After years of no one really talking about school management information systems (MIS) - beyond some staffroom grumbling - suddenly everyone wants to talk about them.

The children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, believes a lack of rationalisation of the MIS used by schools means that no one has any real idea of who is at school when, and for how long, on any given day.

“Rather than a single, streamlined system enabling data to be used in real time, we see a piecemeal approach beset by delays in data provision and onerous data cleaning,” stated a report she published on attendance earlier this year.

Multi-academy trust leaders also want to talk about MIS. As trusts grow, a consolidation of tech across the schools in those trusts is needed, and that hasn’t been as easy as they would have liked.

And in the edtech world, MIS is a hot topic of conversation, too. Partly, these conversations have been about which up-and-coming products will take market share from the big players, but also there is a growing trend of tech experts asking how far MIS enables third-party integration, and some are even questioning whether a school needs an MIS at all. 

“Disruption to the MIS market has been a long time coming,” claims one leading edtech strategist, who wishes to remain anonymous.

All of these issues are important because an MIS is seemingly fundamental to how a school runs. It represents a considerable chunk of the non-staffing budget and is a key reporting tool.

So, what happens with MIS matters, and we appear to be at a point when decisions about what comes next are about to be made.

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The problems with MIS

While coming off the back of the worst of the pandemic may seem the wrong time to begin questioning the technology at the core of school operations, government plans and funding issues have exacerbated existing concerns about MIS and hastened efforts to make changes.

Those existing problems are largely down to the fragmented way that technology has developed in the sector, with many different products often in siloed areas, according to James Weatherill, CEO of MIS firm Arbor Education.

“A good litmus test is how often a school needs to enter a new parent or staff member,” he explains. “I have heard schools saying it can be three to five times or more. It should clearly be once.”

Weatherill acknowledges that as the sector has evolved, many schools and MATs have found their MIS working against them - either by causing “bad data” to be used to inform decisions or by creating workload issues for teachers and administration staff.

Complaints such as these about both MIS and other technology are common in schools, but the pandemic and funding concerns have really brought them to the fore.

On top of this, the shift to there being more MATs has created new issues - mainly around how you consolidate multiple systems into a single system for a family of schools.

Lisa Thompson, deputy director of educational intelligence at Astrea Academy Trust, which has 26 academies in South Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire, explains that as more schools come under a single MAT umbrella, trusts are trying to consolidate multiple systems all trying to do the same thing, as well as multiple systems doing different things, without the data being comparable or easy to amalgamate.

“Although many systems are now providing aggregated data at trust level, this still means that trusts must access multiple systems to get a holistic view of their data,” she says.

The impact of accessing multiple systems includes inefficiencies in terms of costs, time and staff training, and ensuring that the data held in the different systems is comparable, Thompson explains.

“For example, HR and payroll information held separately from curriculum information for use in curriculum-led financial planning, or standardised assessment data held separately from student data, can hamper the ability to look at the impact of key factors on outcomes,” she adds.

“It is essential that we have a single source of truth.”

Savvy shoppers

Cathie Paine, CEO of REAch2, says it was clear that her academy trust needed to rationalise its MIS estate to open up new opportunities to use its data more effectively.

“For us, moving from having four providers to a single centralised provider has been hugely valuable. It means we can gather data across our schools and is crucial for trust-wide assessment, analytics and comparisons,” she says.

Astrea has also recently gone through a procurement and implementation process to move all schools from four separate MIS providers to a single supplier.

It’s not just consolidation in the market and frustration about lingering issues that are disrupting the MIS sector, though. It’s also new demands from increasingly savvy MAT customers.

For example, simply opting for a single MIS is normally not enough to achieve that “single source of truth” aim of MATs. Usually, you also require the ability to integrate data from other edtech platforms into the MIS through what is known as an application programming interface (API).

This may sound technical but, in reality, it simply means two tools can talk to one another and data can be moved between them easily.

