When asked, the majority of schools say that functionality is most important to them when looking for an MIS. But what does ‘functionality’ actually mean?

The idea of functionality means different things to different users. If you’re an experienced MIS/data manager who users the MIS to undertake detailed daily/weekly/termly routines, then complex functionality might be your cup of tea. If you are an occasional MIS user who looks to the solution more for reports and analysis, your idea of perfect functionality is simplicity and intuitiveness.

How you rate the functionality of your MIS is personal to you and will be based on, amongst other things:

• Experience with systems
• Role within school
• Proximity to the system (e.g. a daily super-user v arms-length, occasional use)
• Previous use of alternate MIS to draw comparisons
• Understanding of what might be possible in the future within MIS
• Level of training received

Ultimately, different users require their MIS and data to do different things. To understand how effective an MIS is, it’s worth looking at it from the perspective of the user (not the system) and asking:

• Does the MIS give them the tools to do their job well on an individual level?
• Does the MIS help them work as part of a team of many people?

A recent survey¹ of 2,146 schools asked, amongst other things, how effective they felt their MIS was at providing the data they needed to do their job well.  The pie chart below summarises the responses:

To examine the findings in more detail, the graph below shows a breakdown of the survey results for the ‘Big 5’ who, between them, they make up 96% of school market share² (namely Arbor, Bromcom, RM Integris, ScholarPack and SIMS):

Over half of respondents scored their MIS positively, saying it was either Very effective or Extremely effective.  This is good to hear, and exactly what MIS solutions are striving to achieve in their functionality and user experience. In addition, only a relatively small percentage, 15.69% in total, scored their MIS negatively, saying it was Not so effective or Not at all effective (it would be interesting to understand what data they need to do their job which their MIS is not providing, it could be a great opportunity to develop something new!)

The survey¹ also asked how effective they felt their MIS was at helping them to collaborate with colleagues. The responses to this question tell a different story. As you can see from the pie chart and graph below, a much lower number of respondents scored their MIS positively (Extremely or Very effective) at only 35.51%, and a much higher number scored it negatively (Not so or Not at all effective) 29.76%.  The majority, however, scored their MIS neutrally, as Somewhat effective.

• The cloud-based MIS solutions scored highest across the board for both questions.
• Where MIS scored highly for collaborative working, cloud-related features such as ease of access are likely to have played a part.
• Where MIS scored highly for providing the data required to do their job well, a contributing factor is likely to be how well supported and trained the users are on the solution.

So what do these findings tell us?

Overall, respondents seem to be fairly happy with the data the MIS gives them to do their job, but less happy with how it helps them work with colleagues. As we move more and more towards using technology to work collaboratively (the pandemic-related lockdowns brought this sharply into focus!), it’s important for MIS to keep pace with its learning counterparts.

Collaboration is a key part of the success of any organisation and schools are no exception. Operational teams, senior leaders and teaching staff all need to be able to collaborate with each other, and also with other establishments. It will be interesting to see how MIS solutions help schools handle this tricky task in the future.

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/

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.

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?

Schools are choosing to move MIS more than they ever have before. There are plenty of options out there ranging from client-based to cloud, multi-phase to age-specific, and outcome-focused to all-in-one solutions.

The reasons schools choose to move in the first place are varied. Many convert to academies and sometimes they join a trust where a different MIS is in use so they switch as part of the joining process. Other times, they’ll use their change of status to academy as an opportunity to look at the MIS options available to them now that they are no longer under LA control.

Maintained schools are switching MIS too. For many, the traditional model of them being able to buy into an LA-purchased and supported MIS is disappearing as councils no longer retain budget or mandate solutions. For some, they never participated in the LA arrangement, choosing to do their own thing and looking at the market on a regular basis anyway.

But what it is that schools look for in a new MIS? What’s most important to them?

A recent survey¹ of 2,146 schools across England asked them to prioritise what they felt was the most important factor in terms of price, support, functionality, integration, partnership and reputation when looking for a new supplier. The results are outlined below:

Functionality was identified as the most important factor at just over 57%, with price coming second and integration a close third, within a couple of percentage of each other.

