Chaos in September

'My child will be attending the Academy, if it goes ahead, as he is in one of the three to be closed. He will be going in to year 10 in September so it is a very important year for him and the change over needs to be as painless as possible in order to get the best start in coursework and lessons. How is this going to be possible when the sponsoring establishments can’t even get run a course in tandem without screwing it up?

This year children from various Schools were doing the OCR Nationals, a vocational course run at both 6^th Form and Furness Colleges, teachers from these Schools were teaching the course. So a child from School A might be doing the course at 6^th Form being taught by a teacher from School B. The teacher from School A would take children from School B at Furness College. So far no problem, the children are taught the course and head back to their School to prepare for the exam. At this point it all goes wrong. Children at the 6^th Form have been taught using Office 2003 but children at Furness have been taught using Office 2007, the two versions are worlds apart. Some of the Schools are using one version some using the other, so when it comes to doing a mock exam some of the children have no idea what to do as they using an alien system. To make things worse some teachers have been using the opposite version, so even if the correct version is available for the children the teachers have not taught it so cannot help the children if they have a problem! As it turned out the Children were supplied with the appropriate package for the exam, but possibly missed out extra tuition because of the mistake. Again, if the sponsors can make such a cock up how will the Academy get it right?

They seem to have no idea how difficult the merging will be. That was an incompatibility of one software package, albeit an important one. Different Schools use many many different packages that have the same results but are completely different to use. Not only the packages but the user interfaces themselves differ considerably. Some Schools use a standard Windows front end, some use an RM front end, some use a Novell front end and others use 101 different front ends. It will probably be down to who ends up in the IT Manager post to decide, as they will want a system that they are familiar with, but that is not to say it will be the best for the users, both staff and students. Whichever systems and software they use, 65% of the users will be unfamiliar with it. This causes a major disadvantage to the rest. Not only do they need to learn all of the option lessons but they have to learn the ‘system’ and ‘software’. It will be impossible in the time to get both sites running the same identical systems, so Alfred Barrow people will have two new systems to learn!

Then there are the admin systems. All Schools have an Information Management System (an IMS) the most common being SIMS. Most of these are not compatible and I am told at least 2 Schools have differing systems. They are not going to be operational by September, and these deal with attendance and the like, very important when the School has a duty of care to the parent to let them know if a child has not arrived for School. There is no link between the sites so if a miracle did occur and the systems matched there would be no ‘talking’ between sites. This is why the year groups HAVE been split. All year 7,9 & 11 on one site and 8 & 10 on the other. NOT for ANY OTHER REASON than to have the duty of care system in place, to cover their own backs! The year group split has been denied but come September you will see it.

The whole thing is going to mess my child and yours unless a year or two is taken to fully think the matter through, get systems in place and get everybody singing from the same songsheet. If this happens in September for the next few years McDonalds are going to overwhelmed with applications because none of our kids will be qualified to work anywhere else, apart from KFC of course!