Scomis Autumn 2016 Newsletter

Scomis provides ICT Support and Hosting Services to your school.

To view this email online, view the email below.

Scomis - Your ICT Partner. Password: Our News Update.

Scomis October 2018 Newsletter

Issue 91

Welcome to our Autumn 2018 edition of Password, packed with all the latest Scomis news and updates.

Scomis would also like to extend a very warm welcome to the schools which have joined us since our last Password edition:

Badsey First School (Worcester)
St Teath Community Primary School (Cornwall)
St Breward County Primary School (Cornwall)
Camelford Community Primary School (Cornwall)
Otterham Community Primary School (Cornwall)
Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School (Coventry)
St Gregory the Great Catholic School (Oxfordshire)
St Issey Church of England Primary (Cornwall)
Weeth Community Primary School (Cornwall)
Morgans Primary School (Hertfordshire)

Scomis Live '19
The Scomis Desktop
Time for a SIMS Audit
CTF Incorrect Contract Matching and Data Integrity
Examination Officers Conference
Examinations Update
Remote Backup
Scomis User Groups
Online Safety Update
Updated Scomis Hosted Application Platform
New Scomis Team Member
Scomis Charity
Dear Grace

Registration now open

Be Curious. Be Inspired. Be Extraordinary.

We would like to invite you to join us at our showcase event, Scomis Live '19 at Exeter Racecourse on Thursday 14^th March 2019.

This free, one day event promises to be thought provoking and interactive with content for everyone in education.

Hear from inspirational educational keynote speakers;
Experience interactive hands-on sessions;
Share best practice with other educational leaders;
Explore your current challenges with our educational specialists;
Network with key partners who practice in the educational space;
Refreshments available all day with an enjoyable lunch!

Scomis Live '19 brings together senior leaders, governors, classroom practitioners and operational staff - come to the event to challenge your thinking, gain inspiration and take away new ideas that will benefit your school community.

To help those of you attend from further afield we are offering free coach travel from the Bristol, Dorset, North Devon, North Somerset, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Truro areas. We've also negotiated special rail travel discounts on the GWR network.

For more details including how to register and how to reserve your place on one of our free coaches, please visit www.live.scomis.org

The Scomis Desktop

Reduce Teacher Workload and raise the profile of Attendance with electronic registration using The Scomis Desktop!

'My goal is to support schools to use technologies in ways that actually reduce the workload burden, while supporting teachers to deliver great lessons'.
(Damien Hinds ASCL Conference March 2018)

With benefits including reducing teacher workload and gaining more valuable admin time you can find further information here

Time for a SIMS Audit?

Is YOUR School making the most of SIMS?

Take a Fresh Scomis Approach to SIMS
Balance Workload
Improve your GDPR compliance
Identify Training Requirements

Find out more information here

CTF Incorrect Contact Matching and Data Integrity

Scomis is aware that our customers may have been considerably inconvenienced by the CTF Data Integrity issue and resulting workload. We want to assure our customers that we have been working hard on your behalf to mitigate a very messy process. Capita are reviewing their processes in this regard. We hope to have an update to share at our User Groups.

Meanwhile, you can read more on this here.

EXAMINATION OFFICERS CONFERENCE

Back by popular demand, we're pleased to announce we're running the Examination Officers Conference again for 2018.

Feedback from last year was once again excellent!

Capita, OCR, WJEC, Pearson and JCQ have all been invited to deliver topical sessions, as well as one available for examination officers to ask questions and share best practice. If you have any topics or specific areas you would like covered, then please let us know.

The conference will take place on Thursday 15th November 2018 at Buckfast Abbey, Devon, TQ11 0EG.

The cost of the conference will be:
SLA Schools: £47
Non SLA Schools: £57

This will include a two course lunch plus refreshments.

To book onto the conference please contact the Scomis Service Desk on 01392 385300 or email scomis@devon.gov.uk using Examination Officers Conference 2018 as the subject title.

You will receive confirmation of your booking initially and nearer to the conference we will send you joining instructions to include an agenda and directions.