It makes sense that functionality would come out as the most important factor amongst schools. Ultimately there are certain functions an MIS has to perform to be fit for purpose, such as census which they all do, but there are a huge amount of processes and insights provided by your MIS which schools rely on every day.

The fact that the amount of respondents who said that price was the most important factor to them is fairly similar to the number of respondents who said that integration with other products was the most important factor to them tells an interesting story.

Without a doubt, schools are looking for best value when it comes to MIS, but this doesn’t necessarily mean cheapest. Equally, there is a drive to consolidate systems for sure, but schools don’t want this to at the expense of losing something else they might be using which is incredibly valuable to them; they want to be able to use the best of what’s available to them on the market so integration across solutions is important to them.

(It’s interesting as a similar survey was conducted amongst MAT leaders and, in that survey, functionality scored a much higher percentage; they seemed to be even less sensitive to price and gave more weight to how the product worked – presumably as there are specific MIS needs in trusts. We’ll cover this in another blog).

So, given that the majority of schools cite functionality as the main thing they’re looking for in a new MIS, the next question is: how happy are they with their existing MIS and how likely are they to move?

The survey asked respondents to rate how satisfied they were with their MIS, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being extremely dissatisfied and 10 being extremely satisfied. The results are below, and the vast majority of suppliers got an average score of 6 or above:

It also asked how likely respondents are to move in the next 12 months, as outlined in the pie chart below:

Around 64% in total said they were either ‘unlikely’ or ‘very unlikely’ to move MIS in the next 12 months, so it seems almost two-thirds of schools are either happy with what they’ve got, or don’t see moving MIS as a priority in the next 12 months.

That said, 311 respondents, which is just over 14%, said they were either ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to move in the next 12 months – if this is a reflection across the whole market then we can expect lots of movement from one MIS to another in the next year or so.

Ultimately, if schools are citing functionality as the main thing they look for in a new MIS, how confident are MIS suppliers that their functionality is truly meeting the needs of schools? Aside from the basics, what makes one stand apart from the other?  We’ll be exploring this, amongst other things, in more detail in subsequent posts and would love to hear your views; what do you think users are you looking for in their MIS?

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:

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!

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!

With so much change going on in the UK MIS sector, I thought it was time to have a conversation with one of the big MIS support teams to understand how their business is changing too.

Last week I had a virtual get together with Director of School Business Services Ltd, Mark Tadman, to talk about how his company supports schools in their use of MIS, amongst other things. Mark and Tina started the business back in 2008 and have always been clear that the goal is to provide schools with the freedom to teach; with their managed services and budget planning software, they aim to save taxpayers money and allow schools to focus on teaching on learning.

Some of the questions we discuss include:

• In what ways has the business changed recently (especially around MIS)?
• Do you think that commercial school service teams are going to have to expand on the types of solutions supported?
• With the change in the MIS and tracker market, how does this affect your vision and strategy?
• Who do you think will be the winners in the MIS space?
• Do you feel the Capita SIMS FM agreement with Local Authorities will stay in place even if someone does buy SIMS?
• How would you make it a more competitive and innovative market?

We’ve split it into three parts to make it easier to digest. Hope you like it, and we’d welcome your comments.

There was a time when LA teams provided pretty much all IT solutions and services to their schools and the schools bought into them without question. They tended to be the only local solution available and, historically, this is what had always been done.

But, as the way authorities and schools were funded was gradually changed (and mostly reduced), the dynamic between schools and support teams changed. Sadly some LAs decided they no longer wanted to fund support teams at all and I know there were cases where teams were disbanded altogether or acquired by a third party. Independent teams started to form out of the old authority-schools-only teams and they were happy to work with schools outside of the traditional LA boundaries.  This was great news for schools for two reasons:

1. For many schools, the relationship they had with individuals at local support teams would have been a key part in their school development plan and dynamic. They wanted to be able to keep working with the same colleagues that they have for 20+ years and this meant they were still able to do so.
2. For other schools, they wanted a support choice and they finally had it! Geographical boundaries stopped being an issue. E.g. if you were a school in the South East who wanted to use a service in the North West as they had a good reputation it was now possible.

