Toby.Belfield

Yes, I am the same Toby Belfield! But - now as a Head, do you think I'd seriously put my school at risk if the product wasn't right!!

I have a couple of comments to make. Firstly - I am the Principal of an Independent School, and we have just been nominated for the Independent School Awards, partly due to our use of the SIMS software. We use most of the modules - both the financial and academic ones - and our staff find the software easy to use. As a Principal, I find that the data I need (which is largely performance analysis information) is brought to my desktop without me having to search or carry out my own analyses. Our students have tests in their academic subjects almost every week, this data goes into SIMS and an appropriate analysis is pushed to heads of department/year/deputy heads and myself. Thousands of marks are analysed - and this information is used to inform progress of the children. We have seen, this year, our league table position rise from around 440 to 107. We have cut our costs dramatically - by removing large quantities of paper (eg all bills are emailed, no paper copies sent out now, all payslips are emailed, no paper payslips, all weekly newsletters to parents are emailed - and all reports are provided electronically.) We do not currently enter merits/demerits - but this is our next step. I would like parents to see House Points (Harry Potter style) through this system, online, alongside test results. Secondly, I think it is very useful for Phil to be able to post on these threads. I do not view his comments as glib "sales" speak. I find many of the comments informative, helpful - and I would hope (and believe) that he takes back the comments made by us (the users) to his development/sales/product teams in Capita.

Boarding Schools definitely have students that live within the school. The children of all resident staff will have the same address as the school. The student boarders, over the age of 16 have to provide their names for the electoral register (along with resident staff and their families). It is important to us that we can allocate the school's address to some of our students.

Hi Chris, I regularly use the full SIMS .net suite, through the 3G card. I have to say that the speed of registering is just as fast as using SIMS .net in school. For our teachers, it is very important to have one simple system - rather than several - and so we have taken the strategic decision to use SIMS .net throughout our school, rather than have several different software solutions for the same thing. Registering offsite, in the sports hall, etc is carried out with the same user interface as in the classroom. It works well for us - with no technical issues of speed etc. However, in terms of data security - we are an Independent School - and therefore, access to student and teacher data from home/off-site is not regulated by the LA. It is for us, as a school, to ensure proper data security measures are in place. They are in place - and I am happy for our staff to use SIMS .net at home - with exactly the same user interface as they would use at school. I would imagine that schools that use SIMS Attendance, will want to extend this solution - rather than replace it. That is what we have done - giving no training issues (or additional costs!). Toby

Hi, You are more than welcome to visit our school - where we can talk about use of MIS etc etc etc. I'll email you separately to arrange a date (likely to be second half of term, as I am away from the UK recruiting students in Asia and Russia over the next couple of months.)

I am currently a full time employee of Ruthin School in North Wales, responsible for all aspects of school management and student recruitment. In the past, I was a full time employee of CAPITA - but that is no longer the case. Incidentally - the student recruitment bit is fun! This year, I will have travelled to Hong Kong, Russia, Vietnam, China, Korea and Dubai - promoting Ruthin School.

Interesting - as my experience was not like this at all in the summer. There must be reasons why you had problems, and I didn't, with the August upgrade. I believe our timetable is quite complicated - and there have been no issues with either Attendance or NOVA. We have the upgrades automatically scheduled, for all internal computers - using the SOLUS mechanism. The August release, did not cause issues - with the workstations taking the upgrade when the first user logged on. It seems to me, in reading these threads, that some people encounter problems in certain areas, that other people never encounter. I wonder - is it the software, or the school infrastructure, or user error? Or perhaps a bit of all three.

Don't worry - I promise to post if things don't go well! We have invested a lot of time and money in the system (with sceptism from some staff), so I have a strong desire for it to work. If it does work for us, I will be delighted - if it doesn't, I will be cross. I'll give an update at the end of term - and we shall see.