Thompson says this is something that anyone looking to move MIS providers should ensure is top of their wishlist, so that the ever-increasing amounts of data being gathered are properly stored and accessible.

“Increased integration between systems and/or making data freely available through APIs to enable trusts to warehouse and analyse their own data is a must in my view,” she adds.

‘It is essential that we have a single source of truth’

The trouble is, the MIS suppliers and other tech companies are not always as good on this as they should be, according to the edtech specialist quoted earlier - speaking anonymously as they have links to MIS providers and want their views to be seen without bias.

They agree that the sector needs to get better at demanding API capability because for too long it has put up with systems that don’t talk to each other, often causing the issues outlined above that will only get worse as trusts become bigger and more numerous.

“There should be a continued push to make movement and data transfer around education systems easier, ensuring an open standard framework exists to transfer data between providers, including the DfE [Department for Education],” they say.

However, they argue that there should be a “requirement for MIS providers to ensure that standards-compliant APIs are available” so data can easily be moved between them and other platforms used by MATs, local authorities (LAs) and the DfE, as this “would significantly aid data transfer and migration”.

MIS in the cloud

It’s not just APIs that are on a trust’s wishlist, though - it’s also the ability to shift to the cloud.

There has been a significant move to cloud-based versions of MIS that can be accessed anywhere, any time by staff - something the pandemic brought to the fore, as staff were suddenly compelled to access systems from home.

Astrea’s MIS provider, Bromcom, is a good example of a firm that has witnessed this migration first-hand, noting that the number of schools it onboarded to its cloud-based system grew by more than 250 per cent year-on-year, and several trusts have also signed up over the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, West Sussex County Council (WSCC) recently signed a deal to move 200 schools over to cloud-based platforms - claiming it is the first time that a local authority has moved its schools wholesale to a cloud-based tool.

Paul Wagstaff, assistant director, education and skills at WSCC, says the decision to move towards a cloud-based MIS, finance and budgeting system was driven by the requirements of both schools and the LA.

“Our shared view is that a cloud-based system improves security and access to data while also reducing the level of support required by schools, and [it] also removes the requirement for expensive server-based technology and complex, expensive links to LA systems, which are often not reliable or providing information in a timely manner,” he explains.

The council’s hope is that by doing this, it will reduce the need for schools to purchase additional software to see different data, instead having it all in a single location.

“Linking all West Sussex schools together with a common cloud-based system is seen as essential for the future…to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the LA teams,” Wagstaff says.

Importantly, too, he says it means that children are at the centre of what the LA is doing and that data is gathered “in real time” - as per Dame Rachel’s recommendations.

Contracts and controversy 

All these shifts are perhaps happening more quickly than they might have done because of a seismic shift in the contractual arrangements proposed by the sector-leading (by a large margin) MIS provider.

In November last year, ESS SIMS tried to move customers from a one-year contract to one lasting three years - a shift that was met with dismay by many across the schools sector.

“The idea of a three-year contract immediately caused consternation because it meant [schools] would lose the flexibility of the one-year deals they were used to and [it would] remove this ability to change suppliers on their terms,” noted James Browning, chief information officer at AET Schools, who wrote about the development for Tes last year.

ESS SIMS sold the plan as a positive move, with a letter to customers seen by technology site The Register when the news broke touting that longer contracts would offer “certainty of a fixed cost for the first year and a capped price increase for years two and three” - and saying that improvements to the platform would be made “available at no extra cost”.

This is a line the company has stuck to since, with Mark Brant, CEO of ESS SIMS, saying the move to longer contracts is all part of a push to make its platform fit for purpose for trusts and schools that are increasingly coming together and need to store and share data in a single location.

“The next generation of SIMS, which will be shaped by its users, will make the integration of schools even easier,” he told Tes. “We’re talking about £40 million of investment, enabling the consolidation of data across multiple academies, with more reports and features being added all the time.”

