Here are nine shonky data practices that I've seen in schools. How many are you guilty of?

This Education Datalab tweet got me thinking.

It's a cracking exposé of sixteen (unnamed) schools which appear to have multiple students who are be on roll in autumn, off roll in spring and then on roll in summer. While we can't be certain of the intention, it seems highly likely that the goal is to exclude these students from the school's official KS4 accountability measures, since eligibility is based on pupils in Year 11 in the spring school census.

I tweeted this after reading the blog:

If you work in a school and your approach to data involves gaming the system you've got the wrong approach to data.

(Also: 👏👏👏 to @FFTEduDatalab for spotting this) https://t.co/JAE9KaLkOB

— Joshua Perry (@bringmoredata) May 22, 2019

I stand by the sentiment, but ever since I've had the lingering sense that maybe we have all been complicit in something really silly that helps a school game data, wittingly or unwittingly. And maybe we'd all do that a bit less if, as well as condemning fairly obvious malpractice, we also pause and think about our own more subtle mistakes.

So in that spirit, here are nine shonky data practices I'm aware of. I'm mostly (and deliberately) drawing on things I've witnessed in schools that I've not been involved with directly - either as a member or staff or as a software supplier (I get to see a lot of schools so I'm lucky that way). And, for the avoidance of doubt, my former employer Ark had a great, self-reflective data culture. In the grey areas I talk about below I generally felt Ark were striving to do the right thing. But in any case, this isn't about shaming: it's about facing up to the things we could all do more to understand, or change...

Nine shonky data practices I've seen in schools

1. EYFS results that are surely too good to be true. This may be more likely in new start schools - they only have one year group when they start, so there's extra focus on the data, and it's all Teacher Assessed (TA) data anyway and they're SO YOUNG and changing SO FAST so... somehow things get rounded up.
2. KS1 TA results that are significantly more optimistic than the actual SATs papers taken at the same time. (For those that don't know, students sit KS1 exam papers, then schools basically throw those away and instead submit Teacher Assessed results. But that's an oddity for another day.) I once sat down with a head and talked through anonymised TA and scaled score data. If memory serves, there was one child was given a TA result lower than the SATs score implied. 17 were given higher TA results. Again, in my limited experience you're more likely to see this kind of thing in new start primaries or infant schools where KS1 is the ultimate outcome, so higher scores are good. Which brings me to...
3. KS1 TA results that are significantly more pessimistic than the actual SATs papers taken at the same time. I once sat down with a highly impressive head of school who asked me how Ark handled KS1 results, because their schools submitted TA results on the pessimistic side. Basically their judgments were the mirror opposite of the case outlined in (2). This individual was claiming they were doing it to be "cautious", and  therefore somehow responsible, but then I looked at their progress scores and (surprise!) they do really well in that regard. So... why the need to be cautious? Just be as accurate as possible!
4. Phonics results that follow this pattern. And that's... not how a distribution of results should look. In a national context it's easy to find it almost comical - but maybe it's also worth checking your own school's "curve" - and then see if you're still laughing when you realise how few of your students scored 31 (32 is usually the pass mark - and by now, schools have cottoned on.) 
5. KS2 SATs results that seem to flatter the school. I've read about this more than I've seen it, and having never worked directly in a school I've never been involved in SATs invigilation, so I can't really put my finger on what it looks like when teachers help their students during the SATs exams. But, as this fascinating 2018 Schools Week article by the ever-excellent Laura McInerney explained, another Education Datalab study identified 30 schools where the pupils, "for whatever reason, do extremely well in their SATs exams and then bomb at secondary."
6. Internal attainment data that looks ropey in autumn, better in spring and wonderful in summer. When schools report data from years that are not assessed statutorily, there is not always a way to sense-check what's being reported. But teachers may well be having their performance management based on their class's data. So it would make sense if the kids kind-of got better during the year, wouldn't it?
7. Internal attainment data where the grades imply a common language but the teachers are clearly assessing differently. This is perhaps the most common - and innocent mistake. If you manage assessment across a MAT, it's hard to know whether every teacher is using the same methodology to arrive at an assessment. Even where there's a standardised assessment, some schools are probably getting the kids to sit in a hall, and others are just building the test into normal classroom practice. 
8. Internal attainment data which looks good until the summer term of year 5 / year 10 then gets progressively worse during the "accountability" year. I've seen this multiple times now. I guess the cognitive bias is that people tend to be more likely to declare bad news when they're closer to the moment of reckoning.
9. KS4 students who disappear from roll in the final year. The Education Datalab story highlighted a particularly cynical example of this, but the more common approach appears to be where a student just disappears from roll during the year, never to return. That's clearly bad for the life chances of the child in question - and accountability would seem to be a driving factor behind the behaviour.

