PhilNeal

Please PM me with the details of the discussion you had with us that said that VM isn't supported by us. I will check it out and post a reply. We use VM all the time so I don't understand why this message is being given.

I'm sitting in an ASCL meeting and this very topic came up. Your fire officers will not look at anything you provide for them because they will check the building what ever your records say - paper or electronic. Just clear the building as quickly as possible - leave everything behind. Checking for children that have bunked off (the true purpose of a fire drill) is another matter.

ON class marksheets you can add cols such as this by right clicking.

Depending on your VLE choice a number have used the IMS link from SIMS. There's no additional charge and it takes minutes to set up. I know that Fronter have used it and pretty sure that there's a Moodle link too.

It will be interesting to see which of our partners select SIF for real-time access to SIMS; browser access to SIMS via SIF agents wouldn't exactly be responsive! I'm not hopeful that in the current climate DCSF will be able to fund SIF - take a look at the estimated costs at: https://www.sifassociation.org/uk/upload/news/86EFD8_SIF%20Cost%20Benefits%20Analysis%20Summary.pdf Just for the record Capita has served on the SIFA Board since it started; played a very significant role in devising the UK data model and has encouraged SIFA to address the security issues that would have been problematical in the UK. I'm pleased to say that most of our issues other than cost have been addressed.

The issue of fire procedures comes up every so often. This is a tricky area as electronic devices can't be used in the rain and can't be seen in the sun. Paper lists are out of date before the ink is dry. The fire service will tell you that lists are not relevant as they will search the buildings what ever the list says. Children also disappear from school and just because a child was registered last lesson doesn't mean that they are there now. I don't think there is a good answer.

Sorry that your question wasn't answered - we had 180 people linked in.

I go into lots of schools and ask how often the distribution of SIMS to workstations goes wrong. I was in a huge Norwich school yesterday and asked. The answer I normally get back is "we don't have any problems and if we do its because we forgot to prep the new machine". The disribution system we supply is used by 1000s of schools; if something is going wrong in your school please log a call because it shouldn't be going wrong.

Capita hasn’t complained that it can’t do anything other than government returns but we are in a very fortunate position with regards to investment. The amount of work that is required to produce returns is not trivial however and in my opinion it is the biggest barrier to entry of the schools MIS market. Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland we support around 30 returns excluding the exam system etc. Many of the returns have variants for secondary, middle, primary, special and PRUs. The 2005 Becta review recognised this issue and the plan was that suppliers would be paid by government to write the returns but this didn't happen. The data for the returns is not maintained in one place as this would cause the MIS to be ruled by the returns rather than the needs of schools so whilst it may not be difficult work, retests are required across the whole suite when returns change. Recently a new return for the work force was introduced which required all manner of changes throughout the personnel system; it was a large piece of work. It is not uncommon to have changed codes from a certain date which means that systems have to be able to cope with validation according to the date – again minor perhaps but yet another variant to test.

I hate to keep this thread running (really) but Toby is quoting directly from the letter (document 2) from the OFT to Bromcom that has been helpfully posted by Simay. Toby’s punctuation could be better (sorry Toby) but the “you” is Bromcom and the “we” is the OFT. It is worth reading the letter in full but the key paragraph states “The Office is NOT, therefore, persuaded on the information currently before it that this is a matter in which it would be appropriate for the Director General to intervene.” (The NOT is my emphasis) I am not of course presuming that the current referral will be dismissed in this way simply pointing out that a referral to the OFT is not the same as being found to be anti-competitive. BTW a “member’s interests” search on the recipient of document 1 is also of interest.

This could be the feature referred to previously which is that the "send to all teachers" is in fact sending to all the teachers that are taking the child today.

I can assure you that Capita is not in the habbit of letting our competitors have the email addresses of our customers! Not legal yet alone sensible!!

Whatever system you have the use of the MIS must be backed by the senior leadership team; if it isn't the result will be a piecemeal implementation that does not provide the added value that an MIS can bring to a school. Even with the best technical support possible a system will fail if the SLT doesn't know what can be achieved. Work on the MIS has to be shared across the admin and teaching staff the days of having just one person that knows it all have well and truly gone - the systems are just too big. On the assessment side a curriculum leader has to create a structure that supports the objectives of the school. Teachers will benefit from that central approach, particularly at reporting times. If you are using the system to record achievement work needs to be done to ensure that there is a consistent approach in all sections of the school. There are some very specialised jobs such as timetabling, fees, exam entries etc you should ensure that these roles are not handled by one person or you will face a crisis when that person leaves. Basically the more people that use the system the more the pay back and the lower the risks are when people move on.

Absolutely not! RepGenLite is looking at DBFs which haven't been updated by the current software for many years.

We have around 50 unpaid partner schools that use our software well for this very purpose.

I have no idea how Becta arrived at such a huge number - it is way way way over over our 2009 turnover. I'd be surprised if Nikon at £800/person didn't have this turnover.

If you are governed by LSC the returns are not the same as for schools and some of the other requirements are very different. There are specific suppliers in this space - Capita has "Unite" but I'm out of touch with who the other players are these days as haven't run our FHE business for years.

Noosh are you related to ITGirl and who was the other first poster that used the same style? I wonder where you might work?

I think its available. See what Fronter say.

I know - I should have resisted. Sometimes it is very hard to stay silient!

---- Removed by Phil Neal on wise counsel from Greed.

We’re still working on this issue, all attempts so far at re-producing the problem have failed. (the 200+ windows updates required to get a ‘clean’ XP sp2 image up to scratch to mirror the schools setup took forever to apply, and then still worked fine...)

You can decide not to publish the details of an incident to avoid the naming problem.

This could be related to another issue that has been reported - after running the latest MS security updates some people are reporting that Word printing is failing. MS have put up a known issue but the workround isn't great.

I don't think the printing changes that are coming will address the issue being raised here. If I recall the changes are to ensure that rather than each cheque being a separate task, the cheque run will be a single task. I'm sure that you will have been through our desk to report the issue - if not then please do.