Legal wranglings

This has still not landed well with many schools, though, with Tes revealing that around 400 schools had signed up to take collective legal action over the contract extension, led by law firm Stone King. Graham Burns, a partner in the education team at the firm, said the situation has helped to sharpen schools’ minds over who they are choosing as their MIS supplier.

“The recent controversy over the change in procurement practice by ESS has brought such practices into sharp focus for academy trusts,” he said.

Right now, the case lies with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which opened an investigation into the situation in April, with Ann Pope, senior director of antitrust at the CMA, noting that the switch needed investigating to ensure that schools can still “pick the best provider for their needs”.

“Thousands of schools rely on management information systems, and their choice of supplier should not be restricted,” she noted.

In response to the investigation, ESS SIMS pointed out that the CMA’s remit always covers this sort of work and that no suggestion has been made that the contract needs changing - and that, of course, it is “engaging fully with the CMA as it conducts this review”.

The case is currently in the information-gathering stage and will be until August - so no update is expected soon.

Burns claims ESS’ decision has served as a wake-up call for those in education, telling them that they had not been paying enough attention to this core business area.

“The contractor [ESS SIMS] had set up the school-by-school contracts on an annual renewable basis, and notwithstanding that many of the schools had formed into larger MATs, the contracts were treated as being separate and distinct to each school,” he says. “Trusts need to be wary about falling into an ‘auto-renew’ culture and sitting back while contracts are perpetually renewed. This is poor value for money for trusts and creates a risk of challenge.”

‘The recent ESS controversy has brought procurement practices into sharp focus’

It is also worth noting that on top of this, those responsible for buying tech in schools - be they MATs, LAs or those within a school itself - need to be aware that a new a Procurement Bill is on its way and will likely bring in new rules governing how an MIS (and, indeed, any other edtech system) is procured.

This bill is likely to come into force in early 2023, with a full implementation of the new regime expected to be introduced around September 2023.

Right now, specifics remain thin on the ground, with Burns explaining that specific regulations and guidance documentation will likely follow next year.

As such, it’s hard to say now exactly what the legislation will lead to - but the government is claiming it will create “greater flexibilities” for buyers.

Thompson says if it does lead to more flexibility, that can only be a good thing - not just to give more buying powers to schools but also to encourage ongoing innovation among MIS providers as they recognise schools are becoming more savvy shoppers.

“Other MIS systems growing their market share has led to increased investment, ensuring better products and service. If the market can also attract new MIS systems, increasing competition further, I hope to see this lead to better value for money,” she says.

Combine all this together and it’s easy to see how the MIS sector is going to undergo rapid change, partly through circumstance but also because MATs will be increasingly knowledgeable buyers.

Decisions made now will likely determine what MIS will look like in three or four years’ time, so it’s crucial that schools and MATs carefully consider what they actually need an MIS to do and how they want it to do it.

‘I don’t see why a trust should not have the power to build a bespoke system from the different products on the market’

But one edtech commentator, who again wishes to remain anonymous, would like things to go even further.

For them, the need for schools to have an MIS at all has to be questioned. In their view, MATs should be able to build their own bespoke integrated system from different providers to create a family of products that essentially acts like an MIS but that is exactly what the school or trust needs.

“With the way technology is going, I don’t see why a trust should not have the power to build a bespoke system from the different products on the market,” they say. “This would, in turn, drive competition and innovation, which is what the sector really needs.”

It’s likely the market is not quite ready for such a jump. Currently, simply moving from one MIS to another is a huge undertaking, and one senior MAT leader recently told Tes it would be “too much hassle, too much stress, and I wouldn’t put my staff through it”.

For now, that leader would rather try to influence change in the product he has than make a leap.

More and more leaders are prepared to make that leap, however, and, as outlined above, this is shaking the sector up in largely positive ways.

What is key from this point on is that any change is driven by schools, and to make sure that this is the case, we need to be talking about MIS - and edtech in general - much more. 

Christine Horton is a freelance journalist