AlistairB1983

Handling the data outside the UK won't, in and of itself, be a breach of GDPR, even if it might make us feel uneasy about it.

A lot of the companies seem to be putting their money/priorities with the wrong departments, and it's making them look like the old mobile phone providers of the early 00s - it's only at the point you threaten to (or increasingly, actually do) leave that they bother to make a serious offer. We left Virgin over the summer after our deal ran out and they wanted to increase our TV/Broadband from £35/month to £90/month. Called up and asked what they could offer - their "best offer" (which we asked for, and received, in writing) was £85/month. Just about managed to not laugh directly at them down the phone whilst politely saying we'll be taking our business elsewhere. Signed up to UW (also moved gas/electric at the same time, so win/win - only lost TV which, it turns out, we didn't really need anyway) and got the new broadband installed. Phoned up Virgin to ask to cancel and suddenly we're put through to the retentions department who could offer us £40/month. Pointed out they were about 2 weeks too late, but still insisted on telling us how much faster our virgin broadband would be (turns out, it isn't) etc. doing everything to try and get us to sign up again. Eventually got through to someone who could actually process the cancellation (after speaking to another 2/3 individuals who all tried to convince us to stay) who did all that, only to get about another half a dozen or so calls in the following weeks asking us to change our mind and stay.

Well, judging by the 2024 Summer Census data - listed here https://mis-trends.info/mis-comparisons/ - they only have 14 schools in the UK, as compared with 10K still (sadly) on SIMS, almost 6k using Arbor and over 2k using Bromcom. So quite some way to go to be a contender - currently not even cracking into the top 10 of MIS providers (by numbers). But this is no judgement for or against their product (I've never used it so can't comment) - just pure numerical data in terms of users.

Because, and I never thought I'd play devil's advocate for ESS, they technically aren't stopping people from changing to another product - they're just restricting the ways in which it can be done to make it very, very difficult for people to switch which, in my view, is an attempt to try and deter them from doing so.

It was perhaps a little unfair. After all, the Captain of the Titanic knew where he was headed and most of the passengers actually wanted to be there.

Part of the SIMSRearrangeTheDeckchairs family of products.

And yet, from the original article this thread was started about: Nottingham received just over £20,000 for what it said was “a rebate on additional products purchased by schools using SIMS” So turns out, yes, ESS DO do that. They might dress it up slightly differently, but the fundamental point is exactly the same - money being given from an MIS provider to a Local Authority. Please don't mistake the general negative feelings towards Bromcom's PR department as a condoning what Arbor are (alleged?) to be doing - it's perfectly possible to find the notion of an MIS giving cash to a Local Authority (or other public body) distasteful whilst simultaneously finding the corporate mud-slinging of another MIS (who already has a pretty bad reputation PR wise, given their history) also distasteful. This is not an 'either/or' situation.

They each have their own positive and negative aspects, so it's up to you as an individual/school as to how important each of those positives/negatives are. So you're not going to be able to get a single objective judgement as to which is better, as it's an entirely subjective decision.

This. As a Data Manager, I've encountered too many other staff (both Data Managers and SLT) who are clinging on for dear life to 'how things have always been done', without stopping to ask whether they could be done differently/better. Every other MIS makes processes quicker and simpler than SIMS. However the processes are often not exactly the same and people get hung up on needing EXACTLY this or that, rather than examining what the purposes of having this or that is, and whether the same result can be achieved by getting something similar, but not exactly the same.

Took me way longer than it should have to realise that what you had redacted wasn't something exceedingly rude/vulgar! Must have been too busy wiping the drool off my desk after looking at the picture ...

Unfortunately I can't think of a way to do it by bulk - you would need to go into each one and make them read-only on every marksheet. Yay SIMS!

As a couple of others have mentioned, the 'Core' costs for SIMS are either similar/slightly lower than some of the others (Arbor in our case). However what sold it (pardon the pun) was that by going with Arbor we could terminate the contracts we had with about 3 or 4 other apps/websites that were linked to SIMS, because Arbor did all of that within the same programme. So as a direct 1:1 comparison between the two MIS, yes we pay more per pupil for Arbor than we did SIMS. However in terms of overall budget, we now spend less. Considerably less.

