Ditto

Aha - so I could be a musician after all:D

You read my thought process!

I was, thank you! I've now edited the post to resemble something like proper English .

Does it include the migration, or can that part but be tendered independently?

Oh, I doubt I did . In all seriousness I entirely agree with you. I guess with over 2/3rds of the market, there's room for significant numbers in both pots. I do wonder if the former pot is more the case with primary and the pot you rightly mention is the case with secondary. Either way, with the latest procurement news, has there ever been a hotter week in the MIS market?

Oh yes, building your own calculations, I forgot I did that with Progresso! I'm increasingly thinking ESS should buy Advanced's product, shouldn't cost much based on market share, invest in that - it'll be a quicker route to having a cloud based solution than any other plans I've read!

Great timing - not! The product is clearly good enough to win plenty of market share in it's own right. There's a dinosaur rampaging at the moment and we all know the reaction. Win or lose the court case, they'll lose reputation and that'll cost them.

I agree. I guess we ought to remember the market is shifting, as is well documented by @bringmoredata. Next year's results and the one in three years is going to be a fascinating watch.

I'm afraid I don't have any specific advice, but I think it's an important area to look at when comparing MIS. When I used Progresso (Cloud School), because of the ability to use SSRS I could build to almost any request - wasn't always easy, but could be done. I believe iSAMS is similar. I know Arbor has a report builder. There is is usually a trade off of on usability versus functionality and complexity. SSRS is powerful, but it's not an end user tool. The best applications offer both, so I'm interested to hear others experiences. You might need to reach out to other forums as when I did this work, I was primarily a Data Manager and whilst there are a few here, there are more elsewhere. I also know from experience, who helps with reporting varies a lot in schools. In an all-through school, the senior head had me do it, with data checking by him. We emailed parents PDF's. It worked well and visually was good. However, the primary lead couldn't get to grips with systems way of handling the primary assessment data. Result was endless spreadsheets and Google docs, piles of paper and envelopes on the floor and a lot of stamps. It chewed up huge amounts of teachers time, Office and SLT time. Another school, a big secondary, just the very dull standard SIMS report - they'd never been exposed to anything better!

Very true, but that line would hold no persuasion with the decision makers I'm working with. Another point to add, I believe the top competitors to SIMS offer a better experience for MATS where you want a collective view.

Fascinating question! I suspect your second post means it won't be possible anyway, but I guess if the teacher used a digital camera, they'd be nothing stopping the photos being uploaded to Google Drive, so the question remains relevant theoretically anyway. A couple of observations first. Firstly, it's good to see Google using English education terminology and not usual US K-12 wording. Second observation is, I don't think GDPR intended to get in the way, of what on the face of it, is a reasonable thing to do, but.... I've been having a number of discussions recently with my charitable employer that works with a lot of schools, but also the NHS. The charity always seem to look for consent, but I'm challenging that stance. In terms of lawful basis to process data, there are 6, of which consent is just one. As the ICO point out, consent isn't necessarily a better choice than any of the others. I often refer back to https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing. Completing a DPIA, can help with deciding which is best for your scenario. Also, getting your DPO to review and ultimately sign-off the DPIA will leave you in a more defendable position in the case of a complaint, than not having any evidence of showing you have given it proper thought. I think a key question for me is whether any of the work could be linked to an individual and also what the teacher is going to do with the images. Sharing within the class only is one thing, sharing with all parents or posting on the school website a different matter. So, as I find almost daily at the moment with DPA/GDPR matters, there are more questions to start with than answers. What is good practice though, is once you've decide your lawful basis and to what extent you are going to share the data, get your documentation, such as privacy notices etc. updated and published.

I have to say what a fantastic read this thread is. I'm 90+% in-line with most of what has been said, but I wanted to note a slightly different perspective. Most of us here are tech savvy, a good number of us data protection savvy and clearly a significant number also business savvy. But, invariably the decision makers, the likes of 'educational sector only' experienced heads and SLT don't have the collective knowledge we have. Some of those decision makers are smart enough to take the expert advice beyond their knowledge, but as too many of us know, plenty aren't. Larger MATS perhaps have don't have this issue to the same degree and I believe @bringmoredata has shown that MATs are more likely to churn from SIMS. Having worked with four MIS operationally, and working very closely with SLT, SBMs and heads in parallel, along with approaching 8 years of school governance, I believe I have a broad perspective. Something that I don't think has been considered, is there are a significant number of schools sufficiently happy with SIMS as-is, that they would have most likely renewed for the next three years anyway. As an example, my governance school is part of growing primary only MAT. It's still in single figures and unlikely to change from that in 3 years. As a governor I raised the idea at looking at SIMS alternatives; it was a non-runner. Firstly, the original SBM used to say when questioned on this after we acadamised, 'Don't want to through the baby out with the bath water'. The same was true when we joined the parent trust. Ultimately, the SBM was anti-change and feared it. As a governor, it's a little tricky keeping the topic strategic, and non-operational. But it was 100% clear nothing would change. The SBM is now retired and the trust moved the role centrally so we don't have one now. I have touched on the topic at trust level, but no appetite for change currently there either. The bottom line is they use the product so lightly, they just don't need to change and obviously feel the expense is OK. I also believe their focus is very much on other priorities. I still disagree with them and I will use this hot potato to once again try to get them to open the eyes to other products. In terms of PR, ESS could not have got it more wrong! I believe the pressure will mount to a degree they will backdown and 1 year renewals will be available, but the reputational damage will have been done. How much better would the PR be if ESS said, 'Hey, here's a discounted rate if you renew for a three year period. We're looking for the commitment to help fund massive investment programme to improve the product you currently use, including moving to a cloud based MIS'. I suspect the current approach will cost them dearly, but it might only show up in 3 or 4 years when they fail to match the current cloud market, but a lot more decision makers will become more aware of the competition due to the heat created by the current underhand approach.

