FAQs

CAT Schools have used SIMS for decades as the Management Information System (MIS), storing and processing student information.

The MIS is a key system that is used throughout the school by all stakeholders. For a long time, SIMS has not been developed beyond the minimum DfE requirements. This has led the schools to implement different 3rd party systems to work around shortcomings such as Behaviourwatch, Edulink One and others. This is expensive and complicated.

The schools now need a system that brings all our data together and uses it to empower staff to drive improvement. It also needs to be fast, easy to use, accessible on all device types and reliable, freeing up time for staff to focus on their work, not battling with outdated systems.

SIMS has been purchased by ParentPay and, having realised schools and trusts are leaving in large numbers, are trying to lock schools into long-term contracts. This means we need to move in April 2022.

A working group was formed of stakeholders from across the Trust. They evaluated the key requirements from our use of SIMS and other systems and looked at new ways to improve work.

The group evaluated 2 systems: Bromcom and Arbor and the decision was unanimous that Arbor was the easiest to use and had key workflow improvements that would make many tasks more efficient.

Arbor is a modern, cloud-based system, much like Google Workspace, meaning it can be accessed from anywhere and any device, unlike SIMS which is a Windows-only application.

Data is accessible in Arbor. All users have access to data relevant to their job, i.e. teachers can see contextual information about the students they teach.

We anticipate this move to have a significant positive impact for most our stakeholders with time-saving being a particular benefit for everyone.

Teachers

Teachers will save time by not having to wait for SIMS to load up and log in and won't need to change between different systems, e.g. SIMS/Edulink for registers and Behaviourwatch for logging concerns/communications, this can all be done in one place.

Beyond simple time savings, Arbor helps teachers by putting relevant data at the forefront. When opening Arbor, you will see a dashboard showing attendance, behaviour and attainment data for all your students which you can drill down in to.

Rather than a simple register, each lesson has a full dashboard giving access to attendance, behaviour, reward points, marksheets, and data in one place. The seating plan has significant improvements over Edulink as well.

Support Staff

Admin staff will, similarly, have all their tools in one system, for example, sending communication can be done from any table in Arbor, so you wouldn't need to make a note of which students to send a message to and select them in Edulink or ParentPay, you can send the message without leaving the page. This will be particularly helpful when dealing with things like attendance.

Arbor have identified a number of common admin tasks that take a long time in SIMS and have focussed on making these tasks quicker and easier.

Leadership (HoY, HoD, SLT)

SIMS was very poor at providing access to data, with everything needing to be access through reports, making static and out of date.

Arbor presents live data throughout the system so leaders will be able to see and drill down in to student data quickly.

Having all data in one place will mean that creating chronologies and responding to SARs is very quick.

Edulink One has been a great addition to SIMS, making registers, marksheets, timetables and communications easier and more accessible to staff.

We will be bringing all the functionality of Edulink into Arbor which will be a great benefit as all the information will be in the same system. There won’t be the need to open up a separate system to find data.

Arbor has a Lesson Dashboard which brings attendance, behaviour, rewards, marksheets and much more information into one place.

Edulink One and Behaviourwatch were both implemented to address shortcomings in SIMS and will no longer be needed with Arbor.

Behaviourwatch can continue running but it makes far more sense to move behaviour data into the core MIS. A separate safeguarding system will be introduced for recording and managing concerns.

All current and historical data from SIMS will be migrated to Arbor. Not all data will be retained, however as we will use this opportunity to remove information that we are no longer legally allowed to keep under GDPR rules (records retention).

The MIS core team is lead by David Young (Director of IT) and consists of Vanessa Sinet (Operations Manager) and Emma Dines (Data Manager).

As the project continues, Arbor Champions will be appointed who will take a lead in individual schools or department areas to roll out the system.

The training for Arbor is being delivered online via live or pre-recorded webinar sessions.

Teachers will have a short video to watch which will go over the basic functionality of accessing the system, viewing their classes, taking a register, etc.

Admin staff will have more in-depth training across multiple sessions/videos which will cover each area in use. These sessions are being arranged with the school leads by the MIS team.

The training recordings will all be made available on this site through the Training section.

Cygnet are accredited support providers for Arbor so we can continue to benefit from their high quality of support.

We anticipate Arbor to be far more intuitive and require less support once staff are trained.

The IT Services team will, as always, be on hand to provide support and help.

The migration process for the data will start in January 2022 and we will continue using SIMS until Easter. Training will be provided before the launch and support will be available at all times. A road map will be shared with staff soon.

Arbor has move thousands of schools from SIMS and have a well-defined transition process which will include all the training staff need.

Along with the resources we have provided on this site, Arbor have an extensive Help Centre which includes lots of training materials and help articles covering all areas of functionality in the system.

Use the link in the menu bar or click here to visit the Help Centre.