Steven_Cleaver

In essence probably overkill but we use SIM's Marksheets which are used at sort of Class\Subject level to track sort of modular and bespoke to department modules and works well for Departments and most Departments are now using these although. The Data from our six reporting points is automatically exported out of SIM's into our own Web abased Analysis system which is used by whole school so (SLT, Teachers, HOD's, TA's and Support staff) and does a more comprehensive automated Analysis of the data and allows all Staff to enter Intervention based on Analysis of data and Data can be viewed in various point of views, Student, Class, Subject, Teacher Reg\Form or whole school. We have also built in our own Deviation measures for example at Assessment Point 1, 2 can be on a Deviation of -4, Assessment Point 3 -2 etc so sort of shows although a Student maybe -4 Deviation for the time of the year they are on target. The whole system automatically runs over night so means all data is always up to date. We also use SIRA Analytics which is excellent and is used by HOD's, Teachers and SLT and is excellent at Exam times or the end of year as it gives an excellent view on where students are and saves a massive amount of time but just requires the data to be uploading. A rough Idea of what we use LHS although the systems have moved on considerably since this as I haven't updated this from last year so is over a year old.

I did have a look at the SLG but it did look a bit clunky, expensive and a lot of work to get setup compared to other solutions. We decided to use our own Remote access system Dual Factor Authentication for Staff Access to SIM's machines, Students access the system but can't access SIM's machines can use Single factor Authentication. We also use Insight from Tasc Software for our Parental Portal which has been excellent. Another School in the LEA who were using SLG for around three years but found this a bit clunky and are now adopting our methods about three other schools in our Borough are using remote access for staff and then Insight for Parental portal.

Same here Stone been excellent for Sales, Delivery, Price, after Sales support and Tech support 5 year onsite warranty and with the odd PC we have ever had trouble with are out next day to fix these

Hi Is probably overkill but we have sort of a three prong Approach most Departments now have Track sheets in SIM's which tracks modules as it were, Benefit is that this is good at Department Level to get Comprehensive view based on Class or Department, disadvantage isn't easy for other Departments or SLT to access this. Staff use multiple module Grades and Various Assessment to enter Grades at 3-6 Assessment Points this is entered into SIM's and shows on the Track sheets this data automatically links into our own Web based system which runs every night and recalculates pretty much what we were doing in Excel and more but does this automatically and deals with any changes to Grades, Targets, Class Changes, New students as it runs automatically every night etc we have also added intervention and analyse this in the system. Benefits gives the whole picture of student in multiple subjects, all subjects overviews, data can be viewed by various views as it were by Student, Class, Subject, Form, Teacher, whole school and is bespoke so we can sort of set calculations of against target based on Deviation for time of year for example can have a Deviation of -4 against end of year at Assessment Point 1 and this shows as on Target -2 above etc so we can set our where they should be at what point in the year without setting multiple Targets. Is also the most widely used of our data systems by Teachers, HOD SLT, SEN, Pastoral Support and other staff. WE also use SISRA now SISRA Analytics gives great overview of data particularly at end of year and for Exams although we have found a couple of anomalies with this and had to query this with SISRA. Benefits is excellent producing information quickly on Exams day and as Students get towards the last Assessment point gives a great overview, used by some Teachers Occasionally, HOD years most of these, and Head regularly and some SLT MIS Officer. Disadvantage isn't easy for all staff to follow even with a fair amount of training and support also another system to have to login too. Would definitely look at SISRA Analytics which is excellent although probably our internal system is the most widely used and is excellent was a lot of work although now it is setup has saved us a massive amount of work especially going from three Reporting points to 6.

I did have a look at Impero and did look good but am already using some tools from a company called Burconix Ltd I think the site only mentions version 2 of the tools but whilst these were excellent Version 3 has made a really big jump BCX Management Version 3 Version 3 Notes

@clareq it uses its own client on the station and as long as Wake on Lan is enabled on the PC the Server sends a Wake on Lan request to the PC which Auto starts the PC.

