pete

Q1 for our secondary schools is "predominantly no, but some time-limited exceptions for subsets of pupils where there's a defined T&L need that can be appropriately defined". The main "why do you block youtube?" reason isn't to do with safeguarding (it's still filtered for staff) but productivity and staying on-task in lessons and private study.

We looked at them in Spring 2023 and while it looked promising they were new to the UK market and missing features we needed if we were to move MIS. Probably worth a demo again in late 2024.

You seem to have interpreted my comment as a strategy for firing staff? That's not the intent. The driving force behind email retention policies is everything to with reducing liability for the organisation. Your example (saving someone's job) is arguing for data retention "just in case". That's not reasonable and only enriches solicitors. My argument is if you're going for a long retention period, make sure you're not employing idiots (who will do documented stupid things that cause liability for the organisation). If you are employing idiots, you cannot have a long retention period because of their habit of documenting liability.

I mean, it's a risk assessment like anything else. Got a lot of feckless liabilities employed at a place that you can't fire? Maybe pick a shorter retention period. Generally sane and reliable staff who take pride on doing a good job? Longer period may be less of a risk.

We picked option 1. Which of the two you pick doesn't particularly matter (price and functionality are sufficiently the same that it's more down to fit/finish/preference) as either will be a significant improvement. Only look at option 2 if, looking at the company behind it, any of your decision makers can say say (with a straight face) "That seems like a well-run company that won't nose-dive into the ground in a few years".

Late student buzzes gate, reception lets them in and they walk into reception, say "I'm Bob Bobblington in Y9 and I missed my bus/whatever" and receptionist marks them late and they head to their lesson. NB: We have no more than ~10 walk-in lates a day. edit: The gate phones also take a snapshot of the person/student buzzing in that's good for at least 24hrs* in case the child attempts to evade reception. *24hrs at a school with a sixth form who go into town for lunch. Several days for a primary school in the middle of nowhere.

Our current approach that replaced the paper forms a few years ago is: Mail-merged email to new parents with a unique code per-parent and a link to the "Pupil Record Form Sep 2024" Microsoft Form. Parent puts unique code in top of form. Parent fills out form. Spreadsheet from form is copy-pasted into pupil records. Once the initial rush is over, Power Automate routine will alert office staff to new rows on the spreadsheet for mid-year joiners. Is it perfect? No. Is it faster with fewer transcription mistakes? Yes. It knocked days off the Y7 bulk entry.

Everyday: Garmin Instinct Solar v1. IMO the best smartwatch ever as it only needs charging every 3-4 weeks. In decent sunshine it can go a couple of months (decent sunshine everyday effectively pauses the battery use. Very bright sunshine can add extra days). Like a smart G-Shock. On the water: Citizen Eco-Drive Divers. A bit battered and mainly used when diving or boating. Fairly unkillable, but the screw-down crown has been repaired once (after a while it stops locking down and then it's not water-tight). Formal / more sleek option: Skagen Gents Titanium Quartz.

What are they consistently logged into and in sufficient proximity to to notice an alert that appears? Subjects such as DT, Science, Drama, Art, PE where the teacher walks around a lot to demonstrate technique/monitor safety will always be a problem. But in any lesson that's going well and the teacher's at the board* it's likely to be a few minutes before the teacher notices a silent alert. *especially if it's set as the secondary monitor. Now if (as in our case) the risk is "bear has escaped from the wildlife park up the road and has been distracted by the bins", that's not so much of a problem provided no-one actively pokes the bear. If it's "idiot running around with a machete", you need a more immediate response and for that it has to make (some) noise that's different to the normal noises it makes.

This vulnerabilty? https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-2183 I'm not sure why Microfocus are linking it to Verastream products if you're not running any - it's a general vulnerability. It sounds like you have a host that will still use DES/3DES to communicate if asked. Resolve that. The easiest way is via the free IIS Crypto tool from Nartac (https://www.nartac.com/products/iiscrypto/). Take advantage of the "backup settings" option before you make any changes. You'll likely have to manually tell .Net to use strong crypto as well. This: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/plan-design/security/enable-tls-1-2-client is a decent starting point. Be aware you can break terrible applications that still use TLS 1.0/1.1, so have a backup and test your changes before rolling them out in bulk.

