One of the biggest changes to happen to the world of school MIS was the introduction of academies, starting back in the 2000s under the then Labour government, and becoming widespread following the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition Academies Act in 2010. The concept of schools becoming their own entities as academies and leaving Local Authority control had an effect on their MIS and support choices (which we’ve touched on in a previous blog), but it also created a whole new set of stakeholders: the Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) central team.

MAT central teams need certain things from an MIS which have not really been required before. It’s always been possible to aggregate data through feeds (this happens between schools and LA teams all the time) but MAT leaders need something completely different. They need a complete view of students and staff across the trust to enable collaboration, streamline communication and effectively target resources.

As a result, MIS suppliers have started to build MAT-focused functionality into their solutions and now offer a range of resources and dashboards aimed at making the lives of the MAT central teams easier.

It’s now been more than 10 years since the first MAT was formed so we wanted to explore how well MIS suppliers were meeting the specific needs of MATs.

A recent survey¹ asked 92 MAT central teams to rate how satisfied they were with their MIS from 1-10, where 1 is “Extremely dissatisfied” and 10 is “Extremely satisfied”. Their scores are outlined below; you can see that satisfaction is generally pretty good with the majority scoring their MIS a 7, and only a few MATs giving a score of 4 or less.

Chart: MAT Satisfaction rating of their MIS from 1-10, where 1 is “Extremely dissatisfied” and 10 is “Extremely satisfied”.

The survey asked respondents to briefly explain why they gave that rating, and the running theme amongst those who gave a perfect 10 was ease of use.

The survey delves into more detail. When asked about how satisfied they were with their MIS’ ability to provide actionable information, which is so crucial to trust central teams, they appear to be largely happy in this area. The biggest group (37.6%) responded saying were satisfied with what their MIS provides. It’s worth noting though that around 19% said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and a further 26% combined stated they were Dissatisfied or Extremely Satisfied. Would this be a reason for an academy trust to look for alternate solutions in the future? Maybe.

Question: How satisfied are you with the extent to which the MIS provides actionable information?

However, when asked how satisfied they are with the Trust-specific functionality their MIS offers, the results tell a different story. The majority of respondents said that they were Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied (28.26%), followed very closely by those saying they were Extremely Dissatisfied (27.17%):

Question: How satisfied are you with the Trust-specific functionality your MIS offers?

The fact that over a quarter of all respondents said they were Extremely Dissatisfied with trust-focused functionality should set off alarm bells with MIS suppliers. Trust-focused functionality always forms a key part of the requirements when MATs go to tender for an MIS, and it feels like there’s still work to do in this area.

In a previous thought leader session Nick recorded with Rowena Hackwood, CEO at Astrea Academy Trust, they discussed this topic in more detail. Rowena’s challenge for all suppliers, not just MIS, is for them to move towards creating solutions that work for a new customer base who need a different point of view:

“Increasingly in the sector, there is a move towards stronger and more sustainable groups of schools, which isn’t a national strategy for every school to be in a MAT, but it is a national strategy for every school to be part of a more sustainable group, as it were. And it’s absolutely critical that, in your thinking, you have that in mind.

The kind of MAT dashboards that I want to be able to share with trustees align academic attainment and attendance data on the one hand, with HR, finance, governance, performance, on the other hand, and I don’t have any means at a MAT level to really draw all of those different elements in together. So my challenge, I think, to you is to move away from a school by school understanding of the English school system towards one where a huge chunk of the customer base needs a different point of view.”

Rowena Hackwood, CEO at Astrea Academy Trust

Ultimately, most of the MIS have the ability to offer reporting and insight in one way or another, using tools such as Power BI; it’s more a question of how easy and integrated these systems are, and the extent to which they provide the data the central teams need. It’s the central management issue that MATs would really like to see supported by their MIS providers, and the better they are able to help with this, the more MATs will want to work with suppliers as long-term partners across the trust.

What do you see as the main differences between what academies need vs what MAT central teams need? Do you think there’s a need for an MIS which has been built with MAT central teams in mind as the primary user (similar to IMP in creating a finance system)?

¹The data was collected by The Key from a survey that went out to all multi academy trusts (with two or more schools) in England, by email. These surveys were split by trusts that had just one MIS across the group of schools, and trusts that used multiple MIS suppliers. It was not sent to trusts in the independent sector. The survey was completed by central team staff such as CEOs, COOs, CFOs and others involved in MIS operations, between 29 March and 27 April 2021.

Next in our series of thought leader interviews is this Q&A session with Jeff Marshall.

Through J&G Marshall Ltd, Jeff’s core business is helping schools to convert to academy status. They cover everything a school needs to become an academy: legals, project management, finance system as well as post-conversion services for accounts, HR, School Improvement, governing body training plus much more.

They also conduct MAT Growth Audits to ascertain where a Trust is, where it wants/needs to be and how to get there through step-change growth. It’s this knowledge and expertise that I wanted to tap into to understand a little bit more about the specific challenges MAT leaders face.