This list isn't exhaustive, but there's hopefully enough there to make you reflect on your own experiences.

So what can we all do to be better? Well, if you're a governor, head, data manager or other school or MAT staff member, I'd suggest starting with the following:

1. Read up. Look at any and all of the following:
1. Making Good Progress by Daisy Christodoulou 
2. Measuring Up by Daniel Koretz
3. Every blog post Jamie Pembroke has ever written
4. School-specific assessment courses from Evidence Based Education 
2. Don't assume data you're presented with is correct. I mean, it may be of good quality, but take time to find that out. How has it been moderated? Were standardised assessments used for calibration? If it is test data, what conditions were the tests sat in? Are they working at grades or predictions? Is it even clear what the different between those two things is? This is particularly relevant for governors. I have to assume I'm not the only person who felt a bit useless in a governance role at some point. It's hard to know how to intervene effectively, and the head seems so... on it! Well, a few well placed and persistent questions about data accuracy can make all the difference. Keep asking about data reliability and process until you're confident everything is kosher. Ask to see any available correlations (e.g. TA vs KS1 SATs; internal assessments vs standardised assessments etc). Ask to see your phonics results graphed, so you can see whether a surprisingly large number of students just made the pass mark, while hardly anyone scored just below it. Make sure you know your off-rolling numbers and the reasons why students have been off-rolled. If people don't look happy that you're asking, take it as a sign that you're on to something until proven otherwise...
3. Put a "commitment to accuracy" in your assessment policy. I know, it's just words. But I'm a believer in simple policies or statements (one page could be enough) to align behaviours. It only takes one sentence. Just say something like: "We will at all times aim for an accurate reflection of reality in our assessments, and will be vigilant never to skew our judgments positively or negatively to suit a perceived agenda". 
4. Call bullshit. This is easy for me to say (because I'm not involved in running schools anymore) - but the leaders I've admired most on data do this even when they're in a position of accountability. The first person to show me that Phonics graph I mentioned in point 4 above (albeit a slightly earlier version) was Amanda Spielman, in an Ark meeting (we both worked there at the same time), as we grappled with whether to trust our own network's data. Daisy Christodoulou also led the charge for more honesty about whether our data could be more reliable at Ark, and her crystal-clear thinking led to the a move towards prioritisation of standardised assessments. Both were outstanding at calling bullshit. And hey, their careers seem to be working out ok... so don't be afraid to point out the nonsense and lobby for greater reliability!

MIS MARKET MOVES 2018: three signs that market activity is increasing

If you've paid any attention to the School Management Information Systems (MIS) market in English state schools over the past decade, you'll know that it moves slowly. Capita SIMS have dominated, with around four fifths of the market, leaving others feeling at times like they're competing for scraps.

However, in the last year or two, there have been signs that things are starting to change. A number of cloud MIS vendors emerged as serious options for schools of all shapes and sizes. This led to 860 schools changing supplier in 2017 (or 4%) of the market; a significant increase on previous years.

So now that the DfE has released autumn 2018 data, the big question is: is the rate of change picking up?

Well, a first glance at the data suggests the answer is "not yet", with the number of schools switching dropping slightly over the year to 740. HOWEVER, I think that conclusion would be misleading... and so what follows are my three main takeaways from analysing the data, all of which could point to a potentially marked increase in market activity over the coming year.

1) Overall churn hasn't risen, but the most important number has, and by quite a lot.
Churn has never risen above 4% in the past eight years. Or, to put it another way, at most 1 in 25 schools decides to change its MIS in any given year, based on recent trends (see below).

This maddens the challenger MIS vendors, of course. Everyone knows that Capita SIMS has the lion's share of the market, so getting a major foothold requires other to eat into that share. But how can they do that when schools aren't switching?

