GrumbleDook

This is one that has come up a number of times over the years ... actually getting a complete list of what schools in England are meant to have (there are differences for other sections of UK, so please contact your Education Department for the correct list in Wales, Scotland and N.I.). Advice on the policies and documents that governing bodies and proprietors of schools are required to have by law https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/357068/statutory_schools_policies_Sept_14_FINAL.pdf Perhaps we should play bingo and see who gets a full house first?

Having kipped in with you, Ric, Russ, Vik, John, Si and a few others ... I can honestly say I never really noticed his snoring ...

hmm ... *all* members ... at last, a competition I can enter. Hope the task doesn't rely on access to a) a school network b) a flux capacitor and c) any brain cells ...

Just because the MIS goes pear-shaped it does not mean all data and information on learners is lost and that a magic cloud descends on the school which means staff suddenly forget that they have the same information in other places and that they can't even remember what the children look like! To make an assessment about the amount of time, effort and resources that are needed to make sure that the MIS is instantly replaced a school needs to way up the likelihood and the impact. If the impact is mitigated by using data and informations in forms *other* than the MIS, then this is a reasonable approach to give enough time to get the MIS up again. I have seen this range from 2 days (in a fully virtualised service with cloud-based snapshots of the VMs available, which needed rolling onto alternative infrastructure and then testing .. hence 2 days ... and 20 hour days at that) to 3 months for it to be fully operational, but with bare bones stuff sorted within 2 weeks (enough for exams, paying bills, dealing with attendance). Yes, some folk are a bit to lax in how harmful this could be, but others are too extreme. Schools can be very flexible things and run very bare bones for a certain amount of time. A school will be criticised more for closing because they had no MIS available than if they stayed open but had to be inventive (or use historic methods) when doing certain things. Please, everyone, remember that data is *not* just electronic stuff housed in one data store.

*always* do it through iTunes ... makes it so much simpler.

Have a look at the scenario ... it is a good and real world one, where an NM might have a BC/DR plan in place, perform annual checks to make sure the data can be restored, etc but still be in a position where there is a failure that could not be foreseen. - - - Updated - - - Sack the person who is ultimately at the top? Depending on your theological position does that mean we sack God? Dickie D will be happy ;-)

Ah ... the hidden art of management ... blame management ;-)

I should be clear when I state 'timetable' ... this includes attendance which is statutory to record and report on. Manual recording can last so long but eventually you need this to be done electronically to allow you to share it with those who have to have it. As part of Business Continuity (which all schools have a plan for) the school will stay open. Unless it is a serious environmental failure (flooding, snow, asbestos, fire) the school stays open or makes alternative arrangements ... if there are 3 days left until the end of term, then yes ... the SLT may make a decision to close early for the summer ... but we are really talking about a few days, even if the school is only open for a handful of years (years 12, 10 and 9 are usual choices due to curriculum pressures). For most circumstances that I think the OP was coming from, we are talking hardware / software failure ... If data that is submitted / provided to the school is lost, as in no longer accessible from the hardware / software still in your possession, then we are talking about data being wiped, not lost and available for others to pick up. The ICO (from asking this question in 2011) is interested in breaches of data where it has a direct impact on the person. If this is where a child is not taught correctly due to medical information not being available then there is an impact. If that data is kept in another format and is still available then it has not had an impact, and so it would be hard to show any issue. The ICO would have serious concerns that the data was wiped and would take time to recover / replace (but it would be recoverable) but in the same way that a fire can destroy paper records, the ICO would not look at that as a breach. The fact that half-burned records are strewn across a car park afterwards would be something they look at. If in doubt, call the ICO hotline with the following scenario: A school has a lightning strike and, due to unforeseeable hardware failure on the UPS, the MIS server hosting all electronic data on staff, students, finances, etc is toast. The local backups are not available due to unforeseen hardware failure. Planned verification tests were due but had not been completed for that year meaning that the backups presently hold no meaningful data that can be restored. In this scenario what issues do ICO foresee? The school has access to significant portions of data in other formats or in other locations (hard copy, data held centrally by LA or central government, local electronic copies) and can gather these together to regenerate majority of the data. If someone would like to volunteer to do this and report back it would be helpful to this thread.