I had a look at this a few years back after using Frogs at previous school but some systems were a bit pricy or didn't look to secure or reliable so we use a solution built around RDP gateway sits on a single virtual server but with some extra software developed to sit on top and add various extra Features, and Client on PC's, this allows the following; Dual Factor Authentication from Windows PC's if required, using and Encrypted App I enforce this for PC's with Access to MIS systems. PC's auto shutdown or startup when they are required, so only ever a few on that are not being used. Some Extra security front end that I obviously don't want to state on a forum as I was always worried about opening the school up to remote access and our LEA are very wary of allowing external access so always run penetration testing on anything front facing which to be honest I think is a good thing and we get for free . User Stats so I can easily see how much is being used and we show to SLT and Governors periodically. Logging as shows up access issues what browsers, devices, who, when etc are being used. Works with Windows, IOS and Android. This has worked really well and from starting with staff now have students and staff on and looking at the stats get about 24,000 logins a year with most 4 of our SLT in the top 25. We don't allow work to be copied between home and school so stays in school (Data Protection) and this is in our school policy and enforced politely by the Head and if they do use USB or email is at their own risk (they have been warned.

Paper Cut here as well

I don't say this often about software but awesome. Not sure who else on here is using Burconix Ltd and their BCX Network Management tools but just wanted to say if anyone hasn’t upgraded to version 3 have a look as they have some excellent new functionality. As well as improvements to in both functionality to Shortcut management, Package Task and Software Deployment, Printer Tasks, Users and Computers, Station Information etc etc. Added • Remote Scheduled Station build. • Scheduled Application deployment and package task deployment • Start up and Shutdown Scheduling. Added in various Windows Remote Management features. • Remote Desktop • Remote Assistance • Remote Management • Remote C: drive access All of his seamlessly integrated in with no work on my part . Obviously I know you can do a lot of the above easily enough but has everything in one place saves massive amount of time. Simple way to add in your own Web based systems so Help Desk, PaperCut or any other web based solution again everything in one place. Much more responsive UI, simple right click and select or Select and click from Side panel. They are also looking at linking to SIM’s for extracting info from SIM’s into their UI to use for various purposes, Student Photographs, linking Person ID to user account etc. Already sort of having the extractor working I think just working on linking it in to features on their UI. I could go on but it is a Saturday and the wife is having a word in my shell like Just wanted to say well done and if anyone isn’t on version 3 of the Tools already have a look.

Used to go passed this school on the bus to company I used to work for many moons ago seemed like a really nice school and students getting on the bus always seemed pretty well behaved.

ICT Operations Manager Swanshurst School No knowledge of the school but someone emailed this to me. ICT OPERATIONS MANAGER – 36.5 HOURS PER WEEK – FULL TIME – GRADE 4 (£25,440 – £31,846)

Try these guys Burconix provide excellent service, competively priced and have done a considerable amount of Migrations etc

Cheers we use Nationwide as do most of the schools in our LEA I will have a word with our Business Manager when we are back to see if she has heard of anything as we are looking at extra tills this year and I haven't heard anything about this when we were discussing this with them.

Is pretty much how we do it here uses USBDLM to force USB to use use E or A and use FSRM and File Screening Management to block files which has a good list to start with but that you can easily add to can also email you if any files that are in your blocked list are tried to run or tried to copy etc.

Another one for Tasc Software and Insight, easy for Parents, Students and Staff use nice easy front end for users, Easy to setup, great support, Easily links to SIM's seamlessly enough said, been using this for about four years now and has been a great success and gone from strength to strength and a number of schools in the borough have converted to Insight and never looked back.

As well as the issues with the upgrades we always seem to get so issues around lack of testing, it is the poor communication from Capita, that info on the Autumn release having issues and this not easily found\highlighted on Support Net to be honest why I use Edugeek to check for any issues. Why Capita can't at least as someone has already said email all contacts from Support Net where there are issues with Upgrades or releases so at least schools can decide and make a more informed decision if they want to install the Upgrade having this information or at the very least email all LEA contacts so that at least any issues are more widely known is beyond me. We asked for a similar feature from another supplier whereby we had an Email in regards to upgrades or issues with upgrades could be emailed to us with a link to relevant information and this was done within about a week with an opt in or opt out option. Surely something like this would be beneficial from Capita rather than people having to trawl through relevant articles, forums to find out any issues.

