Overview

Jumping in here as another Data Manager using Arbor – always good to see a dedicated thread for us! I’ve been finding the reporting side pretty flexible once you get the hang of the custom filters, though the initial learning curve is real. Keen to hear what tips others have picked up, especially around assessment tracking or behaviour logs. What’s everyone’s biggest win (or headache) with it so far?

I think talking to myself, but heyhoe! Decided against the post above. Came second or third on an Arbor role they advertised full or part time but settle on F/T and I wanted P/T. Now another local role (max 30 minute commute) has come up. It's advertised as part time but requires 36 hours a week for 42 weeks. For me that's TT +3 - could you imagine a teacher role like this advertised as P/T. Anyway, it reflects the dire situation at work that I'm even considering - maybe they could come down to 0.8 FTE. But..... the are SIMS - same trust as my sons school and I challenged them about using SIMS but I think they will remain behind the curve

It's been a while. There's a DM job going reasonably locally and I am pondering. I'm expecting for those of you who have commented, and maybe others, things have moved on and maybe you have changed MIS. So, what's life like today for a DM, what's your 'system's stack? This school is secondary with no year 12/13. I have a few concerns about the role advertised: i) it's SIMS ii) it pays the same as what I am on now as a Data Analyst (0.5 FTE) but I would need to be at least 0.8 if not FT, although the job is T/T plus 2 iii) I would have 3 staff reporting to me iv) they want the role to include being DPO. v) their written dress code is specifically shift and tie The first point could be lived with but I would want quickly migrate to a modern MIS. The second, the FTE is about 10% more than my charity Data Analyst role, but due to T/T + 2 weeks and pro-rata ends up about the same. Given the number of reports, do you it's fair? The third, no issue here, I have managed a lot more, but see line above. The fourth, that's a worrying insight to the SLT's understanding of data protection governance (conflict of interest etc.), but if they can be persuaded to outsource to a proper fractional DPO, then fine. The fifth, they would need to be flexible. Shirt or business smart I can do, tie is a not going work - yes I would decline if offered. To add to my comments on the second point. 0.5 FTE is relatively tax efficient. Doubling my salary would not double my income, and play havoc with work/life balance. Also, we are now 18 months away to both kids being at uni, so chance of cheaper holidays goes away. LGPS would be a big plus. And do teachers have their headline FTE pro-rata'd? In some ways I am mad to consider it, but ...

Agree with the comments above. My previous school I was initially employed as the "Data & Examinations Manager", which also encompassed Cover Manager as well. Which was fine when I first joined as we only had up to Year 10s present, as it was a new school. However by the time I got up to Year 12s being present it was starting to become an issue - although this was around the time COVID hit, so it's difficult to say with any certainty. Anyway the idea always was for me to eventually have someone else come in and take one of those jobs off of me and depending on who we brought in would depend on which (data or exams) they took off me. If they'd taken Data off me, they would have reported to me as the Exams Officer, same as with your advert. However I left before they could actually get anyone in (they have done so now, about 2 years after I left - wife still works there!) to go to a job where my 3 roles were being handled by 3 different people, so I only had to pick up the Data Manager one as we already have existing Exam Officers and Cover Managers. Incidentally, I do line manage the Exams Officer, so could foresee a situation where the reverse could be true for the right people.

You sometimes get this when a Trust has come in, made the data manager redundant and merged the two roles into "Data and Exams Officer" and then everyone has realised a few years down the line, that exams managers do not have the same type of expertise as data managers, nor the time to do assessments, analysis, timetabling etc. on top of the regular exams role. So they appoint a subordinate "data officer" or similar, to pick up anything their exams person doesn't want to do - as schools tend to panic at the prospect of losing their exams manager these days due to lack of experienced replacements. A few years after that you find the exams manager has become the "systems lead" or whatever, and now they have an exams officer and a data officer below them. Thus resulting in the Trust turning two experienced roles into three underpaid newly appointed roles... I feel the most sorry for the people in stage one of this though - that "Data and Exams Officer" cost-saving role is impossible.

My Line Manager is the leader of assessment, part of extended SLT, and they direct work relating to assessment, but for anything else the Business Manager.

That is a bit odd. Exams Officer to me is focused solely on one data area, whereas Data Manager can have responsibility in some way, for the full breadth of data areas. If one was to Line Manage the other, i'd expect the Data Manager to line manage the Exams Officer - but more likely them to be separate and both managed by a member of SLT.

Thanks for all the replies. A job I have seen advertised has the role reporting into the Exams Officer which I haven't seen before.

Assistant Head with responsibility for data, IT systems etc.

Assistant Head with responsibility for Inclusion, Attendance, Behaviour and Attendance.

Deputy head, with responsibility for data.

At school level, usually an assistant head with responsibility for data in some way e.g. "Achievement" or "Standards" or whatever. At Trust level, it seems to be a bit random still.

I'm interested knowing which role you report in to?

We're looking at moving away from SIMS next year. Leading contenders are the usual suspects. SISRA contract is up for renewal - 3 year renewal. Anyone here experienced enough with the newer MIS providers to give advice on whether SISRA is needed for KS4 performance analysis? SISRA is a great tool, but could become an unnecessary expense if we have the same functionality out of the box with a SIMS alternative.

