SCHOOL ICT NEWS BULLETIN No 139 - 09/01/2009

Published by Children’s Services

Norfolk Secondary Schools ICT Network Managers Workshop

The Norfolk Secondary Schools ICT Network Managers Workshop will be taking place on 5th February at South Green Park, Mattishall commencing at 12.30 with lunch. Letters will be sent to secondary schools shortly with agenda items for the event together with a form to acknowledge attendance.

Author: Jenny Tallent

e¹ Implementation

We are very pleased to let you know that following the meeting with the representatives from SNAPP on the 17th December, it has been agreed to resume the rollout of e¹ in January.

Whilst the project has been suspended, ICTS and Pearson Phoenix have been working in a number of areas to address the issues and concerns that have been raised. We have analysed the issues and concerns and broken them down into the following categories.

We are still working through the list and will be issuing a detailed response to all the issues/concerns raised early in January. From the analysis work we have completed, a number of initiatives have been identified and some have already been put in place.

Feedback from schools and school staff indicate that the changes that have already been implemented (especially the Workshops) have made a significant improvement and schools now have much more confidence in e¹ and the support they receive. Although it was acknowledged that this constituted a very good start, it was also recognised that there is still work to be done to build on and further develop these areas.

We have summarised the main areas that have been or are due to be addressed below:

• Termly e¹ Workshops. Ten primary school workshops were held in November / December. Over 80 schools attended and the feedback has been very positive. The Spring workshops have now been organised and dates will be published in the New Year. These have proved so useful that we would encourage all schools to attend. The Question and Answer list and the details of the next workshops will be issued as separate emails within the next few weeks
• Additional Days Training. Feedback from those already trained was that there was too much information to take onboard over two days. Therefore, in future, an extra day's training will be included as part of the implementation for all schools migrating to e¹. This third day, in addition to covering areas which will no longer be covered during Days 1 and 2, will also give attendees the opportunity to raise queries or ask questions which have cropped up since going live.
• Support. Additional staff have been trained to support e¹. This will enable us to provide increased 1–1 support including an extra post implementation visit. We have also arranged additional e¹ support from Pearson to assist the ICT Solutions team.
• Service Desk. For telephone support, an additional option has been added which will allow schools to go through directly to the e¹ support team.

• Fourteen of the twenty–one faults have already been resolved. The remainder are being reviewed and as many as possible will be included in the February upgrade of e¹.

• Twenty two of the change requests have already been resolved. The outstanding ones are currently being prioritised and, again, a schedule will be published early in the New Year.
• One of the top priorities identified relates to reporting and making more standard reports available to schools rather than each individual school having to write their own reports.
• Another priority area identified was the electronic transfer of data between schools and the electronic import of new intake rather than via manual data entry. It was noted that this was more than an ICT issue and that " data quality " issues also had to be addressed. We are currently working on the process for electronic transfer which we aim to have in place for next April.
• We are setting up e¹ Strategic User Groups for Primary / Secondary schools. These will be a representative group, at Senior Management Team level, to work with Pearson and ourselves to help shape the future development of e¹ and to enable schools to fully exploit e¹ to its full potential.

Finally, we would like to thank you and your staff for your contribution to the work that has gone on during this period. Significant progress has been made and the changes put in place should enable us to move further forward over the coming months.

Issued on behalf of John Leigh, Head of ICT (Children's Services) and Carole Barwell, e 1 Project Manager.

Author: Carole Barwell

e¹ Initial Training Extended To 3 Days

Initial training for e¹ is being extended to three days for Primary Schools. Day 1 and 2 will be the dates already agreed with schools, with a third day being arranged for a few weeks after go live. Part of Day 3 will be a support session, so that attendees from Day 1 and 2 can discuss issues they have encountered during their first couple of weeks using e¹.

Schools who are due to train in January and February have already been notified of the date of their Day 3. Other schools will be contacted in the near future.

Author: Carole Barwell

e¹ Training

There are places still available on the following course:

e¹ staff absence and cover
Date: 30th January 2009
Time: 9.30-12.30
Venue: Norwich PDC

For more information and to book a place please contact training services team on 0845 303 3003 or e-mail Rachel.hudson@norfolk.gov.uk

Author: Rachel Hudson