This is a valid point. I used to get 1, 3 and 5 year quotes for Progresso as it was then and the 3 and 5 year discounts were significant. Progresso internally could plan future investment based on those contracts, but unfortunately their marker share has dropped off so much, their not in many schools long list, let alone short. Perhaps ESS should look to buy them out and invest in that as their solution! Progresso had a stinker of a start, but when I finished using it just under 2 years ago, it had stabilised and was a better product than it's reputation.

Only 'cos I posted it out-of-hours

... and Wilson sold for $308,000 last week - bonkers!

I have a Dell T5500 and T7610 and a few large (4TB) SAS drives. I'm looking at installing the drives in to both machines. I'm thinking ideally I need to get a RAID card, either Dell cards or LSI MegaRaid ones. Mostly likely I'll pick a second hand one. The advice I'm looking for is what would be a reasonable match given the age of the devices and to keep costs manageable. I'd also appreciate advice on cables and cable lengths. Finally, out of interest, are similar era PowerEdge cards and option?

Taking this topic a little further, is the difference between Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium significant and worth the extra license fee. On license fees, I believe there is a 'non-profits' price point - is that something you have purchased? How much is the saving over business versions.

When you say 6th worst pandemic, is one of the top 5 including the Bubonic plague in the mid 14th Century?

True, and having been sitting in an office with the business manager when the auditor was present doing her thing, it didn't come across a particularly probing! With various financial scandals that have sparked since academisation (and perhaps before too), it's right the EFSA monitor closely. What I'd like to see is similar probing in IT security and perhaps it might save a few schools the horrors of a ransomware attack. I guess we should leave it there in case you need to put an off topic flag up!

You're right, but I think this covers why - effectively a data quirk - why they can't retro-fix the data s beyond me. I don't think they'd count children doses as first and second. As for Care workers trying to kill their patients, I don't think that's fair, (even if in jest) some of them just have a different view on vaccinations - different to yours and my view on vaccinations, but one we should respect. However, I'm generally supportive of vaccinations requirements in a limited number of sectors. Ultimately it is an individual, tough choice, but sometimes that happens in life. But, we have to understand it may have a consequence in terms of staffing. As I understand things, pre-Covid, some vaccinations were a pre-requisite to certain jobs (mostly medical I guess), so it's not an entirely novel concept. My father is in a care home and was one of those dumped from hospital into a care home, back and forth a few times and it's a minor miracle he didn't contract covid. Where he is now is local, accessible to family, very stringent on covid secure practice and as a family we couldn't ask for more dedicated staff looking after him.

I tend to agree, but it is up to each school to decide. If your policy is to not have guest accounts, then fine, stick to it, but equally if you have appropriate guest access, you are free to access it. On the topic of what Ofsted inspect, it is true the IT angle is generally only covered on broad safe-guarding perspective. I'd like to see it broadened, to cover IT security in it's widest context, but I doubt too many inspectors have the appropriate skills to make a judgement and to train that level of expertise would take some doing. But it's not just IT - a similar view could apply to facilities and all HSE questions, finance and good financial practice. Ultimately the Ofsted inspectors are very focussed, understandably, on educational practice and performance, with a broad oversight on safe-guarding. You'd probably need a game changing approach to school inspections to cover the wider areas from an auditing perspective. I think there would be value in that, but can't see it happening anytime soon. At the end of the day Ofsted stands for "Office for standards of Education", not the broader aspects of running what effectively is a business model.

I'd like to move to more electronic forms - it'll probably be MS Forms, but the concept is much the same. We'd probably have to still support some paper as electronic isn't viable for some parents.

As I'm now I the main conduit between our organisation and our DPO, a number of interesting questions have come my way. One is around forms of consent and how to record it. Unfortunately my organisation is still skewed to paper records, so often they ask our 'clients' (under 18 children and young people) to sign a paper document to give consent to various data collection/sharing items. So the record we have is paper based. The document may additionally be signed by a parent. This can be scanned or photo'd and stored in our system against the client and the idea is that the original is shredded. We also record the answers against the clients account. Sometimes the document is a completed electronic Word document or PDF form where the client types in their name and date. It always amused me that people use a cursive font - I know that makes no difference, but that's an aside! The question on these two options is, is one better than the other and how do they sit from a GDPR perspective. Being a techie, I'd much rather a auditable, trackable electronic consent form, but the organisation isn't ready for that yet.

I can probably Google and experiment to the answer, but I'm hoping you can fast-track me to an answer. A colleague has sent a Excel file out to staff that is residing on SharePoint. The workbook has filters to allow the user to target the relevant information. The colleague has asked everyone to a) not delete anything, b) clear any filters after use. I can advise the colleague about read-only files, but I thought there was something around 'personal filters' that might help too. Also, when I open the file, it goes to desktop version (because I think I asked it to ages ago) but for others I expect it'll load the web-based Excel version. Can anyone enlighten me on the differences in behaviour in this situation with desktop versus web Excel, and how best we can avoid the filter issue.

I misread that as 'proper gusset' at first - oops