Well, that brings me to the first intriguing trend (see viz below).

As you'll see from this first viz, The SIMS churn rate has increased for five years straight, from 0.4% in 2014 to 2.9% today. The highest it ever was before this year was 1.7%. And that's for all schools; if you look at primary only, the rate has gone from 0.7% in 2014 to 3.5% today. On current trends, churn from SIMS alone would be 4% of all schools by 2020, and 5% for primaries.

If you click on the other tab on this viz, you'll see the churn for all vendors. What becomes clear here is that until this year, churn was driven primarily by two factors:

1. Smaller vendors leaving the market (first Pearson e1, then Wauton Samuel).
2. The decline in the share of products owned by Advanced Learning (and Serco before them). 

Strip out those one-off changes, however, and there really wasn't much happening, at least until this year. So the rise in SIMS churn will give cheer to the challenger brands. At 2.9% churn, SIMS is certainly not going anywhere; but the others will finally see in this number a real opportunity to compete.

2) There's now a top tier of seven well-established vendors.
In 2010, there were only four notable vendors: SIMS, CMIS (then Serco; now part of Advanced Learning), RM Integris and Pearson e1. There wasn't even a long tail of plucky challengers - Wauton Samuel had a little area of the south east sewn up; but otherwise,  that was your lot.

Fast-forward to 2018, however, and you find seven vendors competing for your school's business, and they're all either well established or growing. Those are (in order of market share): SIMS, RM Integris, ScholarPack, Pupil Asset, Advanced Learning, Arbor and Bromcom.

In the next viz,  as well as listing the wins/losses/market share numbers, I've also included a (very rough) estimate of market share in terms of Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). What it shows is that these seven are all likely to have ARR of £1m+. I think that's important, as a level of financial strength is required if a product is going to be able to pay for further development and iteration. One other notable insight from the Market share by revenue analysis is Bromcom is a bigger outfit than some give them credit for. This is because their market share skews more towards secondary schools, who typically pay a lot more for their MIS, because of both higher pupil numbers and higher per-pupil pricing, linked to their more complex requirements. By my estimates, Bromcom have c. 2.5% of the total market by revenue, compared to 1.3% by number of schools.

This points to a broader insight, which is that these seven vendors have their own subtle differentiators. As I wrote in my July 2018 post, MATs continue to dominate among switchers, so their needs are getting a lot of attention. The primary sub-sector is also seeing increased switching, and there's a lot of competition for that business. And for the first time ever, someone other than SIMS won the largest number of switching secondaries: Bromcom gained 40 secondaries in the past year, compared to 33 from SIMS. (A hat tip also to Pupil Asset, Arbor, Advanced, RM Integris and iSAMS, who all added secondaries, albeit in the single digits.)

Finally, an honourable mention goes to SchoolPod (part of EduSpot), who grew to 131 schools. They are particularly popular with Alternate Provision and Special schools, not all of whom report their census in the conventional way, so it's also quite likely their share is larger (probably also above 1% by number of schools) once that is taken into consideration). So in some ways, it may be fairer to say there are eight notable vendors in the market right now.

3) Your local schools use a variety of MIS!
A colleague of mine asked me if I could do a viz showing the geographical spread of MIS choice, ideally with a slider so the change over time could be perceived. So I gave it a go, and I'm glad I did, because while playing with the data I spotted a fascinating change.

If you look at the map in the final viz below, and wind back in time from 2018 to 2010,  you'll see that the dominance of SIMS is less pronounced in recent years. Then, to understand why this is in more detail, exclude SIMS from the viz. (To do this, choose them from the legend, then select "Exclude"). What jumps out in 2010 is that the challenger vendors each had little toe-holds around the country, but nothing more. Pearson had Norfolk; Wauton Samuel had their South Eastern patch; and Integris and Serco (now Advanced) each had five or six strongholds. That was essentially that. Local Authorities were still the main purchasers, and this led to regional consistency. However, if you then scroll back from 2010 to 2018 with SIMS excluded, what becomes clear is that challenger MIS are now everywhere.