Having moved from SIMS to Arbor, twice, it really isn't that time consuming to replicate everything SIMS used to do, and then some. And I expect the same will be true of virtually any other MIS on the market. It's only SIMS that continues to insist on making every job twenty times harder than it needs to be - I suspect to instil this very fear of change to try and Stockholm Syndrome people into sticking with such an awful, failing product.

I just logged in to check, ours are all working okay (including FSM report): Sorry

Can't speak to Bromcom, but as far as Arbor is concerned it has no knock-on effect to other users. Occasionally, during particularly busy periods or if you have made a large number of requests, it may process them in the background - meaning you can't instantly see the changes you've made. But they do always appear, and it has no impact on other users whilst it's running in the background. We've been running the census the past week or so, and no one has complained once that the system had slowed down for them.

Highway Code Rule 64 - You MUST NOT ride on a pavement. Highway Code Rule 68 - You MUST obey all traffic signs and traffic light signals. Can't use the Highway Code as a defence when ignoring it themselves.

Dobbies Garden Centre are closing 17 stores. Dobbies: Full list of 17 stores earmarked for closure | The Independent

Interesting that you chose to quote that part of the article instead of this part: "Nottingham received just over £20,000 for what it said was "a rebate on additional products purchased by schools using SIMS." So it's "inappropriate" when Arbor do it, but when SIMS does it that's just fine is it? Nothing like a nice bit of selective reporting to try and boost your own PR ... for all the good it's done you!

School leaving age - GOV.UK (http://www.gov.uk) School leaving age for Year 11 is the last Friday in June (not the 30th!).

Those about to die on Prime (even managed to sit through the stupid adverts - at least half of which were for other Prime shows!). A decent series - attempting to be GoT in Ancient Rome (including randomly killing off characters for little apparent reason) - but just lacking the polish that GoT had/started with. Characters are ... okay, but don't really show much development, other than a couple of them going in the really obvious direction they telegraph for a good few episodes. But even then, they're acted well - especially the main character (Tenax) played by Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton from GoT), although there are times when the two characters appear very similar. Some of the leading Roman characters differ significantly from modern interpretations of them, but are somewhat necessary for the storyline. The action sequences, particularly in the Circus and Colosseum, are very well done, although one in sequence is a bit OTT in terms of the CGI. Hopefully they'll make a second season, as it left the story with significant room for growth both from a historical/accuracy point of view and also from the fictional side of things as well. Worth a look, if you can stand the adverts.

Ah, I remember getting Imrik for Christmas when I was about 13 or so. I'm sure he ended up being built with more gaps than the London Underground! Having played about a dozen games or so before the little man turned up, I would agree with this assessment. It's a lot 'grittier' than previous editions, and is much more of a grind in most circumstances. From shooting, to magic, to combat, most times less models die than have done in previous editions, so the game generally takes longer to complete - especially compared with some of the over the top stuff from 8th (which I still love, but is a completely different animal). There are one or two minor quibles/silly rule interactions, but really nothing too big to hamper the overall feel of the rules which feels much more like an actual battle than a fast dice rolling exercise.

Was convinced you'd started Dark Elves when I initially saw all that purple! Nicely painted. Are you getting any Pegasus Knights? Those things are properly annoying!

As a school that uses Arbor (and previously SIMS), I'm not aware of any software that will replicate what you're looking for.

In reality, a lot of suggestions as to what to do will be very dependent on your individual circumstances. If the trade value is more than the balloon payment, should you buy it and sell it? Potentially, yes. But do you then need to buy another car? In which case, is the trade value sufficient to buy what you want? No use selling a £10k car that you 'paid' £6k for, if the car you actually want to drive is £20k. Unless, that is, you plan on using it as a deposit on another PCP to bring down the monthly repayments (or similar). Is it worth taking out a loan to pay off the balance? Potentially, yes. Again, it depends on the affordability of the loan repayments compared to PCP monthly cost and also whether you want to continue to have this monthly expenditure. What about paying it off with savings? Again, potentially sure. But do you prefer to have some cash available 'just in case'? In which case spending it all on paying off the car will deprive you of this, but it would mean your monthly costs go down signficantly.