EdTech-Tom

This is an important point, the grant doesn't cover comprehensive training, in my experience with our DfE schools, there's more than enough to get started, but given schools have (how should I say this nicely) Varying levels of IT proficiency, additional training can always be purchased. BUT with the amount of resources available online you can find some excellent training resources for the staff that need it, which can save you money if you don't NEED it. Of course, if you need it you need it and the training will pay for itself in usability and uptake.

Whilst this is true, we (RM, I can't talk for the others) usually charge for the audits/workshops/S&V so it's not necessarily a case of needing to have a project after the fact. Also, great point with what you want to get out of it, as if you want to audit as a basis of building your strategy around you may want to consider a workshop session as well, whereas as Zammo mentions, if you want to get a comprehensive handover an audit will be more than enough and there'll be no need for any of the extra stuff.

Can confirm the A3 is needed. Whenever we discuss/provide a serverless solution we utilise the A3.

I think you're bang on the money here. Before Covid a lot of the wider education sector were quite cloud-hesitant (Not likely the people here, but the wider school staff). I've spoken to a lot of trusts and I've seen a massive change of attitude, people who wouldn't consider it before and were pushed are now seeing the benefits of remote learning, and are now asking me what the next step can be.

Correct! I didn't want to mention it in my post because I'd appear too salesy...

Haha, it's not the most publicised list unfortunately. I made that picture but found the providers via the form and collated them together. It needed to be together, this process is already new and confusing so I figured I'd make it as easy as possible. I'm a bit biased so I can't really give a recommendation, but can say we at RM are handling it well and provide the set up & a product every school in Scotland uses to make cloud O365/GfE easier.

You have a full list of providers to choose from (See pic below) , but if you don't have a preference then one gets selected for you.

Since you've not used either with the pupils you'll be eligible (Link here). This honestly seems like a great time to get GfE up and running for use with the pupils with no impact on the school budgets themselves. RM is a certified partner (Full disclosure I work for them) but I'm not privy to the other partners I'm afraid... We've had a couple of applications similar to yours ( eg, Have a O365 tenancy but not used with pupils) that've been processed fine. I think this is the ideal opportunity for schools to move towards more cloud based technologies and the perfect storm of events that could lead to long lasting change in the way learning happens in schools.

Oh wow, that's quite a bombshell to be dropped with not a lot of time to work with...

Echoing what FishCustard said, It's unlikely your Broadband is tied to your SIMS license, unless you're in a convoluted multi-product SLA. If you do have to get a new Capita license I believe the pricing via the LA and the pricing from Capita may be different.

@Gongalong Definitely try to come to BETT! I'll be there to answer any Integris queries (As it's primarily what I work with) and general Ed-Tech/Cloud queries. Also, Gongalong I would also say it may be a bit late in the year for this decision to be made as Capita SIMS require 3 months notice period from end of contract (Which generally ends on the 31st of March) So December 31st is the time you'd have to hand in your notice of looking elsewhere. I'd follow Ditto's recommendation and attend BETT if possible and spend the next year researching, it's not an easy decision to make as it will impact most staff within the school in some way and so they'll all want input (Changing MIS usually means looking at changing finance package as well, so will affect Finance team, SBM, Head/assistant heads, HR, Exams...) A lot of moving parts.

I wish I could give you a straight up, easy answer but it genuinely depends on a variety of factors, such as Primary/Secondary/All-thru/Independent, size, what parts of SIMS you use (Most schools I speak to don't use the entire functionality of SIMS, it's a very deep product), what modules you pay for vs what's included in other products, Is the cost saving of a cloud based vs server based product+support contract worth doing things in a different way (Change management is quite important re:MIS') as well as what aspects of Edulink One you want, for instance do you need to be able to mark how many minutes late a student is?. I know Bromcom do have a good "complete" offering but I believe it to be relatively pricey, the product I work with (RM Integris) can offer most of the functionality but not all of it (but if it's aspects that your school don't actually use but still pay for it's fine) and we price ourselves to give schools a considerable cost saving. It isn't necessarily an easy answer unfortunately, I'm happy to discuss more and answer any Q's you have if you want to shoot me a PM.

The feedback I hear from the school staff I talk to is that it's a good bit of kit, easy usability and has helped consolidate multiple third party products and SIMS functionality. I would (admitting my obvious bias) of course always advise that if you're looking at a third party product to fill the gaps in functionality of an MIS you could always look at another MIS that may be a more complete solution and would also likely have an associated cost saving. It's sort of like treating the symptoms in stead of the cause y'know?

Why hello there, now you're speaking my language Haha

I don't want to think how many IT calls will be logged across the country due to a different icon

So, this is a pretty grey area unfortunately. In 2018 the government released Keeping Children Safe in Education. The statutory guidance, whilst long wasn't necessarily the most helpful... it says you need "appropriate" filtering and monitoring. Wonderfully vague! On page 97 KCSIE does point to the UKSIC as a reference to what "appropriate" monitoring and filtering looks like Link here. In my eyes, if a school can't identify what sites a student tries to access or searches a student performs and when then they may not be meeting the statutory guidance. A way to reduce the workload of monitoring (and trust me I get it, IT staff are expected to magic IT out of thin air, not realising this stuff takes time, effort and money) is to set up alerts for relevant people when a student searches for something such as "ISIS" or "How do I hide self harm". You probably should be monitoring students, especially in a secondary school. Whether you choose to is up to you, but the government does call for it.

Haha I've spent my fair share of time on forums "You can never leave" is about right

It's a comfort thing unfortunately, I feel that a lot of teachers have had SIMS for a large part of their careers (20 years!!!!) and so the processes they're used to going through (Even though it's likely more convoluted) become the gold standard. And even if you can save them so much time and headache the user experience essentially boils down to "It's not how it's done in SIMS". Frustrating right?

Absolutely agree, especially with staff (unfortunately) needing to work off-site more and more. Cloud systems can address that nicely, but the risk of compromising security increases alongside it unless proper data protection precautions are taken. At that point, MFA with SSO becomes more and more essential.

Hi there, I'm EdTech-Tom, I've been lurking for a fair while now but refraining from posting as I work at RM (Primarily in the software department) , but I figure now is as good a time as ever and I'd like to share my experience from the other side of the sector. So hello all! I'm thrilled to be interacting with the wonderful community. I'll try be as helpful as I can be. -Tom