Stutwo

AVPartsmaster, ICT-Direct, Amazon and Insight usually covers it. Interesting how many are recommended as going "above and beyond", maybe our expectations of what a supplier should be doing to earn our business are set too low.

Just had this from Groupcall, I'll be interested to see what it does: You are quite likely one of the 18,000+ UK schools that already has Groupcall Xporter installed to help process the data that powers third-party applications you subscribe to – such as homework, library or parental engagement systems. With the GDPR deadline now clearly visible on the horizon, you will doubtless be doing your due diligence and mapping what data is being moved where and under what basis. Groupcall will soon be launching an Xporter portal that will make this process much easier, allowing you to better understand and manage the data flows in your school

Sorry I just noticed that and amended my response as you posted yours. I'm not aware of anywhere that could be recommended other than the Lords at the moment though? I've got a meeting with our LA on the GDPR this afternoon so I'll ask the question there.

(Apologies, I've amended my reply as I realised I was linking to the same thread quoted above) The Lords amendment was the only one going through at the moment, and as said before it was dropped. There was no indication that it was for the greater good and common sense anyway, just the self interest of a few peers.

As long as you can get parents on board with your own messaging system, then absolutely.

You can easily make a Facebook page that you have control over - but it does need constant attention. You can set it so only authorised users can post content, you can't stop people commenting but you can delete comments and filter profanity. It's far more effective than either Twitter or your website if you keep it active because Facebook is becoming more and more the de facto method of people communicating information. Events needing publicity can easily be "boosted" for a tenner or so - last time we did that it appeared in the news feed of over 12000 people in a week. Twitter has its uses but the inability to lock down replies means we don't use it anywhere near as much, and certainly not on any displays in school.

The proposed amendment is in here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2017-2019/0066/18066-I.pdf Page 3, Clause 6 - Proposed amendment supported by 3 members - interestingly including Lord Pannick, who is a QC specialising in Public Law and Human Rights so has a bit of clout..

I'm sorry, it's still too raw. The curtains have been closed all week.

My son's Cozy Coupe and a hydrangea in a pot fell over in the back garden - apart from that trauma we came through ok

Our school record for an Educare course is 18 seconds.

Iris, the watcher of cupboards across the nation.

CPOMS is another I believe. It flags when students move between schools and transfers all records if both parties agree.

I spoke to them about downtime, only after 6pm Wednesdays. Not sure what the latest ones are for, the useful changes are all now "by the start of September". Having said that, all our tests this week have run smoothly, just the very occasional "URL not found" which is often resolved by logging out and back in again.

We're running 6.0.45 and for what it's worth, it's the best version we've seen in a long time. Log viewing is still taking too long on occasion but everything else seems absolutely fine.

We're happy with ConnectEd. Responses to SMS/App messages are written straight to SIMS at the discretion of the attendance office and the communication with SIMS is quick (typically writeback within 1 minute and usual report generating time to populate the absent/lates lists for contact). Once you push the app with parents to get a decent userbase, then set the system to only use SMS to those without the app, the savings on texts are significant. The Social Media section is useful if you have more than one person you want to be able to post to Twitter and Facebook as the logins are held within ConnectEd, and also provides some protection if the holder of the logins is absent. The Social Media monitoring simply does regular searches of social media with the keywords you add, then presents the results within ConnectEd or emails you daily when there are any results.