Datasec Data Tool Kit

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi.

 

Has anyone ever heard of a product named Data Tool Kit (DTK) by a company called Datasec?

 

Our School's SLT is about to purchase this software for £5,500pa but I have no idea how good it is. Judging from their website it seems to be a SIMS extrapolation tool, a bit like Discover (which we already have).

 

Thanks.

[tech_guy]

Hi, we use it here and it's been a very useful tool. We had a few issues to begin with but they are all ironed out now. The support is very good. PM if you want more info.

[vikpaw]

Woah, that's steep. Have you shopped around? 4Matrix does analysis for 20% of that cost, i wouldn't know how they compare, but you can get a free trial. DTK must have some really shiny bells and whistles.

[NikiL]

I have had a look at both 4matrix and Datasec. 4Matrix I have trialled. Datasec does have bells and whistles, but more importantly, it has all Key Stages where 4Matrix only has Key Stage 4. Does anyone know of any other third party analysis tools for schools?

[number34]

Hi.

 

for £5,500pa

Is that really pa or the first year cost? Seems a lot of money when you consider what SIMS and TASC licences and support cost.

[NikiL]

Hi number 34. As far as I am aware it is an annual cost which is what is putting me off. I don't really know of any other software that does all of what it does cheaper. Any ideas?

[resin1]

Had a demo of that a while back and agree it does a lot but to my mind it still doesn't justify that price when you see what else is on the market. I guess some places justify it if they do not have a data or analysis guru of some sort in house, and it would really be replacing the skills of someone like that, so if they compare salary v license costs, perhaps it makes sense. It did not seem like a tool for teachers to engage with data, as the interface seemed way too fiddly and full of too many drop down options to achieve anything quickly - so more a tool to aid distribution of summaries. That said, it did have a facility for teacher/department feedback on the data, similar to what 4Matrix do, so I assume they target it to that audience of users too.

 

4Matrix are now stating KS3 support for September, although originally that was aimed for first half of this year, so we'll see. But once it does that and includes their flightpath model, it will be a damn fine piece of software.

 

There's SISRA of course, and if you are in a position to use a new system for assessments, tracking and reporting, Go4Schools has much of that analysis built in.

 

There are others, but those ones appear to have gained most popularity.

[number34]

resin1 seems to have listed the options available.

As the data manager I tend to do all the analyses SLT want using SIMS and AM. That said it is getting more difficult as one of them seems fixated on Raise Online and I am not familiar with it and am not sure whether I can get what he wants out of SIMS.

(but if they paid me an extra 5.5k ......)

[PhilNeal]

Raise is after the damage has been done.

[number34]

Raise is after the damage has been done.

 

He wants to use our tracking data from SIMs to provide estimates of the Raise statistics.

[robk]

Is anyone using the datasec toolkit with Facility? We seem to be hitting more problems than we should and would like to compare notes with others!

[Banjo]

That's a difficult one as a lot of Raise analysis compares the schools' performance with national and shows the difference as significant or not. You're not going to know the national until October each year and Raise is usually out for secondaries in November. What you should be doing is comparing against estimates of pupil attainment from the likes of FFT, if you don't like A,B, or D you have the option to configure your own. Edited October 31, 2013 by Banjo

[Rawns]

Have you tried SIMS Discover? I believe it's covered under your SIMS licence so should not cost a penny? You could at least test it out first before committing to such a large cost.

[hudzen76]

robk, we're Facility and have just set up DataToolkit here; took a fair bit of work around mapping etc. but we're somewhere near now and looking forward to upcoming release... Feel free to PM if needed!

[CAM]

4Matrix is very good and makes results day a lot easier. You can just import all results in from SIMS. It also has support now for KS3 though I haven't tried it yet.

 

Datasec rang me, I squeezed some website details out of the rep (even asked if I used 4Matrix) and said I'll ring him back if I am interested. TBH they looked like a bunch of Excel sheets on the site so left it.

[hudzen76]

Yeah, understand feeling about Excel. Thought that when we looked at it originally; what's point of running spreadsheet that's instantly out of date? Deputy Head loves it though; pulls reports out at push of button and chuffed to bits with them. Still got tidying and additional data to sort, but feels like we're getting to grips with it now.

 

Gotta say the seminar we went to in Bristol last week was eye-opener to where it's going and how the web bit might work to publish live reports to staff based on their teaching groups etc. Should be nice closed loop for staff to see results they input feeding into headline figures and give them ability to see how their groups are doing. Scary, but useful to avoid any surprises come results day. Still need convincing about price being worth it, but they're making a good case so far to us...!