It was a real privilege to be asked to present a session on the future of AI within schools at the Coventry Schools conference last week. Thank you Alison York and Ollie Burnett for the invitation.

 

My session aimed to create conversation and understand the massive potential and possibilities when it comes to technology and AI. The main takeaway from the session is that, between schools/MATs, suppliers and support teams, we should all strive to make the most of utilising the latest technology and staying ahead of the AI curve.

 

1. As Schools and MATs understand their needs they need to push for solutions to meet their pain points, no need to worry about the limitations of technology, that’s for the suppliers to solve.

 

2. Suppliers understand the technology and should offer up solutions which showcase ‘the art of the possible’, this includes reducing friction to utilising their solutions.

 

3. Support Teams are important as part of this relationship to continue to work in partnership with schools and MATs, ensuring they get the most out of their current solutions and advise on changing needs.

 

 

What do you think? Is AI on the agenda for your school or business?

We’re delighted to welcome one of our LA Support Team colleagues to our #FinnemoreFireside chats. A huge thank you to Ollie Burnett, Systems Lead at Coventry City Council, who talked to me about their work with schools and plans for the future.

Ollie has been in education since 2003, is passionate about education and aims to improve the experience for students and teachers through his work. It’s a great conversation and, amongst other things, we talk about:

 

• Having a vision for the future relies on consultation with the SLT, partnering with more suppliers, but ultimately listening and then delivering for their schools and MATs.

 

• How Support teams should understand the school’s context and goals, offering solutions beyond specific products.

 

• The importance of Support teams to schools in helping them navigate software and processes.

 

• How User Group sessions and sharing best practices among schools are promoted to enhance learning.

 

• The challenges of transitioning to new systems, praising the support provided by suppliers. Ollie highlights the need for training and consultancy services due to the shift to cloud-based systems.

 

• Support teams are becoming more consultancy-based in the future and collaborating closely with multi-academy trusts (MATs) to meet school needs.

 

Ollie also chats about the process they went through during their recent MIS switch and why they chose Bromcom. In total, 75% (45) of Coventry’s LA-maintained schools chose to move both MIS and Finance, with the Authority implementing the switch in only 3 weeks by working in a 3-way partnership between the Coventry Support Team, the schools and the supplier. It can be done!

 

 

 

 

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Working with MIS

We’ve been lucky enough to have worked with most of the maintained MIS suppliers including SIMS (then owned by Capita), Arbor, IRIS Ed:gen, Pupil Asset, and, at the time of writing, working with Bromcom as they grow their user base across the UK.

We’ve recorded tons more #FinnemoreFireside chats on the topic of MIS with MATs, school leaders, support teams, suppliers and independent consultants which you can find here or subscribe to our You Tube channel for regular updates.

Other brilliant free, independent resources we’d recommend you take a look at include WhichMIS and BringMoreData, We also run a LinkedIn group ‘The Future of MIS’ which seeks to understand the new role of MIS in schools and explore what it will look like in the future – come and join the conversation 🙂

Interesting to learn today that the CMA has now confirmed they are investigating ESS SIMS on the issue surrounding 3-year contracts.

As schools will be aware, they were required to sign a new 3-year contract directly with ESS by the end of last month if they want to keep using SIMS. What ESS has also said is that there is a 6-month break clause, so if schools do want to move to another supplier then they are free to do so, they just need to let ESS know before the end of September 2022 to leave the contract.

The big question is: is this long enough to conduct the necessary market testing exercise, and go through a satisfactory procurement process, in order to decide if staying with SIMS for the next 3-years is the right thing for your school?

Many schools have told the CMA that it isn’t long enough which has prompted the formal investigation to allow them to consider this matter properly.

Realistically, when a school has used a solution for several years, it does take time to properly assess the alternatives out there. There’s so much more to it than simply ‘getting quotes’ from providers. It involves taking a fresh look at how everyone utilises their MIS:

– What we would like an MIS system to achieve?
– What are our top priorities as a school?
– Is there a way of improving how we do things?
– How have solutions innovated and improved since we last looked at the market?

It was around last Autumn when schools were made aware of the new contract arrangements. The question around the procurement process is a tricky one. Physically making the purchase can be done quickly (there are frameworks, etc. out there) but undertaking a proper market testing exercise involving all the stakeholders in school is a LOT harder.

 

Any procurement process needs to be rigorous, and any decision justifiable as it can be challenged. And, should the school choose to switch MIS, adequate time needs to be available for a successful implementation.

