Alice

My school has recently been looking at changing MIS systems, so we have been looking into MIS costs. I think prices in this thread are not being compared like to like here. Many factors play a part in the price of an MIS system. For instance the above SIMS price I am assuming is referring to mainly the on going annual maintenance and support cost of the MIS, after the capital costs having been paid originally way back whenever the school or LA purchased the license for SIMS Software (hence the low cost). Our school is too in this category. What I hear from other schools is that ordinarily, the price for a complete MIS for a secondary school from Capita can be as much as £28,000 – this is when capital costs are factored in as well as annual maintenance and support costs. Prices mentioned from other suppliers in this thread (RM or Serco etc..) are factored in the cost of the new software licenses. Do others agree with this?

Well our ICT Manager wants to move to a Browser based system because he is fed up with SIMS.Net installation on every work station. Browser based would be more cost effective because of a lower cost of ownership. As to having already paid - we want to opt out from having our funds 'top sliced' so that we can buy our choice of MIS.

Our bursar says that as a school we are currently having our funds ‘top sliced’ by our Local Authority for our MIS software and maintenance-support. That part of our budget retained by the Local Authority is paying for the software in use which is SIMS. We want to move to away from SIMS and use alternative MIS software but are unable to because the LA will not rebate the 'top sliced' funds (i.e. the part retain by our LA from our budget). I am interested to find out whether other schools are also experiencing similar problems due to this method of ‘top slicing’ by Local Authorities, and if any school succeeded in getting their funds for MIS released. Surely the schools should be able to have free choice in their MIS software. Do you agree??