We’ve been privileged to speak with even more edtech and industry thought leaders this term, and the insight they provide us and our community is invaluable.

So thank you Tony Lockwood for talking to us about how companies can improve the performance of their products and develop new solutions.

Thanks to Duncan Baldwin for giving us an insight into teaching, his time at Capita SIMS, influencing government as Deputy Policy Director at ASCL and his current Headship.

We were delighted to welcome Winston Poyton back for a follow-up chat on IRIS Education, especially given how much has changed in the world of school management systems in the last 12 months alone.

It’s great to speak with colleagues from MIS support teams as it gives such a unique and insightful view of the landscape, so thank you Keren Wild for getting involved and giving us your perspective.

Sue Macgregor talked to us about Alps Education’s focus on providing the right analytical tools to schools so they have the power to help every student achieve their full potential, thank you!

And finally, thank you to Ian Koxvold of Supporting Education for talking to us about changes across the education sector, what the future might hold in terms of new solutions, and new strategies.

Sarah and I have thoroughly enjoyed making the series, and already have some great sessions ready to go in the new term with industry thought leaders Andy Kent and Jonathan Coyles – watch this space!

Have a great Christmas and see you in 2022!

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In case you missed it, here’s a round-up of all our thought leader Q&A sessions from last term.

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A few weeks ago Nick caught up with Ian Koxvold, currently Head of Education, Strategy and Corporate Development at Supporting Education Group, but many people might know him better for his years of strategic consultancy work across the education sector.

They talked about the changes across the education sector and what the future might hold in terms of new solutions and new strategies including:

• Ian’s background delivering projects across businesses and educational establishments to make them more effective or efficient
• The insight he gets working for Supporting Education Group as the largest provider of services to schools in the UK
• His perspective on consolidation, and how this has increased from maybe 2-3 players to around 10 in recent years
• What’s a good strategy for acquiring, and has consolidation peaked in his opinion
• The importance of use case analysis in any business, and using it to identify upsell and product integration opportunities
• How different products serve different use cases
• Advice for startups in the edtech space
• The concept of ‘one product for everything’ v ‘best of breed’ solutions
• School support services, the role they play in the evolving landscape, and future consolidation
• The perils of complacency when it comes to servicing your customer, and the potential pitfalls of having a dominant supplier in any given area
• How to measure the impact of solutions on schools and why this is important to success; should we be more ambitious about how we use data?
• The future of the MIS sector given recent changes, and what we might expect to see next
• Three things companies should be doing now to future-proof their business

We’ve split the interview into three parts to make it easier to digest – enjoy!

P.S. We’re aware that some of the audio is a bit rough in places so we’re working on getting a transcript created to accompany this Q&A – we’ll add once completed 🙂

Our next fireside chat this year is with education thought leader, Sue Macgregor of Alps Education.

Sue brings a wealth of sector experience to our chat, having had a long and varied career in teaching and leadership, before moving to Alps Education to lead the Education and Product Development teams.

At Alps Education, their focus is on providing the right analytical tools to schools so they have the power to help every student achieve their full potential. Their platforms provide KS4 and KS5 performance insights that help teachers and leaders to celebrate strengths, action any gaps and drive-up student achievement.  

It’s a great fireside chat, and Sue provides loads of insight into:

• Her background in education, the trials and tribulations of Ofsted (and the pride in obtaining ‘Outstanding’ rating), her move into the world of edtech, and why she works at Alps Education
• Her role at Alps Education leading teams including many other former education leaders, and the context and experience that brings
• How tech has to work for the people who use it – not everyone loves data so it must fit in with what they need. Data can’t solve your problems but it can flag potential issues.
• The value and importance of asking the question “So what?”
• The ways assessment policy has changed, and how schools can work without baseline data (as a result of covid lockdowns)
• Given what we’ve all learned through the pandemic and homeschooling, how assessment policy might look in the future; it’s a wasted opportunity to simply return to what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years.
• How Alps methodology is different, and their mantra of “what’s next?” and allowing students to move forward
• What edtech companies should be thinking of when developing new solutions for educators and leaders, both now and in the future.
• The importance of being transparent, and empowering school leaders, teachers and staff
• Future plans for Alps Education, and developments and innovations the education community can expect to see in the coming months and years.

