bigdannyb79

I think the key point for me here is, no disrespect, but if you're asking why you should be using it you aint the right person to be looking at it ! I'd say most data leads in a school could see the value in real time info. The battle with all data systems is ensuring you get value from the data you collect and that normally requires an analysis to be produced to then inform future actions. This takes time so where you can have dash boards showing for example attendance hotspots or behavior being able to view them in real time allows that intervention to be more immediate and potentially effective. And with power BI and similar you can present it in a pretty visual format that can be processed and understood by the masses and then also sliced and diced when needed. It allows the analysis piece to become a interactive beast that can support multiple audiences with very little maintenance to update the data. Its by no means a quick pass to success but if you have the people, with the right skills, and the understanding to recognise where it can be applied to enhance your context then it is a big step forward to those of us working with data etc. From struggling with Progresso in its infancy to now working with SIMS I'd take the former any day of the week as it gave you the power to use your data as you saw fit. So its great to see Bromcom and others recognising the power of your MIS is primarily what you can get out of the system not with how familiar your workforce is with putting information in . . . Its definitively the way we need to go but in these relatively early stages in schools the issue is having the staff with the expertise to produce the outputs that don't necessarily already exist as you might require them. I dont like to see NM's dipping into writing reports as its 'complex' - you have an important job to do and I think leading the data systems and functions in a school is another one entirely. But glad 'most' of the MIS market is recognising fully featured access to your data is fundamental to what an MIS should provide.

I find it amazing a single school has a data breach and it makes BBC news and yet a large company introduce an error potentially causing 80% of schools in England to violate their data protection obligations and do little in the way of communicating the severity of the issue and yet they plod on seemingly unaffected and unchallenged. It was introduced in Dec, known about weeks ago, and yet the comms from Capita has amounted to a side note on a sales pitch for Options ? This should have been a phone call to every school to verify they understood the issue and pointed to a fix and steps to remedy issues explained. One of my schools had this issue and the patch was applied to stop it reoccurring but nothing was said about remedying the corruption, we were simply told to reenter the missing addresses. To knowingly leave customers in this situation is absolutely shocking. I wont be waiting to see the 'new' SIMS - I've seen enough of Capita for a lifetime.

Don't know why people are getting all hot and bothered about this. Its capita SIMS - please apply the patch and forget about the problems its caused, all is well, please continue to use your market leading product. And remember to renew indefinitely because this is the only option for you as a school. . . The error and timescales for communication and resolution are laughable but the general attitude to the severity and scale of the issue sums what they think of their customers for me. We've spoken to support about this and was discussed as if its a local issue and patch was applied but no correction has taken place so we have a live and current data protection issue and 'enhanced' capita support told us the patch fixed it. poor just doesn't cover it.

I know progresso is bad but if your using it well you'll feel a crushing bump going back to SIMS. And thats a bump in your wallet and in your ability to gain insight from data you collect in your MIS.

as I said speak to smart - I have unlimited licenses across a 5 site MAT for way less than that . . . SLS is constantly developing along with an new online platform so to continue to get the latest and greatest its reasonable to pay for it. So many schools are not budging off 11.4 or whatever the last perpetual version was and its false economy as your not getting any of the benefit from the development over the last 5+ years.

I'd speak to SMART - it wont cost you that much and they recognize the previous licensing model was counter intuitive so I'd have a word.

Systems can be developed though ?! Albeit in this case your correct its been very limited but not to worry its not like they charge a premium for a stagnant product . . .

wow the argument for charging for useful functionality is healthy competition ?!. Were talking about a simple csv import of student data and at least 3 other MIS systems I've used have this built in without worrying about anti competition. Poor excuse. Its an MIS product - making it easy to get information in from a variety of sources is key to the core functionality.

Though shalt not get your data our of your MIS . . .

Of course mats are accountable that’s kind of a given as they run the schools. My point was more when looking at MIS choice think children and young people not ofsted and accountability. Look at how information can support school improvement and aid student progress and then look at a product that facilitates doing that accross multiple establishments.

