AlistairB1983

On a similar point (and something with which I've now had about 12 weeks of experience!), for baby formula Cow & Gate and Aptamil are made in the same factory, with pretty much the same recipe - just the latter is marketed as the 'luxury' brand of the two.

The title of the movie conjured up images of a very disappointed travelling salesmen in his hotel room watching a very different movie to the one he had envisaged

One of the pages in their Help section details importing a second (or more) timetable and what steps to take to ensure there's no duplication: Importing a timetable from TimeTabler – Arbor Help Centre (arbor-education.com) (about half-way down, 'Tips to prevent duplicates'). This would suggest that, in and of itself, importing a second timetable doesn't cause duplicates - just it can do if things are inconsistent.

Agreed, this appears to be another piece of 'SIMS replacement' software - i.e. software which does the jobs SIMS should do but doesn't (but other MIS' do quite happily).

Maybe we should drink our milk from bags like in Canada? Although said bags are plastic ...

I've been at both an early secondary adopter for Arbor (there were literally like 10 of us at the point I joined) and in my current secondary have also just moved to Arbor. Would second the easy onboarding (although I managed to miss the go-live date due to some very fortunately timed paternity leave!) and although I'm still dealing with some enquiries, most of these are because we're in an 'in-between' stage, where with only 1 term left a lot of the stuff imported from SIMS I've left as it is, but all will be 'tidied up' ready for the next academic year in September. With regards to Arbor being 'primary' focussed, I would agree that this was very much the case when I first joined (2018), but over the last 6 years their resources and features for secondary schools has increased year on year. But ultimately I think irrespective of whether it's Bromcom, Arbor or indeed virtually any other MIS - as long as it's not SIMS you've taken an absolutely massive step forwards in terms of improving the quality of life of all your MIS users. SIMS is an archaic piece of software which needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. And luckily, with the way they're currently running it, that shouldn't take that long to happen!

Is this the registrar in question?

We migrated to Arbor over Easter and, despite managing to time my paternity leave particularly well to cover the actual 'go-live' date, I was heavily involved in a lot of the data tidy up/checking prior to and post launch. As suggested above, a check and trim of parent, student & staff data will go a very long way in making your transition smoother. Assuming the Bromcom practice site works similarly to how the one for Arbor did, you can then go through and work out any areas which haven't migrated properly. So for us we had a couple of issues with regards to timetabling that, whilst easy to fix, just needed adding to a 'to-do' list of jobs to complete once the 'proper' site went live. Helpfully Arbor gave us a workbook to go through which helped us keep tabs on which bits of data had been correctly migrated (e.g student numbers, SEN numbers, PP numbers, EAL numbers etc.) and after that it was down to staff to check the practice site and flag any inconsistencies.

I think that reference sadly comes from sources much closer to home - supporters of a group who were keen to put their country First (whatever that means).

I haven't personally read the book (or seen the previous series), but based on conversations with those who have they've said that some of the characters in the Disney version don't come across exactly as they do in the book, although they have all preferred the Disney versions of said characters as they felt they were more 'fitting' with the world around them.

Currently watching Shogun on Disney+ and it's very easy to see why it has a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes! Everything about it is just stunningly well done. The characters are superb, the backgrounds/locations are immense and the acting is simply flawless. The level of detail and intricacy in almost every scene is more than a lot of other shows can manage over an entire episode. My only minor irk is that I wish the series used the actual names of the real historical figures the characters are based off of - although I know this was not necessarily a design choice by the current crew given it's based off a previous series, which itself is based off of a novel.

Had something similar in the previous house - other half wanted to have a 'feature wall' in the second bedroom, and decided she'd like it to be "white with a hint of blue", so that was the paint we purchased. Turns out "white with a hint of blue" is just blue.

Whilst trying very hard to avoid this going into parts unwelcome, this is a very obvious reason for this - funding (or lack thereof). Almost every school is currently amidst an unprecedented funding crisis. Money for IT is just not there, and certainly not to the extent that would be necessary to enable 'fully computerised' learning. (Plus, as others have mentioned, 'fully' computerised will almost never be a thing anyway. Even just considering something like Maths - no one uses a computer for Maths. Those students who have access arrangements to use computers in their exams, don't use it for Maths. Plus Art, Drama, PE etc. etc.)

My inner child (/pedant) can't help but twitch in barely contained indignance at labelling the set Dinosaurs and then immediately including creatures that weren't Dinosaurs!

And this is why hiring good IT guys pays off! Glad you got it sorted and are 1 step closer to being able to consign ESS and their disgusting business practices (and shoddy product) to the dustbin of history.

