MIS is the backbone of school operations which supports institutions, be they primary, sixth form or further education colleges, fulfilling an incredibly important role for children.
When students were forced out of the classroom, amid the pandemic, important questions needed to be addressed: how do you track attendance? How do you fulfil safeguarding requirements? How do you register children in the morning and afternoon, remotely? It was these questions that MIS answered, allowing teachers to log and record information, and share it with their peers, to ensure pupil progress and learner outcomes were maintained.
As the pandemic recedes, and pupils go back into the classroom, the challenges faced are no longer as urgent – and yet, MIS platforms must continue to evolve. During the pandemic, agility and flexibility were the most important, and necessary, characteristics for a successful MIS platform. The fundamental need to adapt – a keynote of 2021 – will remain, albeit with MIS changing to meet the demands of an increasingly digital educational landscape.
In schools, demands for personalised, tailored lessons are leading to calls for close to one-on-one teaching, with lessons targeted at individual pupils’ learning needs. The higher levels of ‘gamification’, and teaching methods that were altered to try to increase remote engagement, could also grow in significance – but in what shape?
MIS platforms will ultimately change to confront these demands, enabling information to be tracked that allows teachers to develop bespoke lesson plans, for instance. And whilst the development of technology such as machine learning might provide a sketch of what the future will look like, and is certainly something to be kept on the radar – but for now, video content on MIS platforms needs to be as cutting edge as possible, and it is imperative that integration with third-party platforms continues.
It is against this backdrop that the market-leading SIMS Next Gen features will start to roll out this Spring.
We can’t wait for all our customers to benefit from the range and depth of functionality that SIMS Next Gen offers, from sophisticated tools to pinpoint persistent absenteeism to powerful insights on pupil performance across multiple schools within a MAT.
We’re really proud and grateful that so many schools have already signed up to our pilot schemes, contributing to the evolution of SIMS Next Gen and ensuring that it contains all the features that schools are looking for.
You can see more about SIMS Next Gen here.
Thanks to the £40 million investment ESS is making in SIMS and FMS over the next three years, schools that sign up directly with ESS, will receive the enhanced cloud-based functionality of SIMS Next Gen for a token £1 per year.
SIMS Next Gen has been developed for, and with schools, and will continually evolve to address the shifting needs of our customers. We don’t anticipate any disruption during the rollout, as new components will be deployed as native cloud-based applications that sit alongside existing SIMS features, allowing schools to adopt these features at their own pace. Without service interruption or loss of data.
SIMS Next Gen will truly empower schools to shape their own digital future. We look forward to you joining us on this exciting journey.
If you are a school and would like to discuss your digital journey with us, then do get in touch using our contact form.
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