Am I missing something or does Integris lack a good way of checking for duplicate parental contacts? Having RTFM for editing/adding contacts and searching for a menu item/report/routine to either list all contacts, report on them or flag duplicates, I can't find anything. There doesn't even appear to be a "view a list of contacts" option. (I'm spot-checking data in Integris against $new_MIS for due diligence and I have a lot of duplicate contacts)

3.5 and 4.2 will be hard to enforce in the face of the lacklustre support levels from "paid" support from the likes of Microsoft, ESS, etc. While I understand where you're coming from, you need a "support has to be usable and not pants" rather than a "paid support = yes" or you're shooting yourself in the foot. I'll take a mainstream widely-used open source tool with usable and responsive community support any day over an "education" software provider. 3.1 bullet 2 is creating a rod for your own back. Especially the "regularly updated" part. Make it clear that things will be added in response to requests from staff, not that you're going to proactively test "Interesting Maths Games v27". Is 3.7 working days, school days or calendar days? Choose carefully. As others have said, do you have the political capital to enforce 6.1? Are you willing to burn it to do so? What's your plan if the headteacher ignores the policy and lets Fred buy something off-list?

I will happily not lie about my powershell skills in exchange for £85K+/year, provided fully remote is an option.

It was working for my colleagues on the 8th and for me on the 18th when I tested it. Using Admission numbers in the filename since we're using Salamander exporter. Just tested it now (17:17 23-10-2024) with a random PDF and it's working. Edit - we're using "starts with" predominantly since that's the filename format we're using.

Software-wise, if you're happy with Xen, look into XCP-NG. https://docs.xcp-ng.org/installation/migrate-to-xcp-ng/ Upgrading from Xenserver 6 adds a couple of extra quirks, but if you're standing it up on new hardware you shouldn't really run into them.

While the MIS market is rife with astroturfing, Scomis are fairly up-front about who they partner with: https://www.scomis.org/our-partners/

Currently on Book 03 (Memories of Ice) of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. If you liked Glen Cook's the Black Company series, you'll probably like these.

I use a (personal) set of the Soundcore Liberty 4 NC earbuds: https://www.soundcore.com/uk/products/liberty-4-nc-a3947g11?variant=45280058933408 And have no complaints. They're frequently on sale (but not at present).

^ That approach $Potential_MIS provider and ask them migration steps. Then double-check those steps with a friendly school to see if they're valid/still accurate/actually work. I haven't had to contact MyConcern since TES took them over, but as part of our adoption (years ago) we asked about data migration away (we always ask, it upsets a few salespeople) and the contract termination section (6b, from my notes - your contract may be different) contains provisions for handing back customer data in an accessible format.

I assume you've run the URL through SSLLabs (https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/) so you've got something that the L1 tech can hand to someone more capable?

^ Yeah, got the "we think we fixed it" email this morning, but haven't had a chance to test.

Is this "we think Bob's stealing things, but we can't prove it", "someone's stealing things but we don't know who" or "things are eventually found buried in the geography office's clutter?" ....since those are different problems. What's SLT's position on exploding dye packs, or a stakeout where an item dusted with powered purple dye is left "unattended"?

If you're feeling mean you could reply "That kind of attitude is how you got your last* $1 million fine from the SEC, are you trying for another from ICO?" *https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021-154

If it's truly mission-critical (your HT would agree) and the site otherwise gets a clean bill of health (virustotal and google check), they get a temporary allow with a deadline to fix their broken stuff. If it's "Bob's interesting penguin facts" that they need for a biology lesson? No.

^ The website says a degree is "essential", the job description says "desirable". You may want to reconcile the two so you don't drive off otherwise capable candidates.