I thought some "good positive thoughts" might be welcomed! I'm driving forward the good use of MIS - in order to make a really big difference in a previously paperbased school. And - I'm very pleased to say that things are going very well. We have started the new term now, at Ruthin School in North Wales. SIMS is being used to manage finance (FMS), Fees (Fees Billing 7), Reports (Assessment Manager 7 & Profiles 7), Attendance, Timetable, Cover and general admin (pupil records). I am pleased to be able to say that Pastoral promotion went through without any problems - a relief, as we have changed from a vertical structure (in some years) to a horizontal structure. We left writing the timetable to the very last minute - in fact, it was started and finished on the last day of the holidays. This allows our students to receive their results (GCSE), before we write the option blocks for Year 12. Nova T6 had no issues - and in a day we were able to produce an efficient, "perfect" timetable. Pretty amazing, actually - as we have a junior school that is on a different timetable cycle to the senior school. Nevertheless, all students (from 3 -18), and all teachers have a timetable that works. House Lists, data collections sheets, registers etc produced with no issues. We moved from WCBS to FMS over the summer - our financial year starts in September, so all is now ready to go for the new year. Alot of work to set up the nominal ledger - as I need to be able to analyse expenditure and fee income in minute detail. New payroll: Earnie 32 - weeky payrolls run fine, and I am optimistic that monthly salaries will work well. We have removed paper payslips altogether - all staff now get emailed. A bit of a saving on stationery. It also looks very impressive! Maintenance staff without emails now have them. Future plan - install Learning Gateway for March 2009, and all our overseas parents will be delighted to receive reports and regular updates through our new website (to be launched in January 2009.) Key point - I know exactly what I am doing with the SIMS software, and can make it work within my school. Staff are on board - and can really see the benefits (reduced admin time, quick access to key data, better informed etc). In (at most) a year's time, I hope to be able to demonstrate how the SIMS software has improved our school in the areas of Pupil Performance (academic monitoring), efficiency (reduction of mundane clerical tasks by admin staff), recruitment (analysis by ethnicity and nationality to inform which students we want to accept) and financial control. A very positive look forward to the year ahead.

I've checked - and my wife's school use HP Ipaq's PDAs. They are unencrypted - as the IT Manager says that when encrypted, the connection to the network is not stable. This, he says, is a general Windows Mobile issue - and not associated with the CESReg software. Capita are releasing an offline version of the PDA solution, on 16th April. This should really help in areas where wireless connectivity is a problem - and then banks of docking stations in the staffroom could be the solution! Laptops, using SIMS Lesson Monitor are definitely used for all classes - as detailed in my post above. PM me, and I can put you in contact with the school. They will be able to feedback on their use of the PDA solution in a boarding school with very demanding requirements! For them - the school would have significant difficulties functioning without SIMS - it is truly inbedded into the school. This is a position I seem to be getting my current school into - as inevitably there is no going back when the MIS is extensively used.

Why not buy Nova-T with Options. It can run standalone - without SIMS .net.

My wife's school use Lesson Monitor throughout and also the PDA Mobile solution, wirelessly. Both work very well - particularly the PDA Mobile solution. This is used for recording attendance in all after school classes, Saturday morning tests (all students have tests every Saturday in the Sports Hall), and in the compulsory homework sessions every evening. Also - the PDA solution is used to record attendance (3 times a day) of boarders that reside in the school during the holidays. Lesson Monitor is used in every class, wirelessly, without any problems. Incidentally, the most recent SIMS upgrade has significantly sped up the logon speed - which has pleased the school greatly! My school will be moving to all the above shortly!!

We give all power users (ie Exams Officer, Headteacher, Bursar) access to SIMS from home, via VPN. The speed is very similar to being within school. However, we will look to SIMS Learning Gateway to provide easy access to core functionality (for teachers, pupils and parents) - such as writing reports, assessment marks and attendance. I think that this "joint" solution is the best one!

SOLUS currently makes a backup for each package that it deploys (ie a separate backup for each patch/release). However - a future version will change this, so that SOLUS makes a single backup. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

Nick, The choice is entirely yours. You have to edit the connect.ini file to turn on Windows Authentication - so if you do not make any change, the usual SIMS login box will continue to appear - with users being required to separately log into SIMS. However, if you wish to remove the ability for your staff to separately log into SIMS - then you can do this, by pointing the users in System Manager to their domain/username - and modifying the Connect.ini to say Connectiontype=trustedauto or Connectiontype=trusted. Full details are in the System Manager handbook. But - be reassured. The authentication method for SIMS does not change, unless you manually change the settings. Therefore, after upgrading to the August Release, the authentication method will still be SIMS and not Windows. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

