A day in the life of Wisbech St Mary Primary School Effective use of SIMS.net (+ other ICT Technology) Presenter: Donna Flynn MIS Consultant / ICT Support Analyst Website: Customer service:

Thank you very much to all the Staff at Wisbech St Mary for working with me over the years! I’d especially like to thank Nina Redhead, Audrey Embling and Tracey Crowson with their input, time and patience with the creation of this Case Study.

Introduction (by yours truly)  Situated in small village just outside Wisbech  Built in 1859 extended many times (and growing)  Currently 161 pupils on roll  Welcoming, busy, but spacious Foyer area  Staff and children extremely friendly and welcoming  Staff appear to recognise adapt and embrace change really effectively to meet the Schools needs  Busy but excellently organised School Office  Staff using SIMS in Classroom (as well as assessment)  Leadership team (with initial support from Audrey) organising and compiling ‘data’ in a manageable / understandable format - especially well!

Teachers’ use SIMS in the Classroom  Teachers find recording in SIMs in the classroom quick and easy. They leave SIMS open and reduced on their boards so that they can access information easily.  The children act as a checking system for the teacher. This also highlights the importance of attendance to the children, they become quite competitive peer pressure for whole class attendance.

School Dinners  Using ‘Attendance in the Classroom’ makes for very quick and effective management of meals for the School Caterer. During my visit their were 96 children having cooked dinners (inc ufsm)! As you can see, having everything recorded so quickly, means organising 96 dinners is ‘a piece of cake’! School also uses Parentpay – which has seen a vast reduction in the amount of cash handled in the School Office. Less transactions = Less room for error Time saved = ‘hours’ (p/w) (there are other financial web based options available – Agora and Schoolcomms)

Paperless in SIMS.net  As so much time is now being saved within the office, the School has opted to introduce a more effective ‘filing’ system with respect to their pupils records. By simply scanning documents in and adding them via the ‘linked documents’ area of SIMS; the original letters etc… can be appropriately destroyed.  If you would like to consider introducing this in your School, why not consider coming along to the SIMS.net Refresher or SIMS.net Tidy up workshops which are currently on offer twice termly:   Or register your interest with our Courses team

InTouch  Fully Integrated communication tool within SIMS.net Links with:  Attendance  Dinner Money  Assessment (Individual Reporting)  SEND  Conduct (Behaviour and Achievement)  Communication Log  General Messaging  / SIMS / SMS

Overview of InTouch SIMS InTouch is powerful and easy to use. It combines both SIMS messaging and to automatically and immediately engage ALL stakeholders on a wide range of school issues. Key features Keep parents and carers in the loop in an instant Send SMS and messages relating to a student's behaviour, awards for achievement, special education needs, unexpected school closures, parents evening reminders, unexplained absences and late school trip returns. Remote access to SIMS InTouch Beat the snow and send SMS remotely direct from SIMS InTouch. Provide easy access to students reports Easy to send out Individual Reports out in bulk at the click of the mouse. Save time becoming more efficient in your communication across the school community SIMS InTouch reuses information that has already been entered into SIMS via the normal business processes that you are already performing within SIMS, an example: Whilst recording an achievement within SIMS, if you choose to communicate this achievement to staff and parents InTouch will present you with those linked adults associated to the child, there is no need to do an extensive search. Using the templates for each process there is no need to re- enter the information you have already entered into the incident, ensuring communication is efficient and quick ensuring that all communication is standardised. Create general messages, design templates, personalise bulk communications or use system - generated automatically drawing on information already held in SIMS. Keep staff members fully informed - Send internal messages via SIMS InTouch ensuring staff are always up-to-date, wherever they are through SMS, SIMS messaging or . Deliver detailed information for early interventions - Save all message details to both student and parental contact records creating a log of messages, responses and non-openers. Licence (one-off cost)Annual Entitlement Primary School £400.00£ Secondary School £2,995.00£995.00

InTouch  Used first thing once registers completed!  As teacher’s do registration in SIMS in the classroom – absences can be chased up immediately !  Can double check for ‘Lates’  Then ‘Send Message ’  Text messaged automatically!  Responses received promptly  Responses automatically updated in ‘comments’ area of register, and logged against child’s details  Audrey commented that this alone has saved her at least ½ an hour in the morning. Attendance figures have definitely improved at the School since the introduction of InTouch

InTouch (The ‘time saver’)  User Defined Groups have been created, for use at times when Sports / Recorder / Choir gets cancelled at the last minute or if a club has limited spaces  (Whilst I was there) An emergency text was sent out to ‘many’ Key Stage Two parents due to not being in receipt of ‘permission slips’ for a Trip to London (no need to telephone round etc…)  Regular ‘One offs’ (Books not returned etc…)  Weekly & Termly Newsletter  Key fob is used when needing to dispatch items from home.  Staff to be trained – so that they can manage their own messages and school trips etc…

Interested in InTouch?  Additional purchase – prices available upon request  Log a request with the ICT Helpline – or  Initial introductory training provided either by Remote or an on-site consultancy. Helpline support provided as part of your SLA  Further workshops are provided ‘Termly’ throughout the forthcoming academic year (ideal networking opportunity).

