SIMS has streamlined administration, simplified admissions and will soon be helping unlock students’ hidden potential in one of the finest schools in India.
With a staggering 60 nationalities represented in the 850 strong student body, The British School in New Delhi prides itself on its international outlook. “We have our head in Britain but our heart is firmly in India,” says Dr Nick Argent, Director at the school.
Children follow the British National Curriculum from nursery to the end of Key Stage 3, then follow a more international path. “Students achieve exceptional results in both IGCSEs and IBs, and many secure places in top universities all over the world. As a result, we are heavily over-subscribed and the management of our waiting list was one of problems we wanted SIMS to help us solve.”
Developing a first-class approach
A management information system (MIS) is designed to make the administration of a school simple. Everything from recording and analysing students’ attendance, assessment and behaviour can be done on one system.
Managing school waiting lists and sharing information with parents about how well a child is doing at school are also quick and easy tasks with the right MIS.
With the wrong systems in place, however, these tasks take up far too much time and errors can slip in as information needs to be relayed in.
Dr Nick Argent, explains: “Prior to moving to SIMS, we had three systems that didn’t talk to each other at all. Prospective students were on one database and when they became actual students, all their details needed to be input again into a different database.”
Then, with school fees managed in yet another system, students ended up with three different electronic identities. “It just wasn’t an efficient way of working.”
Dr Argent had used SIMS when he worked in the UK and knew it could help solve these issues. “SIMS can manage virtually every task you undertake in a school which means data is entered once and then reused. There is no entering a child’s address or attendance mark more than once, for example.”
Reliability was a critical factor when the school decided to switch suppliers too, “SIMS is already used by 19,000 schools around the world, so I knew the system had already proven itself to be reliable many times over. When we decided to make the change, SIMS was the obvious choice.”
A new way of working
Although all system changes can be a little unsettling for the users, acceptance of SIMS has been quick among staff at the school.
“The simple truth is that if you offer an improved product to your staff, no one complains. Capita also did a fantastic job of transferring our data. The customer service has been excellent,” says Dr Argent. “So far we’ve combined two of our previous databases, which has saved a lot of time and unnecessary duplication for our support staff. It also reduces the potential for inaccuracies creeping in.”
A single source
According to Dr Argent, the benefits of SIMS are quickly being realised. “With such a large waiting list, I often deal with parents who want their children to come to our school. Given we operate acceptance on a first-come, first-served basis within categories, it is critical we have accurate information about the date of application.
“Now our admissions team have less donkey work to do in transcribing data and can check all the information is correct more easily. This has resulted in a 30% time saving in administration per admission. I always feel confident that I have all the right information to hand, and that there isn’t another version floating around somewhere.”
Taking Attendance
Dr Argent has also found SIMS very useful in keeping tabs on lesson-by-lesson attendance. “We do not really have any significant attendance issues but the occasional student has been known to skip the odd lesson.
“Using SIMS, teachers are taking electronic registers at the beginning of each lesson as it is so easy to do. It means we can create ‘absence maps’ and find out if two children are missing lessons together, for example. It gives us more information to deal with the problem.”
Additionally, we have an internal minimum attendance requirement to pass the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP). Our last system was inaccurate so we used to get all sorts of challenges if we questioned a student’s attendance. Now we have real-time data so if we decided to withhold certification due to non-attendance, we’d be doing so from a position of strength.”
A forward-facing culture
Now that the workload for support staff has reduced, Dr Argent wants teachers to use SIMS more to track students’ progress and spot if anyone is not fulfilling their potential. “Even though our students are very able and engaged, we still need data to prove the value we are adding and identify if a child could be working at a higher level.”
“We will use SIMS to record all of a student’s assessment marks so we can set them targets which stretch their abilities based on prior achievements. This will mean teachers can closely monitor student progress throughout the school year. They can then step in to help if a child starts to fall behind, in good time before the final exams,” says Dr Argent.
“We’ll also be looking at how we can use the data on SIMS and share it with parents online so they too can see progress improve over time. We’re on the brink of doing some very interesting and powerful things and SIMS is helping us with that journey.”