msnealer

This is a nightmare with standard MIS systems as they hard code everything. We had an issue with Serco that Ofsted expected one set of Ethnicity codes and Serco hard coded their system, only to accept local Authority codes. In your new system, not fields are hard coded except the very basic ones such as name, dob etc. Any field can be added, removed, or altered by system admin. However this doesn't fix the issue of analysis, where standards are change. The new EYFS codes for example. This really buggers up multiple cohort analysis

Hi Not been back since the very nice response to my last posting. I've been using MIS systems for 5 years and I did go through all the MIS systems available in the UK and didn't find any that met our needs. The US one I was looking at is called Orbund. However since then, we have moved onto building our own system. While their system was good, there was a language barrier that many staff could not get over. I'm building our system using the Django framework with a postgresql server backend. We're going live in September and so far, the build has worked out really well. The problem with most of the MIS systems offered here is that they are version of the same thing with little variation. WCBS appeared to be a little better though. My build though is nothing like any of the systems offered. We didn't try to build on ideas that were available in current systems, but went back to the drawing board. We've also kept things really simple. At the same time it will run to work in five different schools, but all working from the same database. Since starting this, I've heard from a number of other schools who feel similarly let down my UK MIS systems and have built their own with great success.

hi I feel the same as many here, that the level of MIS systems in education in the UK is extremely low. I have found some good US ones that can be modified to the Uk though. However I have defined specs for my own database system and if others are of a like mind, we could build our own. If anybody is interested please email me or reply here.