There is a difference between 'lost' as in it has gone somewhere and you do not know and 'LOST!!!!' as is no longer available due to serious hardware failure, etc. The former is a matter for the ICO. The latter is a complete pain in the backside but not unrecoverable. 1 - If you are a state school someone else will have some of the data. In most cases (even with academies) the LA is the first point of call as data is shared with them on a regular basis, including admission data. 2 - Finance: this data can be rebuilt from hard copies ... it takes a long amount of time but that is why you see finance folk printing out reams of stuff and filing things away. 3 - Timetable: you can almost guarantee that your timetable has paper copies of things, or even a local export ... 4 - Emails: you are a bit stuck here. If they are gone, then they are gone. There may be local copies on machines and it is important you save them as quickly as you can, but a lost email is a lost email. 5 - Other Stuff: Marks, custom fields, analysis sheets, etc ... most folk do have local copies of stuff and it can be regenerated, but it is costly (in time and in additional staff to do it). As part of an estimate on this in 2008 I spoke with a range of people about what the impact would be (after a nasty virus outbreak in a school that affected the MIS server) and a typical secondary school (1000 learners) would expect to take 3 months to complete rebuild everything *where information was still available in hard copy or alternate electronic forms*. It would take 25% of existing admin and support staff time, the goodwill of teachers to rein put some stuff, also require an additional 5 temps to do data input and 1 person full time to co-ordinate and manage. This was based on conversations with 8 schools and that was before MIS were being used for so much data analysis or being tied in with other products. Conservatively, for some schools I would double this now. Different schools have different priorities of what they need to restore first, but it is generally as follows to allow a school to run. 1 - Contact details. Without these you cannot have children in school. If you have hard copy that you can rely on in the interim pass go and go to the next one. 2 - Timetable. You have to know which children are where and when. Again, if hard copy is available then pass go. 3 - Finance. Salaries have to be paid. Work with the LA / EFA / Bank to get this sorted asap. 4 - Assessment / attainment. This will vary depending on time of year ... but exam season and results season can make thing critical. Speak to your exam boards for support. The rest tends to be as it comes and based on decisions from SLT.

Hippy Bathday! Hope it is a good one, enjoyed with a good glass of the water of life!

Brownies are so tough bears ask if there are any in the nearby woods before they go for the morning constitutional.

Little one has started school so the pre-school fees are gone ... to be replaced by uniform, after school care, replacement sewing machine (previous died sorting out uniform), MOT and car repairs, dance lesson subs, soft play subs and missing out on a deal for a decent exercise bike as we would have run out of cash for the month!

No Problem. The materials are pretty easy to follow, as are the how-to videos. The Digital Leaders are putting together more materials as well, including a cracking set of resources around LNF. Keep an eye out on the #hwbdysgu hashtag on twitter to find the Digital Leaders and you will find plenty of tweets about what is going on and who is doing what. If you ever have any general queries there is always [email protected] and for tech queries [email protected].

You might find it easier to use the guides held here. Hwb - Hwb+ help and support

Oh, and you can go to Intellectual Property Office - Changes to copyright law and guidance for the list of new and updated exceptions

Copyright & Schools: photocopy, scan, screen or broadcast copyright resources in classrooms - simple advice for teachers gives exact advice about what can be done, where, when and how it can be used.

:-( Account older than 3 years. Maybe after pay day I will sort it out for premium ... it is worth it.

This is the regular problem we had with the initial conferences. Interest in the East Midlands, London and North West coincided with people available to organise and get things running. Unfortunately (at the time) we struggled with anything down Bristol or further to the South West ... and it was not for want of me or @russdev trying. Hopefully, Rich and co have the support of members down that way now and can get something sorted. Best of luck with it.

The catch all 'anyone else the HoC deems needs to see the results early' is so that HoDs can do comparative checks against predicted data and highlight any issues to the HoC (including the need to have papers remarked or raise noted complaints to awarding bodies). Lots of reasons for this, including providing advice for students ... and it would be impossible to generate advice and release results in the same day for some institutes due to size.

This has been discussed in a variety of forums and to some extent it boils down to the school completing a risk assessment on the company, including what they have placed in the Safe Harbor notice and what the school thinks the risks are for the countries where the data may be stored.

And this is part of the problem that exists now. People mistake change for something new as an improvement, purely because it is change. This is not just an issue with technology, but with many sectors ... Hey, we can even look at the DfE for some scary examples of this within policies! If a customer requirement is met by an existing product but that can be made more efficient and still meet the requirement then this is a good change. If a customer requirement is met by an existing product but a change to the requirement is met by a new or improved product, resulting in an improvement of what the company does, then this is a good change. If a customer requirement is met by an existing product but a change to the requirement is forced upon by a new or improved product, then this may not always by an improvement to the company. You get the same in schools and businesses ... change for change's sake. Or the cynic in me would say ... change for the shareholders' sake? Dump desktops for laptops Dump laptops for netbooks Dump everything for tablets Now folk have swapped tech ... erm ... what are the going to do with it?

The problem here is that you are both talking about a solution specific purchase rather than a requirement driven purchase. The drive to upgrade to the latest version of products because it add 43 1/2 new features ... but removes 23 others ... is not a reason to say the new product is better, especially when it meets less of the requirements requested. If using LotusNotes from 1999 actually meets the customer's requirements (presuming that patches for security, etc were all available to bring it up to spec on that side) what would be the problem? Please note that this is not just specific to this thread but it would be interesting to see the response of folk on this in general.

Just had the same chat too. As a note, due to changes to the curriculum in England, Switched on ICT is now replaced by Switched on Computing (apart from EY).

Has anyone dropped a line to Rising Stars about it? Happy to let them know if no-one has.

Directly from the Information and Records Management Society. RM Toolkit for Schools - Information and Records Management Society BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) is a more persuasive argument for backups than legal retention schedules ... even if it might not be legally more important.