By and large, the evolving support team dynamic worked.

What it did do, however, is leave a big question mark over the MIS services they provide and the options open to schools. A big chunk of LA teams were SIMS support teams. This meant that, each year, they committed to Capita to provide SIMS support for all their maintained schools and, in return, their maintained schools were able to access the authority-owned SIMS licence for a certain amount of money (each support team then traded their own SIMS licence and support SLA with their own schools, Capita did not get involved in the support of these maintained schools).

When academisation started to happen it meant schools were no longer maintained, LA-led schools but individual entities in their own right. They could no longer access the LA-owned SIMS licence so had to purchase an MIS themselves. It caught many off-guard to begin with, having done the same thing the same way for so long, but it wasn’t long before MATs and academies started to use the opportunity to look at ALL the MIS available out there and modernise their systems. It’s easy enough to procure a new SaaS MIS, and many saw an opportunity for change to an easy-to-use, cloud-based solution.

And change is exactly what they have done. According to their websites, Bromcom is in over 50 MATs and Arbor work with 73 MATs and groups. On the primary front, Scholarpack have 27 MATs listed on their site and Pupil Asset work with 20% of the largest MATs in England.

So where does this leave the SIMS support teams?  MATs and academies often still want to buy into local support (they still want to work with the colleagues they’ve built such great relationships with) but they want a choice of MIS.

At the end of the day, the progressive support teams understand that it doesn’t really matter which MIS a school or academy uses and they offer multi-MIS support.

As they will tell you, they “support the process not the product!”.  Their priority has always been helping their schools achieve their goals, and it’s something they plan to continue to do in the future – irrespective of the systems they use.

P.S. All the cloud-based MIS suppliers above welcome local teams getting involved with the support for their solutions and have created support partnership programmes. They’re all exhibiting at Bett London in Jan 2020 next month if you’d like to chat with them, or we can put you in touch with them if you’d prefer – just drop us a line.

Sarah & Nick

Have you read the publication from TES https://www.tes.com/news/why-are-some-children-leaving-school-still-unable-read on why some children are not able to read adequately by the time they have left Secondary school?  What a travesty!  It’s an issue we need to understand better on the causes, but it is essential we resolve.

What Dianne and James Murphy focus on is absolutely correct, no child should come out of Secondary Education without being able to read sufficiently. We all need to be passionate about this due to the potential social issues that permeate, like the greater risk to the person becoming a NEET (Not in Education Employment or Training) or even ending in prison.

Reading is one of the fundamental life skills that needs to be instilled into pupils as part of their Primary Education.

I fully appreciate that not every child either enjoys or is able to read to the standards of their peers.  However, the main principals need to have to be learnt by the time they have left Primary education. I worry that too many children ‘slip through the net’ due to needs that are not understood until too late.  As with adults, children are fully aware of the stigma of not being able to read and as such try to hide any potential issues rather than look for support.

Personal Experience

On a personal level I am fully aware of how dyslexia can affect your ability to read or write – and the impact on how you digest information. As I grew up I have had to find mechanisms to help me (thankfully my wife is a great proof reader of my content!).  However, at school I did what a lot of students do and became disruptive and a truant to disguise this issue.

Can technology help?

We need to look towards technological solutions to identify these individual needs and not just rely on what either a pupil says or does. We should be looking at technology to support the professional job that teachers do so they can put in place those strong interventions so that none of our children fall behind.

As part of the work I do in looking at technology to solve the needs in education, one company I was really impressed with has a solution that is up for the Bett awards called Lexplore . It can identify reading needs in children, not just dyslexia, I would suggest having a look and make your own minds up. This is a great tool and, alongside our great teachers, we can stop the travesty of our children leaving education without being able to read!!