DBR99

IT Director Required September 2025 37 hours per week, Full-time (£40,476 - £58,885 experience dependent) Newbury Academy Trust are seeking to appoint an ambitious, enthusiastic and inspiring IT Director responsible for managing and controlling all technical aspects of the installation, configuration, operation, maintenance, cybersecurity and development of the Trust’s ICT hardware, software and network infrastructure. The IT Director is a pivotal role that will play a crucial part in the delivery of the Trust's IT systems and in the implementation of the IT strategy and vision. The role requires excellent interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to lead a small team of IT professionals and work as part of the wider schools team is essential. The post is offered as either full time or term time plus four weeks dependant on personal circumstances. The salary shown is for a full-time post and will be pro-rated for less weeks. If you feel that you have the enthusiasm and drive for this role we would like to hear from you. Application is by letter and application form to Dr C Wilson, Executive Headteacher, the latter including the names and addresses of two appropriate referees. The letter should outline your previous experience and what you could offer Trinity School. Applications should be sent via email to [email protected] Further details can be obtained by email to [email protected] or visit the school’s website www.trinitynewbury.org Please be advised that the school is currently closed for the summer break, however we welcome applications during this period. This email address will be monitored over the summer, though responses may not be immediate. The School will reopen on 1st September. The school has a commitment to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. This role is not exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the amendments to the Exceptions Order 1975, 2013 and 2020. All shortlisted candidates will be subject to online checks, they will also be asked to complete a criminal records self-disclosure form and successful candidates will be subject to Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks along with other relevant employment checks. Closing Date 22nd August 25 by midday Interviews: Soon thereafter IT_Director_Job_Description.pdf

We were remote hosted with SCOMIS and migrated to Arbor in October - I got SCOMIS to help me create an on premise virtual with all 3 of our schools databases on it for reference (actually only used briefly by our Finance/HR staff for legacy reports and sorting staff contracts and payscales which didn't migrate into Arbor well.) Of course our Finance/HR staff would prefer to keep everything forever - don't they always! But as others have said, under the ESS T&C's you have to delete all instances, databases and backups on expiry of you final licence. To remain compliant and legal we'll be doing that on March 31st and it's finally goodbye to SIMS and the ESS/Parentpay group in general. After 12 Years of SIMS, do I miss it - Nope!

We migrated our 3 schools last Oct, took a phased approach so have just finished moving payments from Parentpay to Arbor. The program/project management was very good. Yes we did have snags but nothing major considering how big a change it is. We had a long standing relationship with SCOMIS who hosted our SIMS, so chose to keep our support with them.They have been good and as always very responsive. The issue we have found though is that when SCOMIS have to refer something more complex back to Arbor, the response they get back from Arbor is slow and not often the 3rd line expertise we were expecting. This leads me to suspect that Arbor support are understaffed and overrun by the sheer numbers of schools who have joined or are about to migrate to them. Not uncommon in our industry! Hopefully as things settle and Arbor strengthen their team and the 3rd party support providers become ever more familiar with Arbor things will improve.

As a lot of schools we moved from SIMS with Parentpay for payments with Cypad for meal selection at our primaries to Arbor in November. We're now planning on moving to Arbor payments and meal selection. Our catering company is being really awkward over this as they used Cypad to prevent parents from ordering a meal choice that may contain ingredients that child has an allergy to. Whilst all our allergies are correctly recorded in Arbor - Arbor meal selection doesn't appear to have this functionality. The number of students with severe allergies is tiny and we feel it could be managed manually as it's always been in the past. Any schools in that situation where their catering partner is trying to lock them into Parentpay /Arbor?

SIMS is like the Titanic - hit the iceberg ages ago and now rapidly sinking - make sure your in the last of the lifeboats! We're migrating over Oct Half Term.

Irrespective of MIS vendor, personally I think any move by those vendors to prevent competition in the marketplace for support, not only in cost terms but also in the quality of service is a bad option. We've been with SCOMIS for some years and always found their response and resolution times to be good, if it wasn't we'd have moved at contract renewal. It would be a great shame to loose the pools of expertise that they and other 3rd party support organisations have built up. Without competition what's the incentive for any MIS vendors support to be top notch?

