St Cuthbert Mayne School
Background
St Cuthbert Mayne School is a voluntary aided, co-educational secondary school and sixth form in Torquay, Devon providing a supportive and engaging learning environment for students. Their Strategic Data Manager explains how SIMS has enabled real time access to behaviour and attendance information enabling early interventions whilst saving time and money.
The Challenge
St Cuthbert Mayne School needed a firm grasp on its pupil data to improve overall attendance and to reduce persistent absence and this is currently a key focus for the school. Denys McKee, Strategic Data Manager at St Cuthbert Mayne explains, “It is important to ensure we have attendance data in one place, easily accessible, so we can identify the relevant students and cohorts to ensure appropriate interventions and safeguarding is in place.”
The Solution
Denys McKee is working hard to ensure everyone has access to key student data from SIMS in particular on their Homepage.
The school uses Lesson Monitor in SIMS to take class and form tutor registration and can therefore quickly identify which registers are outstanding and follow up unauthorised absences to ensure safeguarding of students. “With SIMS, we have everything we need in one place for attendance data. We particularly like the way we can tailor the SIMS Homepage for individual roles, so that everyone in the school has instant access to the specific information they need via a personalised dashboard.”
The Senior Leadership Team can have a whole school view of attendance and monitor groups for concern on their Homepage. Likewise, Year Coordinators, Class Teachers and Form Tutors can configure their Homepage to view the information they require. Simply hovering over the attendance panels instantly gives statistics for present, authorised, unauthorised absences and missing marks.’ ‘Staff can drill down to obtain more detailed information to identify trends and patterns early in the year, which students might be in danger of scoring low attendance rates, so we can work with their families and provide interventions to prevent this. ‘
The Attendance Officer uses Schoolcomms which integrates well with SIMS. When chasing up unauthorised absences through texts and letters these are linked to the individual students in SIMS ensuring all information is easily accessible. SIMS also has the capability to push information. It means that if you make a change in one place anyone who has authorisation to monitor this will be automatically notified live, in real-time.
The school also uses Behaviour Management in SIMS, allowing Class Teachers and Form Tutors to record behaviour incidents or uncompleted homework via their registers. These incidents are then instantly visible on the behaviour panel on the Homepage as well as on the Student Teacher View. They can also be viewed on registers as Behaviour Today making other staff aware of recent incidents and potentially further disruptions.
The Impact
“From a staff perspective, having a wealth of information in one place allows them to look at very visible data to inform decisions. It saves time, resources and helps promote the wellbeing and safeguarding of students.”
“By fully utilising the resources available in SIMS, we can view attendance and behaviour data, to identify if there are correlations between the two. Having everything in one place empowers all stakeholders to improve outcomes.”
“Attending Scomis User Groups and working with our Account Manager helps us keep abreast of upcoming developments in SIMS as well as the extensive range of services Scomis offers. Having Scomis’ support when issues arise and the ability for them to remote in and solve problems in a timely fashion is an invaluable service. When speaking to members of the Service Desk team, you are always greeted with a friendly, professional and knowledgeable manner.”
“By fully utilising the resources available in SIMS, we can view attendance and behaviour data, to identify if there are correlations between the two. Having everything in one place empowers all stakeholders to improve outcomes. SIMS saves time, resources and helps promote the wellbeing and safeguarding of students.”