Love_Sausage

It depends on the age of your revals, they updated us for free because ours were only around 4 years old and only needed the firmware. Much older than that and they would have had to change the note reader, which would have incurred a charge. Seems fair enough to be honest, although we were with CRB before the merger who seem a lot more even-handed than Cunninghams.

Not as small as I expected from the pictures on here... https://www.showmyhomework.co.uk/careers

Standard response time to emails appears to be around a week. Has been as long as 3 weeks, and occasionally when something more serious happens and you happen to catch an "Account manager" somewhere near a desk, a day or two. The company appears to have grown beyond its capability to provide adequate support.

Last time I spoke to them about our issues, which seems to be the norm on here of our AD link just not working, they said they were "snowed under" with technical support requests. Still no response despite being promised call backs twice. Their customer support is seriously slow and really frustrating - don't even bother looking at seating charts or praise points, neither of which is actually working yet.

You might need to check that Mic, mine was closed after one day of being open.

Our Business manager was told by some minion in the DfE that is dealing with academisation that becoming part of a MAT meant that your funding would be reduced due to the savings you were expected to then make. I.e. cutting staff.

I'm definitely no Wordpress developer but have created and managed half a dozen fairly complex Wordpress sites. Take a little time to dig around, buy a decent theme (Themeforest best sellers usually fit that bill) that has a good solid interface and you'll be fine. You won't find easier in my opinion.

There certainly appears to be a rush on now for ourselves and the few other remaining maintained schools to set up MATs before we're pushed. Options include taking on a couple of feeder primaries or taking a lower performing secondary under our wing - though how accountable we would then be for the underperforming secondary seems to be the sticking point for Governors with that option.

Then find out if anyone is willing to answer the question "if this falls onto someone's head, am I to blame?"

Our LA jumped on the dip in numbers a few years back as an opportunity to close as many sites as it could to fix the budgets around the time. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that this would happen. We're going to go full circle in a remarkably short space of time and have LA's opening schools again as no academy chains are interested in expanding.

About a million pounds, roughly.

A year ago, I'd have recommended CRB/Cunninghams, but since the merger the support calls have been a pain in the backside - what used to be available as support is now full of chargeable extras. The system works, but is getting clunky and they plague you with emails trying to sell their IDstore and other products.

Have a look on Themeforest.net for themes, loads there. We use the most popular, Avada, which is amazingly slick, configurable and easy to use.

Just a heads up to those of us who use Planet Estream - this looks like a really good addition to the service for no extra cost: Planet eStream - Introducing Planet eStream Connect Full access to the BBC Digital and Shakespeare archive as well as the ability to share media between schools. Spoke to them yesterday and hopefully it will start rolling out next month.

Not if the DPA doesn't apply.

From experience with the ICO helpline they're knowledgeable and really can be helpful but when faced with a grey area they - understandably - err on the side of caution when giving advice off the top of their head. If a student is on a poster/plasma with no identifying details (ok, maybe keep them out of the reception area) I don't see how that is a data protection risk in an environment they can be seen walking around anyway.

Ah well. Generic advice on the hoof, but you've at least covered your situation with the ICO and the school can't ask for more than that. Now to trawl those lists

Photographs of pupils or students are taken for building passes. These images are likely to be stored electronically with other personal data and the terms of the DPA will apply. I would say names are very much the issue. Also, though I realise this is playing Devil's advocate, wouldn't a visitor be as likely to see the student walking around the school or in a classroom as see them on a plasma?

From the guidance: Photographs of pupils or students are taken for building passes. These images are likely to be stored electronically with other personal data and the terms of the DPA will apply. I can see where you're coming from, but unless the photo has names pointing at the people involved, which seems unlikely and can be considered beforehand, then that wouldn't apply.

On checking the ICO website, the guidance doesn't even cover using photos internally: https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1136/taking_photos.pdf (same link as above, beaten by minutes!) It's common sense using the permissions for promotional/external use but inside school I don't think I'd have any concerns. Edit: Of course, this depends on having someone high up the chain agree that this is common sense and that's what the ICO encourage.

If it's to be used internally then wouldn't the students concerned be visible around the school throughout the day anyway? I'm not sure you'd need any kind of permissions for that.

Get someone in who can take a good look around, that isn't an easy space to achieve what you've been asked for - not going to be solved easily/cheaply, and definitely not by our advice alone.

Got my underpants on today! Also, my socks arrived.

We have CURA, seems to do the job but a complete pain to get up and running. TASC does respond quickly to support queries though.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ofsted-advice-note-no-notice-school-inspections That's the gov.uk site for Michael Wilshaw's letter. Our Deputy Head was on an Ofsted prep course a few weeks ago at which the school website was highlighted as now being the first checkbox on the inspection page when a visit is planned. We had a meeting straight after to make sure we had absolutely everything covered as set out in the guidance mentioned above. Follow the Clerk to Governors page, you can't go wrong - the hard part is getting the information prised from the people who need to give you it.