Not sure if this is the same problem, but we typically will have the later year group students timetables missing - this is due to the 10/11's and 12/13's being assigned to a course and that course has expired or not been promoted to the new academic year. Our data manager normally resolves so cant help with details - sorry

We're in the same position - Parentpay/Cypad and support is shocking. We're moving to Arbor over October half term, take a look at the different Arbor packages, Core,Comms, Perform and Collaborate, I think you need Arbor perform to get the payments plus module which includes payments for trips, meals, meal selection etc etc. For my sins I'm project leading our SIMS -Arbor migration, we plan to move the core functions over Oct Half term, but temporarily re-connect to Parentpay etc before binning that and moving to Arbor Pay in Feb half term 25, just to avoid trying to change too much at once and before our PArentpay contract runs out on 31st March 25.

We've used SCOMIS for the 3 schools in our trust for nearly 4 years now, really reliable service and good support both for technical issues and for SIMS itself, howver we are now looking at Arbor, Brocomm etc for the future.

Closes 30th November.don't miss a great opportunity to join the IT Support Team at Trinity School, a 11-18 academy in the Newbury Academy Trust. We are a small friendly team and are looking to recruit an IT Technician to provide high quality and efficient IT support to staff and students across the 3 Newbury Academy Trust schools, assisting in the development, support, maintenance and security of our ICT systems. For further details of the role and to apply please visit our website. https://www.trinitynewbury.org/vacancies Closing Date 30th November 2023.

We currently host with SCOMIS and have done for 3/4Years, they have been really good in terms of reliability and excellent support - hope they aren't forced out of the market as I don't fancy ESS hosting or support! We are also just starting an MIS review and are very likely to move within the next 18 months to Arbor, Bromcom etc before or when the initial 3 year contract ESS forced us into expires. This looks like another example of ESS/Parentpay's heavy handed approach in attempting to secure some market for a product that should have died long ago!

Has anyone sucessfully managed to get ESS to reset the portal choices - Our Finance Manager understandably took the wrong option of the new 3 year 'reduced price' contract for two of our primaries which we don't want - the original plan was to give them time to develop all that's been promised for so long - and failing that look at the competitors. We are also very happy with our current hosting and support provider (SCOMIS) and don't want to change that to ESS. I reckon Arbor here we come!

We've just changed from our old OVS licencing to EES via the Chest agreement (which reduces the minimum EQU staff requirement) and get Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 as part of our Office 365 A3 for faculty licence. We now also have Intune, conditional MFA etc, but still keep the benefit of OVS licencing in terms of the desktops and Office Pro. Horrendously complicated to understand but I used Pugh Computers following other recommendations here, one of the suppliers on the framework who were very helpful at understanding it all. We actually saved £1500 per year as against our old OVS licence.

We've also taken that view. We've had our SIMS remote hosted by SCOMIS for the last 2.5 Years, it works. We dont have to worry about Solus and patches and staff can access via RDP from anywhere. Our SLT reviewed MIS systems prior to switching from old individual servers and LA support and didn't like either Arbor or Bromcomm. I've discussed and we'll review in 18-24 months and if ESS haven't delivered (which I guess is quite likely!) then we'll go through a proper evaluation/tender process. Personally I'd be worried of making a hasty swop, not from a technical POV, but in the learning curve for key staff like the Data Manager, Attendance Officer, Exams Officer etc when they are already at full stretch. Have to say though, this has been so badly handled by ESS - why not leave the annual rolling contracts and offer a sizeable discount for signing up for 3 years?

****** Closing tomorrow *******

Enthusiastic IT Technician required to play a key role within the IT support team providing a wide range of support to staff and students across the Newbury Academy Trust schools. Duties will include: support and use of Windows 7 and 10; supportand use of Mac OS X and iOS; support and use of Microsoft Office 2016; Office365 administration; Active Directory administration; PC maintenance, upgrades,fault finding and repair; peripheral device fault finding, e.g. projectors andspeakers; website and VLE maintenance and providing technical support and advice to staff and students. CLOSING DATE: Friday 7th December Further information and application form may be obtained on the staff vacancy page on the Trinity School Website https://www.trinitynewbury.org/vacancies