drutt

I think I speak for us all when I say... and

Little off topic but Canva is worth every penny, so quick and easy to chuck together professional looking school communications and materials. Helped us to bring creation of our prospectus and any other marketing materials in house, we still get them printed via digitalprinting.co.uk or vistaprint but we save so much money in comparison to using a 3rd-party.

They have the eligibility key check with the newest versions, I'm honestly expecting the software to lock us out at midnight the day the licence expires. https://customer.support-ess.com/csm?sys_kb_id=e9e2396b1bc685909f2142a7b04bcbe3&id=kb_article_view&sysparm_rank=2&sysparm_tsqueryId=5d0ccb731b6e09189f2142a7b04bcb1a

While we've not had this issue here I've implemented a good portion of the exceptions from this community page: https://support.sophos.com/support/s/article/KB-000038173?language=en_US Some of them, like Bing related ones, we pick and choose as Bing is tedious to filter when it comes to how it embeds inappropriate content within the browser page.

We're moving to Bromcom, I've also had it mentioned that the API for SIMS is very limited. Essentially the long established process from my understanding was to provide the BAK file and then they would migrate your data from that, but this situation massively complicates things.

ESS argue that the schema used in the SQL DB is their intellectual property and sharing it with 3rd parties is a breach of that. https://customer.support-ess.com/sys_attachment.do?sys_id=a411deb097d3b950a4b17e371153afff I've had a conversation with our migration partner as we are in the process of moving away from SIMS and they've said this has put a pause on their end as they need to identify the legal ramifications. Same for our 3rd party support provider. It's a huge mess.

Make sure to put together a proper data archival plan, ESS has recently changed policies and you are no longer allowed to keep a local read-only copy of the SIMS or FMS software/databases once your current licence with them ends. They have also implemented policy stating the BAK file contains their intellectual property so cannot be used to migrate data. Guidance to customers extracting data from SIMS or FMS for the purpose of migration or data archive

It's gotten to the point that we delegate laptop trolleys to departments to manage, if they find damage it's in their interest to report it as soon as possible and manage the student(s) who caused it. We have around 400 laptops available for student use, not including Sixth Form so we can't check them each day as there are only 2 of us and honestly we have better things to spend our time on. We also don't bother with extended warranties anymore, vandalism ends up voiding them anyway.

Blocked by default for students, some exceptions made for creative arts and ICT lessons in Y10/11, with the caveat it's up to the teacher to make sure its not being abused in lesson and if we find the student is abusing the access it will be removed. Really can't trust the YouTube algorithm as its very easy to get lumped into the weird rabbit hole of content that just isn't appropriate for kids. We had more relaxed access for our Year 12 and 13 students until recently but found some of them would spend hours on Netflix or YouTube.

It would probably be better for your own well being to just remove that person from your life and forget about the money. Take it as the admission fee to a life lesson.

We have been using Evolis Primacy since about 2014, the printer had to be replaced in 2019 after 5 long years of consistent use due to a fault with one of the internal rollers constantly jamming. Luckily it's part of the FM maintenance contract so they ponied up the money for it. I have the printer connected directly to my workstation as I print the cards for students and staff, all the design work is done in the cashless software iDStore and honestly have no real complaints, far better than the EasyTrace system we had before 2014.

We use PaperCut Print Deploy. After setting it up had no issues that come to mind, also really good for exam printers assignment.

We were getting this between 8:15 and 9:10 but it seems to be resolved now.

MRBS is a great little system that is free, all it takes is a little bit of time to work out how you want to set it up and you can either host it internally or use the schools webhost. I don't think it supports SIMS integration but we've been using it for the past few years now with booking ICT suites and trolleys of laptops and it's done a fine job!