We’ve split the interview into three shorter parts for you to watch and listen to – enjoy!

Our next fireside chat is with Schools ICT Service Manager and all-round MIS expert, Keren Wild.

Schools ICT is a fully traded service of NYCC working through North Yorkshire Education Services (NYES), which means they work with all types of organisations and education settings across the UK, not just in North Yorkshire.

We’ve known Keren for many years, and it’s great to speak with colleagues from MIS support teams as it gives such a unique and insightful view of the landscape. In this Q&A, we chat about a wide range of topics including:

• The North Yorks framework and how this has given choice to the schools
• The value that Support Teams offer to Edtech companies; how support teams protect their schools and take away the pain of IT
• How technology has encouraged primary schools to make different choices, especially with the added pressure of Covid closures
• How Support Teams will evolve in the future to include wider services, multi-MIS, more competition, and becoming being a partner to MATs
• Academisation and its role in moving Primary schools to cloud-based solutions
• The role of Senior leaders in the decision change MIS, and how this can be a challenge
• How well schools’ understand data and what an MIS can do for them
• Anytime, anywhere access to MIS and how this has become even more important since Covid
• How secondary schools feel about cloud MIS options
• Usability and change, and what challenger MIS could do to make their solutions slicker
• The difference between ‘one-stop shop’ and ‘best of breed’ solutions
• The opportunities for Edtech to partner with support providers as they have insights and connections which will give Edtech companies insights to the customer

Following on from our first fireside with the Senior Product Director at IRIS Software in November 2020, we’re delighted to welcome Winston Poyton back for a follow-up conversation – especially given so much has changed in the world of school management systems in the last 12 months alone.

In this fireside chat, Nick and Winston discuss:

• Developments across the IRIS business since our last Q&A session when iSAMS had only just been added to the portfolio
• How IRIS is busy reinforcing its education credentials through building relationships and listening
• Their thought leadership work including this webinar with Lord Jim Knight, and their recently published whitepaper “Are Education Management Systems Future-Fit?”
• The wellbeing challenges faced by schools – especially in the light of Covid – and how technology can help
• The ways in which the MAT landscape continues to evolve and why academies are demanding more
• Innovation and what this means: it’s not just about new tech, but new ways of doing things
• How IRIS is working hard to make sure their customer experience is as intuitive and friction-free as possible

We’ve split the interview into 3 parts to make it easier to digest. Enjoy!

Our first fireside chat of the new academic year is with education thought leader, Duncan Baldwin. Duncan brings a wealth of sector experience to our chat, from teaching positions and his time at Capita SIMS (now ESS SIMS), to influencing government as Deputy Policy Director at ASCL and his current Headship at The Castle Rock School, part of the Apollo Partnership Trust.

In part 1 of this fireside chat, we discuss:

• Duncan’s background (including his encounter with Margaret Thatcher!) and how he has come to hold such a variety of posts across education
• His focus on outcomes, data for improvement, and how he’s helped people understand the asset they have in MIS software.

In part 2 we cover:

• How he’s utilised his breadth of experience within his Headship role
• Government initiatives and how data is used to show they were working
• ASCL policies and initiatives
• His project with SISRA and encouraging school-to-school collaboration

Part 3 focuses on:

• What are the better performance measures out there?
• Duncan’s work with SMID and askEddi on identifying trends
• Why Christmas jumper day is not always the fun thing you think it might be for many pupils!

In part 4 we discuss:

• Unearthing insights by collaborating with other schools on data
• The challenges of MFL – especially when pupils move to secondary school – and the challenges of transitioning from Year 6 to Year 7 in a global pandemic
• The impact of the SixIntoSeven project, developed in partnership with school leaders in response to Covid-19 school closures and cancelled SATs in 2021

And finally, in part 5 I ask:

• What’s next for Duncan, his school and his Trust?
• As an outward-facing education thinker, would he be willing to collaborate with schools and industry further?