She looks pretty damn good! Plus, having played against one a couple of times already, can be a right pain in the a...

We're also in the process of moving to Arbor, but haven't experienced this issue as we've always managed system access on site rather than through the LA support team. However I would agree with the post above - cite needing it for emergency disaster recovery/similar to get it that way.

Arbor can - I set it up at my previous school. There were two distinct days set up: one for KS3 and the other for KS4/KS5. KS3 was L1, L2, Break, L3, L4, Lunch, L5 whereas KS4/5 was L1, break, L2, L3, Lunch, L4, L5. They even had slightly staggered finish times to avoid crushes at the exists. The only thing that was the same for all students was registration and L1, after that they were on completely different timings throughout the day.

We sent our data over to them this week, for uploading into the 'test' server to check how our data migrated. Whilst I didn't see the specific email/links regarding the upload, no mention was made of needing to do anything different to what was previously expected.

We are currently in the process of migrating over (due to transition after Easter) and, for this part, their communication has been spot on. We get almost weekly update emails from our Onboarding Manager alongside virtual meetings to discuss how things are going, as well as detailed lists of what data needs to be checked/cleaned prior to the test site going live and, ultimately, the final data move over during Easter. Prior to us starting this process this term we hadn't had loads of communication since placing our order in the summer, but honestly that wasn't something that ever worried us. We only really started to get communication in the run up to Christmas that was confirming time-lines etc. and scheduling our first onboarding meeting. So for you that would probably be around March or so, depending on your exact transition date. Whilst I sympathise with the desire to get ahead of projects, I can understand why Arbor are somewhat inflexible in terms of transition dates and/or lack of communication beforehand. They are (judging by the published numbers) dealing with a large number of school transitions and are obviously keen to try and achieve a level of uniformity and consistency throughout their transitions, and so are reluctant to allow for 'ad-hoc' transition dates or to send out onboarding information prior to the start of that process. Plus they're probably limited in terms of the number of Onboarding/Project managers they have, so until one is allocated to you (presumably once they finish their previous school), it's unlikely your transition process is going to begin. However, I am in total agreement with your frustrations at the lack of communication. Whilst all of the above is, in my view, completely acceptable reasons for a lack of engagement on their part prior to the start of your transition schedule, not communicating it effectively most certainly is not. It's one thing to know you're not able to start until such time due to limitations/staffing/whatever, but to not be told that isn't acceptable - and certainly not when you've already contacted them to ask about it. A reply explaining their reasonings/outlining approximate time frames as far as they're able to (even with a clause explaining these are only estimates so can't be held against them or similar) would, I'd imagine, go a long way in terms of reassuring you that the process was in hand. To that end, if it were me, I would probably try phoning them rather than emailing as it makes you harder to ignore/deal with later, and be quite insistent on speaking with someone who can at least say something similar to the above. But finger's crossed you managed to get the situation resolved, one way or another. Edit: - also, if it's useful, I'm happy to send you over a list of the sorts of data they are asking us to tidy up prior to the migration?

Whilst not one of the previous posters, we are shortly moving to Arbor (go live after Easter), and are planning to drop both EduLink and Class Charts. We currently only use Class Charts for internal use only - e.g. lesson seating plans and SEN provision map integration, whereas EduLink is our method for communicating home to parents, sending out reports etc. But as all of this can be done via Arbor, we're planning to stop using these two 3rd party apps shortly after roll out (although possibly some use might remain until September when our licenses are up for renewal). We are looking into possibly dropping our payment app as well (currently Squid), but that's a decision for later down the line after the Arbor roll out is all confirmed and settled.

We currently use EduLink for registration and behaviour, although we do still have ClassCharts as well for seating plans and also because unlike EduLink (at least when we first signed up) it doesn't link directly to Provision Map.

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.

My Dwarfs will be staying on their 20mm bases as they're all plastic glued down and I'm not in the mood to play around with that. Maybe one day in the future, if our group sticks with TOW, I'll put them on 25mm mdf bases and then just dot some sand/stones around the edge and match the paint scheme. But otherwise I'll be doing the same as you - painted up trays (we've already 3D printed several to test other companies - Mantic bases are slightly larger than GW ones!). The main ones I'm going to move will be my Night Goblins as they're all superglued to their bases as when I made them over a decade ago I used plasticard to make it look like they were on flagstones. So I should be able to do the same thing on the 25mm squares, get them all painted and ready, and then spend a day or so popping them off the 20s and sticking them to the 25s (and other sizes for Giants, Manglers etc.)

I've been diligently working away at my pile of shame over the last 6 months for this very reason Everything is, currently, fully painted and based. It's just the stupid new base sizes for The Old World mean I want need to rebase them.