It's Autumn census day today! Every school has a statutory duty to complete the school census each term, and if this feels stressful we've compiled your quick last-minute resources to enable you to return your school's census data by the deadline of Wednesday 2nd November. Scroll down to ease the pain. 

Next week we'll be waving the Scomis banner at two conferences, Optimus Education's MATs Summit in Stratford-upon-Avon and the Devon School Leadership Services conference at Saunton Sands. If you're attending either make sure you come and say hello. Below we talk about why conferences are so important to us, and our customers.

Coming up

Whether you're exhibiting, like Scomis, or attending as a delegate, as our customers and future customers do, conferences can be time-consuming and a bit of a faff. So why do we all do it?

We know from speaking to our customers that conferences are an opportunity to gather intellegence from peers and EdTech exemplars, to gain perspective on challenges and solutions, reassurance that we're all in this together finding fresh ideas and learning from others. It's also a great way to find and meet new suppliers and partners. And it's also about social and professional bonding.

For us, we love seeing our customers and meeting future customers. We're inspired by the conversations that we have and we gain great insight from them. It's an opportunity for us to aggregate these conversations with the insights we gain from working with our customers and solving their challenges. What we do with this is aggregate this data to the benefit of our customers and future customers. Conferences are a great space for market testing new products, and we're excited to launch two very exciting game-changing new products next week at the MATs Summit.

MATs Summit

Next week we will be at the Optimus Education MATs Summit, Thursday 13th and Friday 14th October, with networking on the evening of Wednesday 12th October. This year the summit is in Stratford-upon-Avon. We're sharing best practice from our extensive experience guiding and delivering strategy to improve education outcomes at over 100 trusts nationwide. Trust leadership teams benefitted greatly from attending this conference last year.

Devon School Leadership Services Conference

Next week on Thursday 13th October we will also be exhibiting at the Devon School Leadership Services Conference at Saunton Sands, which you can find out more information about here.

School Autumn and Workforce Census

Autumn school census day is today, 6th October and the return date is Wednesday 2nd November. In all likelihood your establishment will already be ready for this important day, but if you need a speedy refresher on the day, here are Scomis customers' free resources: 

• Arbor's video on submitting your census
• SIMS School census for primary schools self-directed course 
• SIMS School census for secondary schools self-directed course

And this is your reminder that the School Workforce Census is on 3rd November - the first Thursday of November. The deadline for returning is the 2nd December. Find our free SIMS School Workforce census self-directed course here and Arbor's resources here.

Autumn into Winter Wellbeing

Since our last newsletter, the autumn equinox means that nights are longer than days, and days will continue to shorten now until just after the end of this term.

The cost of living crisis is affecting many of us, and those around us, and along with the energy crisis, is adversely affecting the budgets every person, school and trust in the country. It's stressful because so much is out of our own control.

As Dr Emma Kell reminds us in her ScomisLive talk, there are small actions and acts of kindness that make a difference. These small actions can assist our own wellbeing and that of others around us. And we've collected some easy resources to help you take care of mind, body and soul at work for restful and restorative five to ten minute break. 

• Five minute guided meditation to recentre
• Five minute gentle yoga stretching on your chair
• Online jigsaw puzzle to switch off
• Five minute guided mindfulness for creativity

Training - what's coming up?

Ahead of our CPD, Training & Courses email, coming next week and packed with opportunities, there's a remote tutor-led course on Tuesday 11th October, for exams officers wishing to make use of SIMS Exams Organiser to manage internal examinations, for example mock examinations.

Domestic Exams covers everything you'll need to know to manage mock examinations.