We also have plans to move to Arbor at some point in the next year, but I don't know when yet. My previous school went from SIMS to Progresso ( which was terrible at first but I didn't hate after 2 years) then back to SIMS following a trust change. I have recently heard they are moving to Arbor soon too. Like SpreadsheetJockey I feel it is something I do every couple of years, and in some ways I'd rather get it over with sooner than later. SIMS is ok and it works but it is rather old and clunky. At least all these changes mean we don't get bored

We are also imminently to move to Arbor, from Bromcom, although I have used it sparingly for Trust level information already (our other schools are Arbor schools). Arbor will be my fourth school MIS, after Facility, SIMS and Bromcom so at this point switching over is just something I do every few years! I suspect it will be mostly on par with Bromcom, perhaps a little less secondary friendly due to each product's starting point. Both are infinitely superior to SIMS though, from a data management perspective, even if they haven't got everything right yet. Just being cloud based is a huge plus. And SIMS cloud-based MIS seems pretty much vapourware at this point - I think I have genuinely been waiting on that for at least a decade at this point...

I don't use it in my current school - although on Friday we did have our first meeting with them about moving over (so will hopefully do so from next year!) - however I did use it extensively in my last school (2018-2022). So not only was I essentially the only person in the school who really understood how it worked, I also got to see how it changed from when I joined (when it was essentially a primary MIS with secondary 'tacked on') to when I left (a complete rival (if not superior) to SIMS). My view across the 4 years changed - to start with it was horrible, absolutely horrendous due to it's lack of flexibility. I couldn't understand why I couldn't just make or hide columns on marksheets, like SIMS. Everything just seemed to be designed around KS2/Primary users, as we were one of very few secondary schools using the product at the time (approx. 30 or so if I remember right back in 2018). However as the years progressed they updated and refined Arbor more and more, and also came out and did some on-site training with me one summer when everyone else was off, so that I could get the assessments built for the following year exactly how SLT wanted them (I pretty much knew most of it, but she did show me a few improvements/alternatives). By the time I left in 2022 to join my current school, I was genuinely impressed with Arbor day-to-day. It did virtually everything I needed it to, and usually in a format quicker/more obvious than with SIMS. Having now returned to a school using SIMS (for now!) I hate the fact that some things require going into about 4 different menus to fix. Census, for example, in Arbor you run the census and in the 'report' page where it lists the errors and queries, you can click on and fix most of them from within that page. In SIMS you have to load one page with the list of errors/queries, then go somewhere else to input the data, then go back to the census page and re-run it etc. Arbor it's all on the one page (assuming you have the missing info), and you can do it with a couple of clicks and then *poof*, goodbye error. Not only that, but they do all the importing of patches/updates/basedata (for exams) automatically, so you don't have to do anything! Which as a DM/EO in my last role was an absolute blessing. So personally, I absolutely love it. So much so that I've convinced my current school to move over to it.

Simply, are there any of you out there? I would like a DM view on the product and what it's like to work with day-to-day.

There's almost too much free training out there! There a a good number of online platforms, but start with https://www.coursera.org/search?query=excel&. I'd suggest getting your head around building pivot tables as soon as possible and get to grips with filters in depth. Build your knowledge on formulas. If you find you are doing the same task repeatedly, look at recording and fine-tuning macros - but that is more advanced. Ultimately, it's real world challenges that it is best to learn with. And of course, post when you need advice on Edugeek - there are a few Excel experts here!

Hi All, I've been put forward and asked to take up the Data manager role at my school. I have no previous experience but have been told any and all training will be provided however i have a feeling this will focus on BromCom and my main worry being that my knowledge on excel is basic. I was hoping to get ahead of the game and look some courses and do some reading before the new year starts but I'm unsure where to look any recommendations would be great as i am a little nervous. Thanks

Hi, Yes indeed. It's all up the creak at the moment. https://customer.support-ess.com/csm?id=community_question&sys_id=744962341b649154551b8557d34bcb58&anchor=answer_cd29bef81b24d154551b8557d34bcbcb&view_source=searchResult&fbclid=IwAR05fgiCMteEaLDeMvXm0OvdisSyfyD6-muJ0NIkGbk2mjSxNi5cU5Nf9zc

I am unable to import the results, when I search for the CTF file it either cannot be found, or it shows it as being in an invalid format. Is anyone else also experiecing this>

Hi there, The link below is to the job description. Please have a look and give me your views. https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ovfsoduikg094q/JD%20%26%20PS-U.pdf?dl=0 Many thanks

I see. My work does involve a tiny bit of NHS interaction, but it's basically a data submission. Without knowing more about the role it's hard to advise in detail. Given your Master's, I suspect you will be well qualified, but do you have practical experience as well as both together is often the best, but we all start with no real world experience. From what I've seen, Excel is used a lot! So, be up to date on that and data validation techniques. I've also seen Power BI used widely, so having knowledge on that would help. I would suggest being prepared on DPA and GDPR - know that NHS is going to have a lot of sensitive data so prepare for questions about confidentiality. Beyond that, without a nit more info on the role it's not easy to say. But good luck, be confident and let us know how it goes.

The role is at an NHS trust in the UK.