Some of the things we discuss include:

• What’s the background to your education experience, and what do you find so attractive about working in education?
• What’s your approach to supporting a MAT; what do you feel are the greatest pain points in the first 6 months and what conclusions have you come to regarding what is required to get it right and wrong, as the first 6 months are very important?
• What do you think is important when looking at edtech solutions across a MAT? What issues do you find?
• Do you feel that there is enough innovation in Edtech, how would you like to see this tackled?
• What do you think is missing from what Edtech companies offer, do they act like strong partners in your opinion? What could they do more of or differently?

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

Next in our series of edtech thought leader Q&As is this conversation with Rowena Hackwood, Chief Executive Officer at Astrea Academy Trust, a family of 29 schools across South Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire with a proven track record of school improvement.

It was great to be able to get the perspective of a MAT leader as it’s something both edtech and MIS suppliers need to have at the heart of their product strategy. In this interview we talk about:

• What drives Rowena and her work in education
• Her approach to taking on a MAT, and what’s involved in the first 6 months as a new MAT CEO
• The most important factors when looking at edtech solutions across her MAT, and the biggest issues
• Innovation across the edtech sector as a whole, and what she’d like to see tackled by suppliers

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

The next in our series of Business Leader Q&A sessions is with Stephen Bilboe, Sales & Marketing Director at WCBS.

Founded in 1984, WCBS specialises in providing integrated management systems to Independent & International schools across three main areas: Admissions, MIS & Finance.  They’ve recently invested heavily in delivering next generation, cloud native systems that use the latest technology to achieve a much better user experience for Independent and International Schools.  This culminated in the launch of HUBmis in October 2020.

Stephen and I chatted about WCBS and the many changes happening in the MIS sector, including:

• Your focus is very much within the Independent and international schools market, do you see yourself ever moving into the maintained market?
• What makes you different from other Independent MIS solutions?
  Have you found the Covid situation has impacted your business, do you see yourselves working differently going forward?
• As an MIS business, what is going to be important to you over the next 2-3 years to continue to grow?
• What’s next for WCBS?

How important is human contact?

When lockdown happened back in March, like many other businesses, our business lost all in-person contact with the outside world (and it was hard!).

But as humans we all want to deal with other humans; it’s so important to have a real face and a real person behind your solutions.

It’s for that reason we set up online chats with various people in our industry to talk trends, try to make future predictions in a changing world, and generally shoot the breeze. We’ve been sharing the recordings and the response has been great, I think everyone wants to get to know the faces behind the companies too!

So thank you James Weatherill, Richard Harley, Ali Guryel, Winston Poyton and Barry Anns for giving us an insight into the school MIS market which has seen some big changes this year.

Thanks to Mark Tadman, Guthrie Denniston and Martin Baker for talking to us about all the things you do alongside the MIS solutions and the ways in which you help schools.

And finally thank you Phil Neal, Joshua Perry and Graham Reed for your views and ideas on what might happen next and the big trends in edtech.

Nick and I have thoroughly enjoyed making the series, here’s to many more in 2021!

Next in our series of Q&As with edtech thought leaders is Ali Guryel of Bromcom.

As the Chairman and Managing Director of Bromcom Computers Plc, Ali is responsible for the strategic development of the company products and markets.

Check out Nick and Ali’s virtual get together below.  Here Ali talks about why he believes schools and academies need a one-stop-shop, and what differentiates Bromcom from the other MIS suppliers out there.

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

During lockdown, Nick took the opportunity to have a virtual get together with Phil Neal to talk all things MIS.

Really interesting views on everything from the inception of SIMS, the future of the market, the role of support teams, the big questions MAT leaders should be asking and a great deal more.

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

There are a few sure-fire ways to tell if your business is dead. How many of these do you recognise . . .

1. Have you stopped putting your customers first?

These people pay your salaries. Doing the stuff you think is important over the stuff they think is important will result in them leaving. It’s that simple.

2. Are you standing still?
If you find competitors are doing the stuff you can’t, be afraid. You need to run with the pack (at the very minimum).

3. Are you working in silos?
Every department needs to work with every other department to be successful. Why on earth wouldn’t every company allow it?

This is how you can tell if a business is dead, but what are the vital signs that show it’s still alive?

Connected?

Flexible?

People-focused?

I’m interested to hear your thoughts

Photo by Chris Mitchell from Pexels

HIPPO is an acronym for the Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion . . . and they’re bad for business.

Hippo’s tell you their opinion and, because it’s easy to agree or too scary to challenge it, people nod along. Highly-skilled and experienced team members’ ideas are instantly devalued purely because they’re paid less than the Hippo.

It throttles innovation and it needs to stop.

But what to do instead?

Take the Google approach and test everything. Every idea deserves to be tried or challenged, and when you can back it up with data from testing you’ve got a really good chance of being heard over the roar of the hippo.