Nick, There are no changes to the Examinations Organiser module, in the August Release, that will have any impact on the import or processing of Examination Results. Therefore - you should not find any disruption to your use of Examinations Organiser in August. It is important, however, that your SIMS system is up and running on the days that the results become available - so timing the implementation of the August Release is what is important. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

SIMcfc73, I'd happily talk to you about SIMS vs other suppliers. I now work for Capita - but previously did work in a Independent School that used SIMS to great effects. I am currently looking how SIMS can be best used in small Independent Schools - as there are a large number of schools of this type that are not using any MIS at all. My belief is that the SIM system can be used in a limited way (if necessary) to improve pupil performance. The importance is what to do with the data that is inside your system - rather than just use SIMS for data collection. If you are unhappy with your SIMS systemm, or would like further dialogue - please send me an email ([email protected]) Regards, Toby Belfield Deputy Director CAPITA Independent Schools

SIMS also provides NOVA-P - which is a specific Parents' Evening Scheduler program. It enables letters of appointments to be produced, as well as timetabling the whole event - even providing functionality for "separated parents" (who want to remain separate on parents evening) and parents with multiple children at the same parents evening (for timetabling together). A full timetable will be produced - as well as individual appointment schedules for each teacher. It is not currently web-based - but does do the job. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

Hi, There is a SIMS.net E-portal - which is the SIMS Learning Gateway. This enables parts of SIMS (SIMS web parts) to be a part of Microsoft Sharepoint - thereby giving great functionality to Parents, Pupils and Teachers. Ask Capita for details of this product. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

As part of our May Release (scheduled for 1st May), schools will be able to move the UDFs to any chosen panel. In doing so, the UDF will automatically inherit the permission of panel - both on screen, and in the reporting dictionary. Currently, however, the UDFs appear at the bottom of the screen - without any permission. Regards, Toby Belfield CAPITA

As part of our continued development - we are moving the Lesson Monitor functionality into .net. Schools that are currently using our Lesson Register product will notice a big enhancement in May 2007, when the Lesson Monitor functionality (edit lesson marks, key reports etc) moves into .net. Clearly, the advantage of the Lesson Register product within SIMS, is that the links to the rest of the SIMS system are seamless - meaning that it easy to link from the Class Register to Behaviour, Assessment, Fees, Student Basic Details, Detention, etc. Toby Belfield Capita

I am more than happy to take detailed functional questions on any aspect of the SIMS product. We have recently released our new Fees Billing software - which is integrated as part of SIMS .net. Your Bursary might find it useful to have a separate demonstration of this. Do not hesitate to contact me directly - as my responsibilities extend to the Independent Sector (having spent over 10 years in the sector, as a Housemaster, teacher and Head of VI Form.) [email protected] Toby Belfield Capita

The Capita position is that we will ensure that the SIMS 2007 August Main Release will work on both SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 (and correspondingly MSDE & SQL Express) We will also ensure that any fixes that are related to the September School Census (or DENI in Northern Ireland) are coded to work on both platforms. Subsequent releases (from the SIMS 2007 September Update - planned for 15th September 2007), will be tested and developed on SQL 2005 only. For all installations before August 2007, we will support SQL 2000 - and therefore, in the case above, I suggest that you request the SQL 2000 media. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

I am trying to work out whether your reference to David Cameron is my picture - or my posting! As for the good spam filter - Capita is quite good at that sort of thing. However - I am currently receiving around 150-200 emails per day, so would appreciate only serious queries, so that I can concentrate on getting things done! Regards, Toby Belfield Capita

I appreciate the concern about August - and several schools/Support Units have contacted me with concerns that schools are actually shut in August. However, in my view, there is never going to be a "good time" for this sort of thing. The SQL Server 2005 upgrade needs to be done immediately prior to a SIMS upgrade. This is why schools should not do it before August. However - after August (but before, say December - when January census dates loom), should be fine. A BETA version of Examinations Organiser will be possible - and thanks for suggesting this. I will remember to make this happen. Our Release schedule - which means that Main Releases are delivered on the first of February, May, August and November, means that July is not really an option. I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly ([email protected]) - where I hope to be able to continue to answer queries. Regrettably - I do not always have time to monitor these forums - but will do the best that I can. Regards, Toby Belfield Capita