marshharrier

Dead right Sarconia! Capita have several 'partners' in this space (all of whom have to pay Capita for the privilege) who will now ALL be terribly upset by this. All I can say is why on earth would ANYONE partner with Capita, as all that happens is that they eventually copy the partner's ideas possibly putting several small companies out of business! This isn't the first time they've done this nor will it be the last. The education sector is best served by 'choice' and Capita do their best to make sure that Capita is the only choice! The only way it will stop is if schools 'see' what is going on and don't buy.

Got a letter yesterday from ParentMail. They go live with a parent payment module in September (pluspay). Should be interesting as they already have 90% of our parents registered for communications which should mean a very high take up rate. We're going to use it so I'll let everyone know how it goes.

maniac ... it still might be worth paying the sub for something like ParentMail as you get broadcast SMS capability too (plus full audit trails .. what was sent to whom and when they received/opened it etc). It's targetable so you can pick one student, 10 students or the whole school (you can also filter across groups i.e. 'all boys in year 8' for example. As elsiegee40 says it's perhaps the best out there and you get your money back in paper and telephone savings

T2P have only just bought in email so you'd be a bit of a guinea pig for them. I also understand that you have to use a separate website for email rather than text .... although that info was given me by a third party. ParentMail have been doing email and text for 7 years .... so it's tried and trusted.

Have a word with E4education (e4education.co.uk) - they do some cracking websites and can arrange budget to suit. If you tell them you're a ParentMail customer you'll get 10% discount on their quote (but don't say I told you) :)

Use ParentMail. I checked exhaustively amongst them all and ParentMail were the best combination of value for money, functionality and most important SERVICE! (They aren't the cheapest ... but if you try hard enough you'll always find a man who does it cheaper!) Nothing is too much trouble for them and they bend over backwards to help us on the rare occasions we have a problem. Not often these days you find a company like this. Can't praise them highly enough. HM

The most dominant product in any sector will always receive more attention especially from those who happen to think that such dominance is of unhealthy proportions. Fundamentally 'choice' in the market keeps suppliers 'honest' and when choice is very limited and difficult, then suppliers tend to become arrogant and customer service levels decline rapidly. After all "there's no need to keep customers happy ... where else are they going to go!"

As long as you don't complain when you only have one choice in the market ... and the price keeps going up! At that point there will be nothing you can do about it. It's called competition and it's healthy ... it's the only thing that ensures that a genuine 'marketplace' remains!

Now that's hysterically funny ... to suggest that some of these massive companies are somehow claiming the moral high ground by 'resisting the urge' to promote their products unfairly after so many years of getting away with it totally unchallenged ... that's the best joke of the year Worryingly they seem to have gotten away with convincing some people already. It would be 'just so' and 'on form' if they now started to use their massive influence to complain about it.

Not sure why Mr Neal felt the need to post and then retract? I haven't seen any comment on this thread suggesting it was difficult to integrate with SIMS (which was the gist of his 'removed' comment?) .... very odd. With regard to balance .... I like to see it and will wherever I see blatant examples (it's easy to prove this point by looking back at certain members' previous posts!) of individual promotion of one product will do my best to help others see a range of information so that they can make a balanced decision. It should be normal that people look at various products/services, choosing the one that works best for them. This doesn't make any product better than any other, just better for them. Unfortunately the education sector often doesn't work in this way, with huge commercial operators exerting massive leverage in obvious and not so obvious ways, such as part (or whole) funding of 'outsourced' IT departments for Local Authorities, who then tell all their schools to use particular products only (or they won't support them). I'll probably get banned for this comment, but it is a disgrace and needs to be stopped.

In the interests of balance for the readers out there (rather than the Schoolcomms appreciation society of which some members here seem 'platinum members'!), there are quite a few 'comms' products with direct links to SIMS.net (including 1st day absence in some cases) and they all pull year groups, classes, houses etc from SIMS without any fuss. In no particular order of merit; 1. TruancyCall 2. GroupCall 3. ParentMail 4. Keepkidssafe 5. Schoolcomms 6. Teacher2parents plus a few more that I cannot recall right now.

Good luck fawkers with the data collection excercise Trouble is .... you have to keep doing it! I think enabling parents to keep on top of it themselves (a la ParentMail) is the 'only' long term decent solution that isn't going to tie the admin team in knots every year.

Folks - I hope you don't mind the intrusion. We use ParentMail not because technically we can't do it ourselves, but because they administer the data and facilitate the parents to update their own data! The problem with electronic communication is keeping contact data accurate otherwise ... it doesn't work (obviously) :-( I don't know a school that can honestly say they have the problem licked of getting parents to respond comprehensively and regularly to school requests for up to date information! ParentMail reminds parents each term and gets a better response rate because the parents know what it's for - specifically. Oh yes ... plus they enable us to send TEXT messages too! It's also relatively speaking - cheap (or perhaps I should say good value)

Not meaning to be a pedant BUT ... don't you think that stating that it was 'no coincidence' that Schoolcomms was on the SIMS.net homepage when you knew there was a vested interest/connection between the two companies which you chose NOT to disclose .... was just ever so slightly disingenuous! Comments like that give people a certain impression that in this case isn't fair or balanced. ... ermm I doubt that a major decision such as which MIS tool a school might use could be influenced by a small third party software provider! I do however agree that partnerships between companies offering complimentary products/services is usually good for customers but transparency/honesty is important so that customers can make a considered choice. So many companies now use dubious tactics to hide relevant facts from schools. It's very easy to make the wrong choice based on misleading information, and we all need to guard against it. Hopefully the Edugeek forum should provide this balance by allowing this kind of correction where misleading information is provided!