As everyone has said good luck with your new role .

@PhilNeal I sort of Partly agree with Phil but also think there is something else going on, we moved from Office 2003 to 2010 a couple of years ago and did notice some issues with the old templates although some seemed fine and others we just couldn't get to work so we sort of used LosOjos method which fixed most of these had to recreate these where we just couldn't get them to work. We have been running Office 2010 for around 3/4 years now so all Templates should have and were working fine after the initial issues we had when changing when we changed Office. Over the Summer though we have completely re-vamped our analysis and reporting systems and this meant again changing a lot of the Reporting Templates where we again hit this issue of the reports not displaying correctly and again used the same method as LosOjos when we were altering in linked data which fixed most but still had to recreate some completely so not sure it is just the differences between the versions of Office alone.

As Ephelyon has said can't quite remember what PAR's was upfront but is £1,375 and Insight £1,347.50 yearly based 1040 Students. Again as Ephelyon has said for Behaviour from a class point of view can easily multi select a number of students or whole class to allocate Behaviour incident against Staff find this pretty quick to use, Drop down Box for Criteria, Radio buttons, we set points against specific incidents and staff can enter comments if they want, is really well used here because it is easy to use for staff but also SLT make sure staff are using the systems put in place and use the analysis from these systems well.

Used PAR's now in a couple of schools now over the last 10 years, introduced in from the ground up in one school so installation, configuration and training of staff with various features Registration, Behaviour, Detentions and Reporting ( to extent). Completely agree with past comments in regards to Support is excellent and again about asking for extra features or fixing any bugs they are excellent, upgrades are very painless. I feel the big advantages with PAR's is the user front end is much easier for staff to use also PAR's has a mass of pre-created reports that you can run to get various information these can then also be filtered easily, as well as a custom report feature and although Lesson Monitor and the SIM's front end has improved over the years still feel it isn't quite up to PAR's in regards to this or accessing reports although I have looked at this in a couple of schools a couple of times. We have numerous staff in various roles in school with a little training are then using the various reports themselves to extract various information, Exams\Reporting Officer, Heads of Year, Pastoral Head and Attendance Person, all find PAR's extremely useful in their roles and easy to use If you are looking at TASC and PAR's would also suggest you look at Insight their Parental Portal option which has worked brilliantly in giving Parents and Students access to Behaviour, Attendance, Reports and Exams information has also saved the school money as we now upload all reports to Insight so has saved money in printing, collating and sending these home as they are now accessible on Insight including past reports, we are also looking at integrating our web based Tracking and analysis into Insight so Parents and Students can also see this in insight so really they have a whole picture in one place.

Correro here as well which seems to work pretty well have all Budget holders managing own budgets on this but can delegate some spending authority to members of there Department been using this for four years now and is pretty stable. Seems to work well with good reporting features, emails staff automatically if something needs dealing with. SQL backend with web based front end. The Finance Department in this schools and a few Academies in the Borough seem to like it.

Loved this thought it was a great start to the series and as someone has said if they keep up momentum will be great.

Do Class Tracking in SIM's and Do similar to @Lojos and @SteveM555 Reports via CommandReporter then into own SQL Database then Web front end to do analysis, works pretty well but has took sometime to set up and do it like this as we wanted some bespoke analysis and easy access for all staff and produce some bespoke reports to save staff time, to be honest can do a far bit in SIM's on its own and Discover which we looked at but we wanted some very specific information and Reports and to make these very easily accessible to everyone. We are sort of looking at linking this into Insight our Parental Portal which to be honest I have already done as a test and was pretty easy just need to make our Web Analysis Server use SSL. So would probably look at @PhilNeal methods first with Discover and see if that can get you what you want.

Hi Vikpaw the LEA dialled in and made a change to my permissions not sure where but it seemed to fix the issue I have emailed back to let them know and to see where the fix is but haven't heard anything back as yet but seems sorted for now, cheers Vikpaw.

Could try Slimdrivers