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Hi all, we recently published a blog article on raising whole school parental engagement through effective student reporting and I thought I would share it within this forum. http://bit.ly/1yja5pQ Do you have any winning strategies for parental engagement? What are the biggest challenges that you face with your current IT infrastructure to facilitate sharing information with parents? Best wishes Reeza

Hi everyone, Hornsea School and Language College is one of our earliest adopters of EduLink One, since its launch less than 5 months ago. EduLink One is a powerful whole-school platform for communication; sharing school data and providing easy access to a school’s MIS for deeper learner insight. EduLink One is accessible 24/7 via a web browser or app. Parental and student engagement is an important mission of Hornsea School and Language College, a school with 1,100 students on roll. For Rob Coles, the Network Manager at the school this has meant implementing effective measures for real time reporting, as well as messaging. Rob explains why they chose EduLink One as their preferred tool for ensuring student and parent participation is maximised. “Firstly, ‘keeping it simple’ has been my motto. If we can make access to various 3rd party tools and services easy, it is significantly more likely parents and students will use it. As EduLink One is a single unified platform that delivers several fundamental services that we want parents and students to interact with, a single login to access all of them is an attractive proposition. We previously used SchoolsComm and Emerge, but with EduLink One we could consolidate everything we needed within one solution, simplifying access. Even better, it saved the school money. EduLink One complements our Moodle Learning platform, sharing the same login, so we have a truly holistic approach to our digital services. Secondly for teachers, they can take registration electronically, which writes back to SIMS. As it runs on a smartphone, this is really useful for subjects like PE and drama, where you don’t want to be lugging round a cumbersome laptop or tablet. We can also use it on school trips. There is no limitation to how many staff can access EduLink One, which is really convenient and flexible.” To read the full case study click here. You can try out our demo site for free by clicking here (no registration is required). Please PM me if you have any questions.

Hi All, We are currently in the process of looking at an app that would tie in Text Messaging/Push Notifications, Payments, Social Media, student reporting etc and have recently been looking into Weduc? I know there are others out there and we have have had a few demo's from different companies, was just wondering if anyone else currently is and uses Weduc and how have you found it to be? Are parents on board and happy with the app? Thoughts?

Has anyone implemented the Frog Parent Assessment module? There are no helpful instructions on how to configure your Aspects in SIMS in order to get them to work with Frog. I could really do with visiting a school that has it up and running, just to see where we are going wrong! Is there anyone who has got it working that would mind me popping if for a look? Many thanks.

Hi i am looking for any good/bad information anyone has on Schoolcomms we are currently using on of their competitors but they are fantastic and i looking to try and find a cheaper option any help would be incredible Thanks

BECTA is long gone (may it rest in peace), the Education Bill is looming on the horizon, and Ofsted framework changes are afoot... We are at that time of year where we need to renew our SIMS Learning Gateway maintenance contract, and I am being asked from above if it is worth us keeping SLG running. Yes, I agree we can save money on printing reports by having them available online, but those savings do not match the amount Capita desire from us! I started to wonder how many Schools/Colleges are planning on maintaining SIMS Learning Gateway (and other equivalents) now that it is not "expected" for us to provide it. I know that Ofsted will most certainly be looking at the different communication methods used with parents/carers, but there's not really any mention of online reporting, just VLE's. We already use email, text, a VLE, and our website to communicate; we have SIMS.net installed in classrooms for registration purposes; we already meet frequently with the parents/carers of our students; and we do not set homework for students as homework is done during our slightly longer school day. Apart from attendance, report, achievement and behavioural information (which we already communicate to our parents/carers), I'm not sure what else I can add to try and justify the expense of keeping SLG for what parents/carers and our staff will actually get from it. Has anyone else been put in the same situation? Has anyone considered deferring using SIMS Learning Gateway for a period of time? Am I just being jaded? (Forgive my mood but I've had a headache all morning, and it's been a long week already!) Any comments are much appreciated

Did a search and didn't see this rearing its ugly head lately. This is like a train wreck waiting to happen here. Our registers look fantastic, ( after they have been tidied a week later). So, what are your plans? 1 .What product are you going to use to publish your data to parents? 2. How confident are you that the attendance data is accurate. ( In real time ) 3. What data do you plan to publish in the early stages - AM/PM reg, all lesson attendance, behaviour? Finally i haven't found a document from the DCSF that explains exactly what schools will legally be obliged to publish. Can anyone point me to anything? Cheers