Ahem ..... other than the fact the Schoolcomms have to pay Capita for that privilege you mean! Schoolcomms is a commercial partner with Capita which means Capita take a slug of revenue from Schoolcomms every time they sell to a school. Sounds like a good reason to put a link on a home page to me! Plus of course the owner of Schoolcomms is a former director of Capita! (Wheels within wheels eh!) I really must try to stop being so cynical - must try harder

ParentMail handles the 'parents changing data' problem better than most others which is why we chose them. The system automatically prompts parents every term (we don't have to action this), to login & update their own details online & we get email notifications from the system as each parent changes data (ParentMail is already updated with those changes of course). Works well and means we get updated contact data 3 times a year. Also means MUCH more of our messages actually get home than if we simply extracted MIS data which is only updated once a year, and even then we don't get every parent updating us!

Michael - I have to agree & disagree. In the commercial world (which is normally way ahead of the education sector) .... no one company provides a solution that 'does it all'! IMHO there is no way that anyone will provide MIS/VLE/Finance/COMMS successfully in one package. There are many examples of 'jack of all trades' type products which end up being inferior than other specialist products. As the latest Becta advice states clearly ... "It is unlikely that schools will find everything they need from one product or supplier". However, I agree totally that Gov't targets are unrealistic and are likely to be extended or even scrapped once/if the Tories get in.

How much!!!!!!! Extremely and unnecessarily expensive IMHO!

Use https://www.parentmail.co.uk We've been using for years - nothing bad to say about them and very cost effective. Watch out for 'texting only' products like teachers2parents .... you'll end up sending tons more text messages than you should (because it's the only option) where ParentMail allows the choice of email or text. (also provides single audit trail of all communications with read/delivery receipts).

Did a bit more research into why the Schoolcomms link appears inside SIMS.net Here's the lo-down; Schoolcomms are 'commercial partners' with Capita which essentially means they pay(in one way or another) Capita to endorse their product (with a link inside SIMS.net)! There are various types of 'partner' to Capita where the partners pay Capita for access to SIMS.net, but only commercial partners pay for endorsement by Capita - as I understand it. Not sure I feel comfortable with particular products being endorsed 'for commercial gain'! I'd rather endorsements were done 'on merit' and not by big corporate types with other agendas.

Hi Folks ... I deliberately didn't mention any names because I honestly don't know what system they were using. It's a bit of a pet subject for me in as much as we need the intelligent application of IT in schools rather than technology for its own sake. Some of these systems are quite complicated with lots of functionality and much of it is aimed at saving time on the part of administrators or school managers. IMHO this often amounts to technology for its own sake and systems which require human intervention in places are seen as 'deficient or backward' when actually they are more 'thought through' in terms of real world use and consequences.

I don't get this at all I'm afraid .... texting to parents I mean. Fair enough it can be useful but I don't understand why any school would choose a product that offers just one channel for communication, like the one mentioned. Aside from the fact that SMS is fairly limited i.e. 160 characters, it just leads to texting overload or even text blindness i.e. parents ignore them! Much better to use a system that does both email & sms, & reserve the SMS messaging for when it's urgent. We use https://www.parentmail.co.uk across our federation of 9 schools. Email 85-90% of the time and we use SMS when it calls for it. Also controls the cost of text messages which are mostly chargeable as extra (and if you go with unlimited sms ... you pay for it anyway!)

Just need to watch out for 'false positives'. My sister works as an admin at a 2000 student secondary in Essex. They got bombarded with parents complaining about incorrect text messages. I don't know what system they were using but it took absence data and fired automatic text messages out to parents. Students on trips or legitimately off-site for whatever reason were being pinged for being absent (or their parents were!) It caused such a problem they stopped using it. Human intervention as always in the key in appropriate places. As a consequence the school has seen a poor take up of subsequent technology based initiatives Not being funny .... but Mr Royston woud say that wouldn't he as the MD of GroupCall !!

ParentMail is the one to choose IMHO. Text, Email, Paper, plus they do the admin work & sort out parents changing their email/mobile without telling us!! Now links to SIMS/net & saves us a lot of work.

Schoolcomms developed by Capita ... I don't think you'll find that is correct. It's a private organisation with a commercial relationship with Capita i.e. they pay Capita to endorse their product! Not sure I'd ever be happy to buy a product recommended by someone who was 'earning' out of it. We went with ParentMail across 9 schools. Gives me NO headaches whatsoever and good support too.