Conduct  Following attendance at a CONDUCT workshop last term, Audrey was keen to introduce a way of recording achievements in SIMS.net. One of the areas we cover at these workshops is making this information easily available via your SIMS Home page!

Conduct  The School opted to introduce their own ‘rewards’ for achievement: Reports are already in the system, and can be printed in any format to meet the school’s needs

Conduct Recording a child’s achievement can be done when recording attendance or within the ‘Conduct’ module. Really easy to record and monitor. A child’s individual ‘points’ can be reviewed at any time in key areas of the SIMS software - ideal for parent’s evenings. This information can also be included on an end of term report.

Conduct  School using this really effectively at the present time  Currently updated weekly by the office  School to consider introduction of monitoring ‘ Behaviour ’ next term  Parental feedback has been excellent! They like receiving ‘ Achievement ’ texts / s via InTouch (most especially those older children who tend to ‘lose’ reward certificates)  School to introduce to Class teacher’s to record Conduct in due course as part of registration routine  HLTA’s also have access to SIMS, so this could be considered as an option in order to make existing systems even more effective

Interested in implementing Conduct in your School?  Can be set up within your school environment working with key members of staff on a Consultancy basis (Staff Inset sessions have worked well and proved popular in the past)  If you have a ‘system’ set up elsewhere, why not consider coming along to a workshop (like Audrey did). We generally offer workshops once a term! Telephone (or and either log a request for a Consultancy / INSET Session via our Helpline Or Should you wish to attend a workshop, please register your interest with Courses.

Parental communication and engagement!  School uses an outside noticeboard (powered by Cloudscene). This is updated daily to include the more mundane items such as time and weather to important messages for the day / week!  This is obviously very popular as when I arrived at the School, parents were crowding round to read comments!

Parental communication and engagement!  School uses Facebook !!  Again, looks to be very popular as was a lot of daily posts! Although Audrey was quick to point out that only parents and carers are accepted as ‘friends’ and is accessed regularly to ensure that inappropriate comments are edited and dealt with!

What did the Teachers have to say? Met with staff at break time and asked for their views on ipads, laptops and any other ICT they use in the school:  All staff have been issued with ipads – and currently use them for everything from following their timetables, ing, assessing their children (foundation teacher uses ‘Tapestry), to playing music!  Definite preference for ipads in classrooms rather than laptops  Very much looking forward to the introduction of the SIMS Teacher App in the School in the very near future (Pilot School)  Staff use SIMS.net every day (am and pm)for recording Attendance and Dinners  Staff also use Parent pay in the classroom – which has ensured far greater dinner money accuracy rather than when using SIMS  Staff also responsible for recording their assessment data twice termly  Children also very au-fait with using ipads, and is used across all year groups as a learning and ‘reward’ incentive

Impact on Office  Staff recording registration and dinners in the classroom = minimal disruption to teaching and office!  My normal experience of working in School offices is children coming into the office 2 by 2 with registers, large amounts of dinner money, messages and permission slips etc. During my visit just 2 (very polite) children = 2 bags made it down to the reception area!

Learning and Reward Time!

Assessment Manager  Teaching staff responsible for recording their own assessment data twice termly within the assessment manager area of SIMS (deadlines are set and staff have ample opportunity and time to ensure this is done).  Audrey double checks data and by filtering / manipulating data and running reports (as per school requirements) – passes this across to Nina in readiness for further analysis and presentation to Inspectors / Governors etc…  Foundation Teacher produces all her own assessment data and analysis and presents to Nina in given deadlines  Data is presented ½ termly in an extremely comprehensive manner. A similar format is used at Beaupre Primary School, Outwell, which Wisbech St Mary has adapted to meet their specific needs. They are justifiably proud of their data presentation!

Discover School introduced Discover this past term. Found particularly useful for the following:  Analysing specific groups (by introducing ‘dynamic’ discover groups)  SENDCO and Subject leaders use it regularly-intuitive and easy to use  Used mainly to track closely specific Intervention Groups  Can clearly evidence impact of such Groups  Ideal for Governors Meetings – Nina advised that she demonstrates this ‘live’ to demonstrate impact  Each staff member uses it to meet their own needs – and is set up accordingly – in the office (for example – dynamic groups have been set up to monitor attendance)

Discover  Attendance – due to our transient cohort – we have the highest percentage of GRT pupils in our cluster of 19 schools (including a secondary academy).  Discover supports our evidencing of the impact this has on our data, as we can use the dynamic groups to run a separate set of data for reporting.  We can show real time data for transient pupils, showing underlying data for stable cohort.  Modelling Pupil Premium and other group data in real time. This allows for changes in cohort and specification between data captures.

Result of all that Analysis?  An intuitive ‘booklet’ that can be produced at any time which gives a completely accurate and organised view of the schools attainment! Very impressive!

How did they achieve this?  INSET Session with Classroom staff – introduction to SIMS and Assessment Manager  Foundation Teacher has attended many of the EYFS workshops  INSET Session with Classroom staff on Discover  Office staff consultancy – concentrating on Headteacher’s requirements with respect to Assessment Manager  Workshop attendance on a variety of ICT Service items of software  A very clear ‘focus’ of what needs to be achieved  A lot of very hard work from a ‘team’ of dedicated members of staff – who all give the impression that they very much enjoy the work they do!

Thank you very much to you all!