 

It doesn’t help that, if a school has used one system for a long time (which tends to be the case for LA schools) they’re really starting from scratch. A lot of innovation has happened in the last 10 years alone; there’s no way of understanding what’s out there until you’ve had the chance to really dig into the possibilities. Creating requirements for an MIS can be equally challenging; just because something’s “always been done that way” doesn’t mean they want to continue with that process.

 

And then there is the implementation to consider. This is an area MIS suppliers have invested in like crazy so it’s possible to get a school up and running on their system really quickly. But there does need to be a plan for how the changeover will be managed. These are systems that are not just used by one or two people in school, they are used by operational staff, teachers, SLT and parents.

 

It’s also very difficult for schools to be able to look at things on a truly like-for-like basis as so much has changed. For example, it’s pretty usual for a SIMS school to have bought into the core MIS (inc. support from their LA team) and then, over the years, purchase additional modules to meet different needs (e.g. to manage dinner money, or offer an online payment solution, or a texting solution, or an app for parents/students, etc.). The more modern MIS solutions don’t usually require all these extra modules or products to be purchased at all, they tend to be part of the core MIS as standard and the whole thing is cloud-based so it’s a seamless, complete solution.  But this means it can leave schools with an even more complex procurement ahead when they realise there are far more factors at play  – and better potential savings to be made.

 

(What’s also interesting is that, as part of its investigation, the CMA has said they will also consider the pricing of some ESS product packages – specifically, it will look at how SIMS is being sold alongside FMS – check out our separate post on this thorny issue.)

 

What do you think? How long should a school allocate to procuring their school management system?

If you’ve gone through a procurement process, what’s your advice?

The extent to which an MIS is used by a school is usually dependent on quite a few different factors:

 

• How well they understand what the MIS can actually do for them over and above standard pupil census type stuff
• How easy it is to use, but also how intuitive it is to learn for new users (which we’ll explore more in a future blog)
• The training the users received at the outset; did it inspire the implementation of new ways of doing things and leave the users enthused?
• How easy MIS companies and support teams make it for users to gain the value they are after? E.g., completing a process or gaining the insight they require.
• How easy it is to get help in the event of coming across a problem (or, looking at it from the opposite side, how soon will users abandon it if it feels too much like hard work)?

 

For all MIS suppliers, providing an innovative but intuitive product is only half of the story. It’s the support that goes around it which makes it a solution that will really satisfy your customers and embed the solution throughout the school with staff, parents, governors and students alike. Every supplier offers direct user and tech support to their customers – either included as standard as part of their cloud MIS or, for some, via the purchase of an additional support contract.

However, there is another very important group of stakeholders here who play an important role in supporting the use of MIS, and that’s local support teams. It’s a relationship that has evolved over the years, so this blog aims to look at the role of support teams, the MIS suppliers, and schools’ views on the support they receive.

 

Historically, the concept of who provided MIS support to a school was closely tied to how the MIS licences were procured to begin with. Back when all schools were LA-controlled maintained schools, the majority of Local Authorities in England and Wales, plus Northern Ireland, procured MIS on behalf of their schools on the basis that it would be them who provided the support those schools needed in the use of the system. The LA support teams would only then contact their MIS supplier (the majority were SIMS users) for 2^nd and 3^rd line support.

 

As the way in which authorities and schools are funded has gradually changed, and especially with the introduction of academisation over a decade ago, the dynamic between schools and support teams has changed (check out this blog post for more on this subject). Independent teams have formed out of the old authority-schools-only teams; commercially-focused, multi-MIS support teams are building great support partnerships with schools and MATs alike.

 

Everyone is happy to work with schools and academies outside of the traditional LA boundaries, and schools are no longer beholden to their LA choice of MIS offering when they are able to procure any MIS direct from any supplier they wish at a competitive price. The dynamic has changed, and more choice will undoubtedly benefit schools and users.

 

What impact has this had on where schools get their MIS support?

A recent survey¹ of 2,146 schools asked, amongst other things, who they contacted most often for support with their MIS. The chart below shows the survey results for the ‘Big 5’ who, between them, make up 96% of school market share² ( Arbor, Bromcom, RM Integris, ScholarPack and SIMS):

Chart: Response to the survey question “Who do you contact most often for support?”

