Ditto

The thread has got technical to a degree that doesn't matter to end users. The underlying issues need to be tackled and fixed permanently to the degree this thread goes silent.

Thanks, that'll be great, including the humour!

The charity I work for are looking at rolling out cyber security training for all staff at a minimum basic level. I'm looking at the NCSC free offering, but have you used something else that are feel is worth considering.

No more horsing around - it's overture musical puns now.

In that other Bromcom performance thread, there are lots of comments around stated up times not reflecting reality - we need to add a good dose of realism to the buying process.

Good point - but a worryingly familiar sounding story. On the upside, at least this time around, there are a number of good players in the market.

Common financial sense over process.

In DfE speak, 'must' is a legal requirement, 'should' recommended. I would expect if you can demonstrate the appropriate protections, I expect other approaches are fine. Besides, what are the inspection process here - I can't see Ofsted checking. None of which should stop you guiding your school in your preferred direction of course!

It will have had an impact, no doubt, but I've no idea to what extent. Well, I say no idea, but I know Arbor won over 3000 schools in 2022 and 2023, so probably not too big - Bromcom by comparison were over 1000 schools. Remember another of the biggest trust (AET)is also going through the process, but we won't know the outcome for well over a year according to https://schoolsweek.co.uk/software-supplier-takes-legal-action-against-second-trust/. But isn't it strange that more than one large trust has selected something other than Bromcom and gets hauled through the courts. Barring some very sinister goings-on within the market, I don't get it. Equally, one has to wonder if ever procurement Bromcom won was forensically scrutinised, would they all have deemed to be 100% clean and lead to the same product selection. To date, as far as I know, no other MIS has gone down that route, and whilst Bromcom are within their legal rights to pursue and win the legal case, it does set them apart from their competitors.

Maybe slightly off topic, presumably dealing direct with suppliers is OK too for those below tender threshold? I used to negotiate directly with Advanced's Progresso for a growing Free School and got exceptionally good deals - perhaps too good a deal as the product has been dropped since . I learnt they moved to Arbor, but don't via which route.

For clarity, the equivalent figures for market share by pupils is as follows and should remove the bias of school size due to phase of school. In 2020, Bromcom's market share of pupils was 4%, matching Arbor's also at 4%. In 2023, Arbor reached 20% compared to just 12% for Bromcom. (Acknowledgement to @bringmoredata for this.) Potentially, it makes my point even more clearly. Arbor are doing something to achieve greater market share than Bromcom and if the products are equally good, then the question is, what is it? Reading the /forums/mis-systems/233791-bromcom-sso-issue-slowness.html thread, perhaps whilst the products are functionally similar, one has to question production level delivery. This sort of thing doesn't show up in demo's, but slowly the wider market becomes aware. Personally I don't think that is the difference, but I'm not sure what is. For me, for a number of reasons, the brand image of each is very different, and that maybe leads to unconscious bias. For those running outside of a tender, perhaps it is conscious bias.

Came here to follow up on the puns, but looks like you all hoofed it.

94% positive on Steam from over 100k users. Only launched on Steam 18/1/2024. Described as 'Early access'. I presume we'd need to stump up the £24.99 to Steam to use the Edugeek server? I understand it is available on Game Pass for Xbox, but would be happy to here the full lowdown from the experts.

Too many naysayers out there

In 2020, Bromcom's market share of schools was 3%, just behind Arbor's at 4%. In 2023, Arbor reached 22% compared to just 9% for Bromcom. That tells me one thing: i) Arbor as a product is in many schools opinion a better value proposition than Bromcom's. So fundamentally, whilst UL's process was deemed not compliant with procurement regulations, it's selection of product was entirely reasonable. Something I know the judgement ruling reflected. As a consequence, as the article mentions, £2 million that could have gone on kids education, didn't. I've no evidence, but I do wonder if the different growths rate reflect this - for example are more schools going down the framework route or if under the appropriate threshold just not including Bromcom in their tender. It's just a shame this whole debacle occurred. My ideal would be Arbor and Bromcom compete on their products with neither totally dominating. A market with 3 or more strong competitors is genuinely best for the consumers.

Sad face understandable, but should also have for all the successes achieved.

Were any of the above post from users other than people that migrated to Arbor. For example, I would think moving to Bromcom would offer similar opportunity to drop some third party apps, unless that is a differentiator between the two?

The daft thing is, if they report it to ICO, things will blow over quickly, especially given how short a period the issue was live and how quickly resolved. So maybe we can say they end up in tepid water. A carefully worded email should be sent to schools, who can then pass on details as they see fit. That should be possible even if they don't know each actual breach details. Beyond that, they might get a ICO might advise that steps should be taken on preventing the issue in the future. By going in to denial, when a cluster of schools in the meantime notify ICO of the issue, then they are likely to end up in steaming hot water!

Section 4 covers it all and uses the wording 'without delay' more than once. So, if you know a school whose data is breached, they should have been notified 'without delay'. I've been on the receiving end of this process and whilst I know it's stressful at their end, it is this end too and extremely time consuming and therefore costly. We were notified with a 'assume all data breached' at the outset, but eventually it was concluded, that with near certainity, no data was lost. The lack of information was always the hardest position, as we had to balance undue stress for notifiying vulnerable people unnecessay against then finding out from a third party im an uncontrolled manner. So please, TES/Classcharts, tell us what you know now, and update us as you proceed.

referring to " could learn a thing or two"

... and TES given the current issue with Classcharts.

Thank you so much. I'm talking to a school tomorrow that has decided to migrate the same way, but haven't started yet. I know they are Classcharts users, which given the current issue they are dealing with will be invaluable information.

I hope my reseach doesn't trigger Storm Kathleen

So as best I can tell, there are no documented changes on the latest version. However, I see one diffference of note (ignoring the un-capitilising of a word in the previous version - no pedants here ) and that is as follows: I however note that 'Pendo' is documented as being added as of 31/10/2022. Thanks again to web.archiveorg, it shows the update to the list didn't happen. To conclude, all-in-all nothing but some version control updates. As a side note, I note that TES retain the right to update these policies and it's the schools job to check them - see Section 8. Now, that's a list of 15 third parties that TES might be sharing your pupils data with. Hands up who: a) has a DPIA document for Classcharts use b) considered and documented the list of third parties and OK'd those c) constanly check the TES site in case the DPIA needs updating. It would be interesting to know the number of Classchart schools, and the number that answer 'Yes' for question a) In mathematical terms, I expect the sequence of numbers thereafter are best described as a curve of exponential decay!

Yep, the change in the terms looks to be fixing a broken link. I'll work on seeing privacy notice changes.