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Surely there must be a better way to resolve this dispute? Education Software Solutions (ESS) has asked the High Court to intervene in a row that risks disruption at 1,100 state schools in Northern Ireland. Capita sold the SIMS software to ESS, set up by the private equity firm Montagu, for £400m in 2020 as part of chief executive Jon Lewis’s efforts to reduce a £1.1bn debt burden. The outsourcer continued to provide the software to schools in Northern Ireland under licence, but ESS claims that permission expired in March. Capita disputes this, telling the court it accepted “commercial terms” for an extension of the licence proposed by ESS during a phone call. ESS wants the High Court to declare that no valid extension was made and have threatened to apply for an injunction forcing the software to be deleted across Northern Ireland. Around 1,100 Northern Irish state schools could be forced to delete copies of the software provided by Capita, which ESS claims are effectively pirated. Further information on this dispute and the court claims/counterclaims can be found on the WhichMIS? website at whichmis.com

Hi Everyone, Just wanted to give a heads-up that our annual entitlement statement came through for one of my schools this morning and noticed they are trying to force everyone on to three year contract terms. The exact wording they use: I have sent them a message through the renewals portal and also emailed them directly to say we only want to renew for 1 year as we are planning to move to a new MIS soon. Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up and you might want to warn your business managers, etc. in case someone just clicks blindly through the renewal or, I suspect if the renewal form isn't completed they would just automatically move everyone to 3 year terms. I have to say when I saw they were taken over by ParentPay my hopes were pretty low but this is clearly just a way to force schools that are likely looking elsewhere to stay while they try to catch up. David

As the title states really, the ESS portal is useless. We have contacted the contact us link and not had a reply in over 7 days. The only information is for the next 12 months of SLA for FMS and nothing on the steps to take for cancelling / giving notice etc. Anyone navigated this recently? Anyone have any advice or contacts at ESS / ParentPay Group to take this up? Thanks in advance.

I was wondering if anyone here had a Meru Wireless installed and could offer some advice I'm having some strange happenings with our wireless in that some laptops just decide they cannot connect to the wireless network. If I log in as the local admin, then it connects no problem with no manual connecting from me, just connects itself. Not being able to track the problem down (other than maybe an issue with the number of laptops attempting to connect at once, around 30/40) my other thought was maybe the ESS Profile wasn't set up correctly. Any help would be gratefully received.