Continuing our series of edtech thought leader interviews, I recently caught up with independent consultant and former colleague of mine, Tony Lockwood.  Tony describes himself as having had a career of two halves: one in Education as Head of Science in a Nottinghamshire Secondary School, and one as Head of Product Management at Capita Education Software Solutions (now part of ParentPay Group).

Nowadays, Tony advises MATs and schools on getting more out of their Management Information and other Admin software systems, as well as subscribing to additional systems or changing suppliers. As an independent product consultant, he also provides help for EdTech companies to improve the performance of their products and develop new solutions.

In part 1 we discuss:

• the key changes Tony has noticed in the last 3 years
• the consolidation of businesses with Private Equity to provide a larger value proposition
• how, even though MATs came into the market some time ago, solutions are very much still fixed on schools
• MIS as a platform, and the future of MIS

In part 2 we cover:

• What’s next for the MIS market, and the challenges that SIMS has and that even though they have a loyal customer base
• The challenger MIS and which suppliers Tony expects to do well.
• What makes a good tech company and what we can learn from Spotify, where a lot of companies see themselves as tech companies but they should see themselves as service providers.
• The fact that educators and suppliers need to be more curious to deliver better value

Continuing our series of edtech thought leader interviews, I recently caught up with Martin Hall, Senior Product Manager for MIS at RM.

Having spoken with almost all other major MIS suppliers in England, I’ve been wanting to speak with RM on their plans for the Integris solution for a while. RM Integris is the second-largest MIS supplier in England in terms of market share, and RM also offers an ecosystem of other school management solutions which work alongside their MIS, including their own finance solution.

In part 1 of this fireside chat, we discuss:

• How RM has changed over the years, having started as a couple of people building servers in their garage to becoming a global education company
• The 3 key pillars of business for RM, and their plans to invest in their Integris MIS and finance solutions
• How customers expectations have changed, and how RM works with them to allow them to focus on students’ progress – the most important thing
• Where RM are currently with their Integris MIS: how it works with RM Unify, what’s their partner strategy, plans for growth into new system areas (such as HR, compliance, safeguarding, etc.) and also into new phases and markets
• Their approach to future development

In part 2 we cover:

• RM’s focus on the MIS market and current competitor solutions
• What makes RM Integris different
• How the market might change in the future given recent consolidation and acquisitions
• How support has changed, especially as businesses such as SBS and Strictly Education have been acquired by one owner
• The role of LAs v the new role of Trusts: how MATs act and work differently, using data centrally and intelligently

Finally, in part 3 I ask:

• Where does Martin see the MIS market going in 5-years time?
• Can and should data be used to inform policy?
• How does RM work in partnership with schools and academies?
• How can edtech suppliers get better at delivering disruptive, and is this a good thing?

Continuing our series of business thought leader interviews, I recently caught up with Luke Pargeter, Co-founder and CEO of iAM Compliant.

Every school has a legal duty of care to their staff, pupils and visitors to their premises. The problem can be that remaining within the law can be costly and time consuming if not managed efficiently, which is why Luke and his co-founders created iAM Compliant.

iAM Compliant is a web-based tool, designed to help schools with everyday health and safety compliance, reporting, eLearning and more.

In this fireside chat we discuss:

• What gave Luke the inspiration to create iAM Compliant and how the team was formed
• The relationship between safety, environment and learning
• The impact of compliance on wellbeing and staff retention
• What differentiates iAM Compliant from the competition?
• How Luke sees the edtech compliance market evolving in the future, and where iAM Compliant will be in 3 years time.

We’ve split the interview into 3 sections to make it easier to digest. Enjoy!

The next in our series of EdTech Thought Leader Q&A sessions is with Mark House, Product Manager at RM Education.

Mark was a teacher for over 20 years and has been working at RM as a Product Manager in the Education market now for 5 years. Our discussion includes:

• Whether education technology in the UK and globally needs to be more innovative; what’s stopping it?
• RM’s work on innovation in assessment that will save teachers time, but also take away the issue with unconscious bias.
• Any advice Mark would give on looking at new technology, and seeing how this fits with delivering an innovative solution.
• Where Mark sees the next big thing in Edtech?