 

The first thing that stands out here is the big chunk of respondents who said a colleague was who they contact most often for support, ranging from around 28% to 52% across the suppliers). It most likely accurately reflects the people it was sent to, who were Headteachers, Deputy and Assistant Heads, and School Business Managers/Leaders. Many of these would ask a colleague for support with their MIS instead of calling/emailing a support team – it tends to be only one or two main MIS users who log cases and place calls. You can draw a couple of conclusions from this:

• Having an MIS expert or superuser in-school is SO important as it is likely they will be relied upon by other staff; working closely with your customers to ensure there is a champion is a good thing!
• A lot of questions/issues with MIS are being dealt with in-school and never reach MIS suppliers or even their support partners. This is a good thing in terms of metrics such as case volumes, but it would be interesting to understand exactly what people ask other colleagues for help with, as it may be that an opportunity is being missed to develop or improve.

(N.B. It’s worth noting here that the schools the respondents are from will have a support arrangement of some kind, either with a local support team or the MIS supplier themselves. However, it’s not possible to tell which it is from this data).

 

The second thing that stands out is the fact that a much larger number of RM Integris and SIMS respondents (around 41%-42%) contact their local support unit for support compared to Arbor, Bromcom and ScholarPack. This is probably due to the fact that these suppliers have very long-established relationships with LA support teams which combines their MIS with other solutions including infrastructure, hardware, security, and other services³. The other MIS are catching up though, with each developing their own Partner Programmes and working with local support teams to help them become accredited support providers.

 

We can also gain insight into how happy schools are with the level of support they are getting – irrespective of the route they choose to take it.  The chart below outlines the survey results for the Big 5 when the respondents were asked how they rated the quality of support they receive:

Chart: Response to survey question “How do you rate the quality of MIS support you receive?”

 

Towards the top end of the scale with the highest proportion of respondents stating that they were ‘Extremely satisfied’ were Arbor (43.14%), Scholarpack (38.31%) and RM Integris (34.57%).  RM Integris and ScholarPack also recorded the smallest proportion of respondents stating they were ‘Extremely dissatisfied’ – both were below 1% (0.62% for RM Integris and 0.65% for ScholarPack).

 

The Evolution of Support

If we were to compare how and where schools take MIS support from to say, even 10 years ago, the landscape has changed dramatically. Depending on the supplier, anything from 19% to 64% of their customer base are taking support from the MIS supplier directly; this would have been more like 5% to 15% in the early 2000s.

 

So where does this leave the concept of local MIS support contracts? Is this something schools no longer feel they need if they can go straight to their MIS supplier?

 

Not at all! Good support teams help schools with so much more than simple button-pressing when it comes to their MIS. The progressive, dynamic teams are also more than happy to support their schools irrespective of which MIS they use. As they will tell you, they ‘support the process, not the product’ which means their schools and academies have choice. On top of that, many local support teams have longstanding relationships with schools going back 20 or 30 years; they support them in everything from creating and implementing assessment policy, preparing for last-minute Ofsted visits, developing overall school/academy/MAT strategy, delivering budget savings, creating the right reports for SLT, governors and trustees, rolling out new tech and devices so everyone can access, the list is endless.

It’s true, not all support teams are created equal, and there will be differences in service levels across the country, but many work in genuine partnership with their schools in everything they can. Where the MIS suppliers provide excellent direct school support, but then also build great partnerships with support teams to help them work with their schools, is where you’ll likely see the most customer satisfaction and loyalty.

 

 

 

¹The data was collected by The Key from a survey that went out to all primary, secondary, special schools and pupil referral units in England, by email. It was not sent to independent schools. The survey was completed by Headteachers, Deputy and Assistant Heads, and School Business Managers / Leaders between 29 March and 27 April 2021.

As part of the survey, respondents were asked which MIS they use. The results are outlined below:

 

 

²Market share statistics are sourced from two excellent blogs: Graham Reed’s Omega Pegasus https://www.omegapegasus.com/mischallenge and Josh Perry’s Bring More Data https://bringmoredata.blogspot.com/

 

³This may not necessarily be the case for ESS SIMS following acquisition but, for the period 1994 to 2021, SIMS was owned by Capita who provided a large portfolio of services and solutions to Local Authorities.

 

The next in our series of Q&As with edtech business leaders is with James Weatherill, CEO of Arbor Education.

Since their inception in 2011, Arbor has established themselves in the MIS market with their cloud MIS and analytical insights.

In this interview, Nick and James discuss the driving force behind Arbor, what makes it unique, the huge role support teams play in the MIS market and predictions for the future.

We’ve split it into three parts to make it easy to digest.  Enjoy!