GeneralDreedle

Wow! BSF thread and everyone's looking but nobody's talking. What are the chances of that?

Even although I have this problem I think Capita are spot on on their release schedule here. Only the foolish adopt MS products in their year of release so Spring 2011 seems reasonable to me. For us in school XP plus Office 2003 was a mature and stable platform. I've seen platforms and applications come and go since Windows 286 and WordStar. IMHO Office 2010 is just Fire and Motion from the marketeers - all the features thrown up in your face like Mr T's jewelery, but when you eventually find what you want it's the same grey dialog as 10 years ago. I'd also endorse SIMS using Office automation for reporting. I've spent several years using CMIS Facility's arcane report codes: dozens of rows of punctuation edited in a small text box with no syntax checking or error handling. It's flexible but tragically it is also obviously Betamax. Harnessing the power of MS Word is a good decision. The consensus here seems to be that reversion to Office 2007 is the only solution for us. would that be all users or just those writing merge reports/letters?

We started out with SIMS this year and had Office 2010 and Windows 7 to contend with too. We've already had funnies in anything that uses Word automation. Late Letters don't get up the right list of events. Now, after struggling uphill all term and finally rushing to knock up some student reports using Assessment/ Individual Reports it just crashes SIMS all the time. So you guys are telling me that a) Windows 2010 wasn't supported until the Autumn release so I was probably doomed from the start. b) Office 2010 is still not supported and has known incompatibilities (Is it adopted in Autumn release - I can see no reference in Release Notes?). So I'm still indefinitely stuffed. Is there any way round to get some reports out for kids?

Well, there we go, folks, that's all there is to say: Greed, fear and stupidity have once more won the day. And when you shrug and say the builders spent, All that hard-earned money that the public sent, And at least I'm still here, and I'm doing my best You'll wish before the end they took you off with all the rest.

'Boo's got it. Your restatement of what I said is not right. There should be NO MIS suppliers. It's an artificial market. They are fantastical creatures, a bit like vampires really, differing only in that we brought them to life. The government creates requirements year on year and forces schools to gift taxpayers money to Capita and Serco etc. in order to meet those requirements. Now, we all know that govt can't manage IT projects (worked on some of them - that's a whole other can of worms) so I'm not foolish enough to be advocating another one. What I'm saying is bottom-up create a culture of best value, shared reponsibility. Of course it's anaethma to BSF and managed service but then that's going to crash and burn anyway (see my strangely silent thread elsewhere). Lots of things start out dreaming. Lots of dreams die. But money talks vikpaw, and the bloat is about to burst. Might be someone listening now. Cheap Dreams: They really are interesting.

I agree with what you're saying about the whole vegan obsessiveness with opensource tools that have the sellotape hanging off them. I'm a pragmatist by nature and MS stuff works and the kids love it, but my epiphany here is that it is an idealogical battle. The war can only be won with a SinnFein solution. Eventually you get the government of the day to adopt a defacto standard. You get the Titan to stamp his feet and send the little men and their little houses back into the dust. Not a competing market. A truly Free one. Much as I have loved MS tools over the years and ridiculed XWindows and widgets and gnu and all those noddy scripting languages I fear that means linux on desktops with web delivery to portable devices and other platforms. Schools can run lots of MS boxes on their networks (maybe I can keep Excel!), just not run their business system on them. Why should the government ask the questions and not distibute the software that gives the answers? Why the tango through the year as census specs are revised and suppliers run to catch up? Issue the census patch when you raise the requirement. Otherwise don't bother the schools with the question!

I live in the hope that you are totally wrong Mike. "Data confident Self evaluating schools" need to tell inspectors to stick the data where the sun shines and show them happy, fulfilled children and staff instead. There's only so many ways you can present 1000 kids shoe sizes and when your MIS and metrics are completely overhauled every 5 years you have no credible longitudinal data to rely on anyway. All KS3 sublevels are makebelieve with no calibration between KS2 and 3, no basis in the clalssroom, and no standardisation of assessment in most secondary subjects. The differences in most cohorts are so statistically insignificant as to be risible and the samples are too small to speak with any authority, particularly with the target groups they chase each year - eg white male FSM is the flavour of the month at the moment. Any school level data that schools need is provided on Raise Online and FFT, and this is what the inspectors and SIPs use so why would they do anything else?

Does anyone know of any schools who have either rolled back their BSF ICT implementation or fought their way out of the contract following the customary "teething troubles" (only a creature of the devil could have that many teeth)? I would also like to hear about any schools who have tried to do this and how they were thwarted... I realise that LA and MSP pressure in this area is such that folks may not wish to post a public response here. Please feel free to message me if that is the case.

Executive summary needed: is there no way to set Excel and Word into some kind of legacy mode where the functions are back on the old menus and not splattere randomly accross the top of the screen wasting an inch of valuable document space?

Blockbuster gone? Where do I go now to get 5 jelly beans and an icecream for only £10?

BECTA. How we shall all miss it's surefooted guidance.

I'm a bit late coming to this thread but I too worked as a developer in industry for many years (C++, VB, SQL, a bit of Java etc) before working in schools. And many of the thoughts and frustrations here speak my mind. I have several times sat down in beermat design meetings with old mates. The conclusion is that you could nail this product and the whole lucrative market with a small team of maybe 5 people. The problem is getting it into schools. Look at SIMS' (is it 80% marketshare?) origins as a model. You need: 1) A home school to use as sandbox - OK that's probably achievable 2) A local authoritty that will take it on - No chance: they're mostly 3rd rate battery hens 3) selling power/ schmooze ability / graft - No chance: makes me physically shake with rage So number 2 is a systemic block - do you know a LA with those balls? Number 3 is an personal block but also a common shared profile for software engineers. You can't afford parasites on the team so you need that rare engineer who is also a corrupt smarm merchant. And no ethical values. The solution I think is contained in the reason why the beermat design team meetings always collapsed well before last orders: we always fell out over SQL Server v MySQL I always said you want to integrate web parts and Outlook groups so the MS overhead is worth it, but my hardcore mates insisted on full opensourrce. When I look back now I suspect they were right: The solution needs to be totally free and pupils should be able to help out on the development. You make the money from installation, support, training and lots of bespoke jobs. As I've said I'm an engineer and no salesman but I suspect you sell it to the teachers, not the schools or LAs: the dinosaurs are almost extinct - all that's left in schools in 5 years is those 20 something and 30 something eager beavers (soon to be burnouts!) who love computers. Make it part of some awesome, must-share portal eg: a free national supply teacher agency website. My 2c worth of big picture...someone else can handle the details, meanwhile I'll enjoy my evenings, weekends and holidays.

In Facility it's on this menu: Returns / CTF / Produce File for Other Application Shouldn't Capita have pointed that one out? Do they not offer changeover guidance? How much have you done to those pupils since? - might be easier to get rid of them and reimport.