Yeah MATs are there here to put policies in place to answer ofsted's questions ?! Errr no. Accountability isnt the real issue at all. Its about young peoples life chances and as a group realising benefits from collaboration and economies of scale. We don't necessarily need to compare schools we just need to identify needs and priorities quickly and easy in each and every school. Commonality is not a requirement but crucial in my eyes but as it aids efficiency and visibility at many levels - its been shown on many occasions OFSTED dont care about consistent systems if the progress and outcomes are strong across the MAT. And back to my first point we care about kids not OFSTED anyway. The biggest thing for MATs from my experience with an MIS is flexibility and scaleability of reporting and Bromcom, ISAMS, Progresso are getting that where as SIMS attempt with school view is frankly laughable. flexibility is key for MATs as they are all different so you need a reporting engine powerful enough to give you whatever you want and quickly apply that accross many sites. The ideal is a reporting tool that can access data across schools so once the data is in its immediately available for aggregation and again certain providers are leading the way in that. There's often worry about familiarity of staff etc but the reason why many MATs are changing to certain suppliers is that is easily remedied with training and support where as struggling to access data across your schools is not so easily remedied . . .

Good to hear ! Too many NM's in schools spend far too much time supporting one single application and I find it frustrating when resilience then becomes the primary discussion point when people talk of MIS choice. If I added the hours NM's spend in large schools trying to get updates out and troublehooting some legacy MIS systems it would be much more of a worry to me than the resilience of my internet feed. The market has stagnated for too long due to a monopoly - lets move on and see how much more effective NM's can be when the extent of supporting an MIS is adding a URL for users to access ! Everyone's a winner.

Agree with MAtt40k. the world relies on the internet now and so not a blocker in any way to a cloud MIS, its just something that needs to be taken care of. Without wanting to offend anyone on here when considering MIS choice an ICT Manager's voice shouldn't be one of the key ones in this discussion unless they play a role in the use of the MIS. They have a valuable contribution in ensuring any technical considerations but the function and impact of the MIS should be considered first then consider its possible implementation and support. You're MIS ultimately provides intelligence to support decision making in your schools and so you need to be considering those decisions and working out how and where the info you can capture in an MIS can support making timely, better informed decisions. With a MAT the key benefits are collaboration and economies of scale. You want your MIS to support those benefits and help you work quickly and effectively across schools and be clear on strengths and weaknesses at school level and collate those to give a consolidated picture. So if you look at what you do now and how that may evolve as a MAT and then look at how the various providers can support those initiatives and systems in a multi school environment. I'd suggest when you start considering it from a MAT perspective and beyond a single school view cloud becomes favorable, not just due to cloud but also how the providers in that space have developed their products. ISAMS and Bromcom have impressed me previously and my only worry with ISAMS, when I last looked in detail, was its relatively new presence in state schools but their development team seem responsive and proficient so I would have expected them to have smoothed off any bumps in transitioning from a primarily independent school base by now. So again sorry if I offended anyone but I wouldn't be considering your fire proofing or internet redundancy in your initial shortlisting but focus on the systems, staffing and initiatives you see running across the MAT and ask how they could be supported by an MIS and ensure you have something that is effective, value for money, sustainable and scaleable. So to simply answer the original question no there is no technical reasons to think this is a bad choice. Get the right product and then explore how it needs to be implemented to ensure its resilient and reliable.

Good old CMIS - all else fails a bit of 'Execute SQL' could get me anything I ever needed ! How progresso got so many things wrong when they had the basis of many good things in CMIS is beyond me. I know they were shafted by the agreement they had with Patni for a while but I concur with above that their 'we know better than you' attitude is the reason why their product still falls so woefully short in some areas years later. Frustrating thing is the influx of customers form AET then got them a hot line to development and ridiculous things like the 'Big Bell' got thrown in overnight when long standing issues sighted by the majority of customers sat on the roadmap for eternity. Rarely heard anything from AET schools - ominous ?

@Davida1992 did you get anywhere with this. Having a look at android devices and durability in a school environment is something not often covered in online reviews !

Sophos looks like it should be ok - from sophos In reference to the news that ICT4Collaboration have ceased to trade with immediate effect, Sophos would like to reassure you that your Sophos products purchased via ICT4Collaboration will continue to be supported and the warranties for software and hardware honored as long as you are compliant with the terms and conditions of our end user license agreement at https://www.sophos.com/en-us/legal/sophos-end-user-license-agreement.aspx. Sophos is continuing to work with BDO, the administers to ICt4Collaboration, and the local authorities so that there will not be any disruption to your service with Sophos. We will update you shortly if any changes to your console will need to be made. Please feel free to contact us directly at [email protected] in case you have any questions or concerns. I hope this reassures you that the service will continue.

