be good for independent. Scholarpack - formerly free and open source, but still worthy. FreeMIS - since you're small and it's free Bromcom - probably too large and expensive SIMS - as above TS school - free, found on another thread here (via google!) TS School screenshot - Free school administration CMIS - maybe too big and costly Integris E1 Corero Double First Pass Phoenix Gold
elsiegee40 Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 We're a small independent too. Earlier this year, we were making this choice too. Our final two were Schoolbase and Scholarpack and it was a difficult decision. Scholarpack has the advantage of being wholly hosted - nothing to install or maintain because it's out on the web. In small schools with fewservers and IT staff, that's a huge advantage! The SLT went with Schoolbase, but I'm not entirely sure it was theright decision for us. Setting up a VPN for it via our RM provided ADSL has been very difficult. Please PM me if you want to know more.
featured_spectre Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 Elsiegee I've stepped into a school that made the same choice. It does a decent job but unless you have your permissions set up perfectly and WiFi / wired network is perfect, you will have problems. For example I found changing a users network logon password caused havoc with schoolbase for that user.
elsiegee40 Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 (edited) Wifi? What wifi?! The decision was made because Schoolbase uses Sage for it's accounts and billing which is good. The bad has been that it's taken RM a month to finally get our router settings correct for the VPN. Hallelujah moment last Friday afternoon. It does add to my part-time busy workload which is why I'd suggest small independents seriously consider Scholarpack's wholly hosted solution. Edited October 3, 2011 by elsiegee40
featured_spectre Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 I mentioned that but the ineptitude of the previous IT guy left things here in a right state (well the infrastructure is sound but the rest is poor). So far I've spent £22k to get things up to scratch
rpwillis Posted October 3, 2011 Posted October 3, 2011 As it's a US based company you'll need to consider the Data Protection Act. If the data is stored outside of the EEA, which I imagine is likely, then the company has to have signed up to the Safe Harbour agreement. Preferably they would also be using a data centre in the EU.
crispy Posted October 4, 2011 Posted October 4, 2011 Does Quickschools handle the UK censuses like workforce and the Independent school census in January? From a quick chat with a salesperson on their website they said 'they think so' but I can't see anything on their website?
vikpaw Posted October 4, 2011 Posted October 4, 2011 Does Quickschools handle the UK censuses like workforce and the Independent school census in January? From a quick chat with a salesperson on their website they said 'they think so' but I can't see anything on their website? I would hazard a guess that the answer is almost certainly NO. It's US based, so i'm sure they will say they can get whatever data you want out, but, it's unlikely to be a part of the system that is maintained with pre-defined reports; adjusted every time the goalposts of the government are adjusted on a whim. I suppose it's not too bad for independent schools who don't have those requirements, and if the school is small enough, with a per student per month pricing plan it's cheap. I can't see it being an option if it would cost us $4500 per month!!! Even SIMS is cheaper than that! That would pay for SIMS, In Touch, SLG and a mighty fine all singing and dancing coffee maker 1
vikpaw Posted October 4, 2011 Posted October 4, 2011 In fact, to be fair, all of our UK based providers are way cheaper than that, and generally comparable with eachother. That coffee maker would be a £20,000 coffee maker by the way so as well as singing, dancing, making tea (!) it also does your homework and Tax returns. Sorry for any confusion.
vikpaw Posted October 5, 2011 Posted October 5, 2011 The SLT went with Schoolbase, but I'm not entirely sure it was theright decision for us. Setting up a VPN for it via our RM provided ADSL has been very difficult. Please PM me if you want to know more. Just for you, we now have a Schoolbase prefix, so you can tag your threads
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