Examinations Update

Download Day

Only 69 schools logged calls on KS4 and KS5 download day this year equating to a total of 131 calls which is unusually low. We trust that means that it went smoothly for most schools.

By far the most common topic related to downloading and refreshing updated basedata from the boards followed closely by questions about Trilogy Science and how it was counted. Both will be covered on next year's Exams analysis training. The clumsy workaround for some unfortunate schools who had attached the wrong gradeset to a QAN in the Manage Qualifications area will be addressed before next Summer exams season. Finally a common problem was producing reports from Examinations Organiser and having to select 9-1 qualifications separately from legacy qualifications will hopefully disappear next year! If there's anything we missed which you think should be raised with Capita, please do email us at scomis@devon.gov.uk with the heading "Summer Results Examination Improvements" and we will telephone you to discuss it.

Upcoming events
We've put a two day training course on for Managing Examinations in Sims on 9^th and 10^th January which covers all the day to day Examination Processes for those that are new or want more knowledge in this area.

Examination Officers Conference – Thursday 15^th November 2018 – Buckfast Abbey, Devon, TQ11 0EG (see above for full details)

Remote Backup

The Scomis Remote Backup Service continues to develop. Additional features available in the coming months include:

Instant Data – instantly recover data from your backups onto another device in the event of a disaster.
GDPR search tools – assisting with GDPR compliance and easily search all your device backups for documents.

Find out more here

Scomis User Groups are a value added service for our customers and take place on the dates below.

These are an opportunity to keep up to date with important information, learn something new from our Scomis specialists and network with colleagues from schools in your area

27th November 2018 - North Somerset User Group
28th November 2018 - Oxford User Group
29th November 2018 - Portsmouth User Group
5th December 2018 - Devon User Group
6th December 2018 - Cornwall User Group
12th December 2018 - Virtual User Group

More information about the User Groups can be found here

Online Safety Update

Positive Online Safety News from Scomis!

We are pleased to announce that from 1^st September 2018, all Scomis customers with a Scomis SLA will receive an Online Safety Newsletter each half-term as a part of their service entitlement for a trial period of one year.

Latest Online Safety News includes

Screentime recent research published by the South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) highlights the amount of time that young people are spending online each day.

7/10 young people are using voice assisted technology (Siri/Alexi)
Childnet's recent research (1000+ young people 8-17) provides details of how frequently young people use voice assisted technology and the ways in which they use it.

Further information can be found here

Updated Scomis Hosted Applications Platform

Scomis are currently undertaking a major technology refresh across the Hosted Applications platform. Following a successful pilot with a range of schools across our spectrum of customers, we are now undertaking the work necessary to make the updated Hosted platform available to all.

Find out further information here

New Scomis Team Member

Gary Henderson has joined Scomis as an Educational and Product Specialist, as part of the Customer Relations and Business Development team from 1st October.

Gary is currently an Assistant Principal at Penrice Academy (a Scomis customer) and brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience as a senior school leader. His specialisms include reporting, assessment, the use of data to raise attainment and parental engagement at a strategic level and operationally through the use if SIMS

Scomis Charity

Our Scomis MacMillan Coffee Morning was a great success and enjoyed by all.

Kind staff donations to our cake sale and raffle and the guess the weight of the cake competition meant altogher we raised £424

Dear Grace,

I have been asked to complete the School Workforce Census but I have not done this before.
Where can I find guidance on this?

Regards,

John

    Dear John,

    The bulletin has all the useful guidance regarding to the School Workforce Census.

    We will update this bulletin with new information as it is released.

    Kind regards,

    Grace

Scomis Online Services

Phone: 01392 385300

scomis@devon.gov.uk

scomis.org

Scomis, Great Moor House,
Bittern Road, Sowton,
Exeter, EX2 7NL

This message was sent to julie.l.chance@devon.gov.uk by Scomis via NewZapp . Scomis is a not for profit organisation that provides ICT Support Services to over 720 schools plus other educational establishments in 19 Local Authorities.

Follow this link to .