I still think if your planning any change at all, and any MIS change is a significant one, you need to ensure its best choice for all and for the group moving forward not just the best of what is currently in use. Whats your roll in relation to the schools and whats the link between the schools ? It might be slightly more difficult if the schools are in no way linked but still in that case I'm not clear on what the business case would be for changing - if its just ease of supporting the MIS for you as an external party then I believe that would be a crazy justification for specifying the MIS choice for these schools.

why are you just considering just those two ? I dont think I've heard anyone ask this specific question since about 2005 !! And whats your role with the schools as I would also consider, if appropriate, how well the MIS supports visibility across the group etc. If your doing a tender surely you want to look across the market for the most appropriate product not just limit choice to ones currently in use ? And if you want a personal opinion if I was procuring a new MIS to a secondary school I would definitely be looking to review other solutions than the two you have mentioned !

Yeah I was just reacting to the blanket 'this is bad, think of GDPR' - when as you say GDPR doesn't really change any of the considerations here over and above what you should be thinking about under current DP law. And appropriate use of a reporting solution would be no less contentious than appropriate use of the MIS product itself. When your customers are talking about how they are trying to plug gaps in the reporting output of your product I'd be taking a different approach. Progresso does, in theory, handle this aspect well and the reporting model inherits the permissions of the account used to log into the MIS - there's the occasional blip and some glaring holes popped up from time to time but the principles are there in that the access given to roles in the MIS are mirrored in the reporting side. They also dabbled with proving a direct plug into pyramid analytics - however as with Progresso generally the idea was right but the implementation was way off. It had limited datasets available to it and ended up being close to useless as you always ended up needing something you could find. Prob could have been made to work if feedback was taken on. I see arbor were one of the companies selected to be able to provide national analysis alongside ASP so they are definitely still interested in the market just don't seem to be getting growth.

No different to the MIS lead in the school having an admin account to the MIS then - in a school the person analyzing the data is likely to be one and same so there isnt any increase in risk ? I think they should be exploring how they could interface with a leading BI product like tableau rather than scaremongering its use on the basis of GDPR . . .

Disagree with your generalisation - a lot of what people would be presenting wouldn't be sensitive and you wouldnt be giving complete access. Many of what would be wanted would be summative analysis of numbers so not personal - much in the same way schools say they have a basics measure of 56% isnt a violation of GDPR. its quite easy to know if your exposing personal info - its not like you would publish some assessment analysis and people drill to the students behind it unless you specifically configured it. Its just a reporting tool - you wouldnt stick names and addresses on your website so you wouldnt publish then in your reporting tool either ?

When I talk about value its quite simple - the benefit schools get from the money spent. I don't even know what point your trying to make pcstru, if one at all rather just argue a point or indeed any point. Schools need to be more aware of market choice as many aren't getting value for money but don't even know of all the alternatives and LA's touting traded services help support the monopoly they created. SIMS is a limited aged product that hasn't been invested in and developed despite the significant income generated from their customer base - other companies have brought products to market with a fraction of the customer base and resources available to them. Having a lot of customers is not an excuse for not developing or I'd still be using windows 3.11 that I got on my first computer. I know from schools I work with they will be better off when they change from the legacy MIS they use as the functionality they need they can get cheaper in a more accessible package from alternative suppliers. The reason for my original contribution was to prompt that thought process of 'Is my MIS best fit and best value for my organisation'. I'll leave it at that but will continue to ask that question when people come on here looking to get simple outputs from their MIS and having to look at other products and solutions to achieve the desired result.

Maybe a bit but once you have market share of 80% plus that takes time to break apart so in reality, for the customer, the scenario in terms of competition in the market place hasn't really changed at all. And if you see the marketing coming out of some LA's for their MIS (by that they mean SIMS only) & ICT support (often with little separation) you would still think SIMS is the only MIS - and makes me laugh when the LA data teams have to deal will a different MIS its almost like you have offended them. I had a LA SEN team almost cease funding at one point as their data extraction tool wasn't working with Progresso and they were firmly putting the blame at the school despite it being their solution and reported "it works with other schools" - by this they meant it worked with SIMS schools. So the world has moved on but I dont think it is where it should be. I'll add I used to work directly within an LA so have some insight . . .

That wasn't my original point. My later point on value comes from simple price/feature comparison of current market including associated costs.

Tbf if you read the doc it pretty clearly implied that too - I was picking up on the point on what contributed to the market position, which in my opinion has resulted in poor value for schools.