The growth of MATs has increased the geographic diversity considerably, but more broadly it's also a self-perpetuating trend. In the old days, if you spent your life working in one LA, chances are you'd only know one MIS, regardless of which school you worked at. Nowadays, however, you might have five or six different MIS being used in neighbouring schools. That creates more familiarity with alternatives, and with that comes a willingness to consider options.

So to summarise, the market isn't changing quickly (yet), but it is healthier than it has been for a long time, and the rate of change seems set to increase in coming years.

NOTE: In my day job with Assembly, we're friends and partners of all the major MIS vendors in some way, and we now have deeper commercial partnerships in place with RM Integris and ScholarPack specifically. However, we don't see it as our place to "pick winners" when it comes to school MIS selection, so my aim with this blog is to present data objectively to increase market understanding. I avoid adding anything that could be construed as subjective speculation or opinion.

MIS MARKET MOVES: the majority of switchers are now in MATs!

It's under a month since my last MIS market update, but I've managed to get my hands on the latest market data (from the 2018 summer census return) AND I have the comparable dataset from last year, so I've decided to publish an updated year-on-year analysis of market moves.

After a few fun hours interrogating the data I reckon there are a few noteworthy insights - and you can play around with the stats for yourself using the Tableau Story below. As always, my thoughts are below the dataviz, so scroll down if you just want to know the headlines.

So, here's my take:

1. The majority of switching schools are in MATs. 53% of switching schools were in MATs, whereas 38% of schools in the dataset are in MATs. Both figures are notably high and deserve scrutiny. With the former, it's clear that if you want to grow your market share, you need a MAT offer - even those MIS who are picking up standalone schools have a strong MAT presence too. In the case of the latter, with fully 38% of all schools reporting a census return being part of MATs, Trusts now represent over a third of the English MIS market. This is a big deal - anecdotally my experience is that people still think of MATs as more like a quarter of the market, or even less.   
2. Six vendors grew their market share. Once again the biggest winner is Scholarpack, who picked up 344 schools, making them the fastest grower in absolute terms for over two years now, and the clear third placed vendor overall (after SIMS and RM Integris) with over 1,000 schools. The next three largest climbers will all be pleased with progress: Pupil Asset netted 131; Arbor gained 102; and Bromcom added 67. RM will also presumably be happy to add 32, given they start with a solid 10% market share (keeping them as the clear second placed vendor after SIMS). And SchoolPod also added another 28, taking them over the psychologically important 100 school mark. 
3. 796 schools switched MIS in the past 12 months. That's close to the all-time high we saw in September 2017, when 860 schools switched. MIS investors, founders and senior leaders I speak to are bullish that the number is continuing to rise. So a 1,000+ switching dataset in autumn 2018 is a real possibliity.
4. Regional strongholds are emerging for certain vendors. The map views on the above viz (tabs 5 and 6 on the Tableau Story) show that Pupil Asset is dominant in Norfolk, and growing nicely in a corridor stretching from there down to Cornwall. Arbor appear to have some promising concentrations in London, the North West and the South West. RM's three particularly strong clusters are the South & South East (from Oxfordshire to Southend), the East & North East (Peterborough to Doncaster) and the North West (Halesowen to Bradford). Bromcom have impressive take-up in London (anchored by MATs including Harris Federation and Ark Schools). And while Scholarpack have slightly broader coverage, the North West (Lancashire and Cumbria), the East (Nottingham and Lincolnshire), the West and West Midlands (Birmingham to Herefordshire), and London. On the other hand, iSAMS and Schoolpod have no significant discernible clusters.
5. There's a new vendor in town! A warm welcome to Faronics Wise, who added their first English state school. This Canadian company claims 30,000 unique customers in 150+ countries, so it will be fascinating to track their investment in this new market for them.

A final note: as mentioned previously, in my day job I run Assembly, a schools data platform that has relationships with most of the companies mentioned above. For that reason, I stick to data-driven observations in these posts to help people interpret the data, and I don't personally express MIS preferences or offer recommendations.

MIS MARKET MOVES: mini-mid-year update, Spring 2018

Each year I publish a blog with the latest figures on the English state school MIS market. The most exciting dataset comes out in December / January, based on the October census, and includes all the summer switchers (which tends to be the busiest time).

However, there are data releases during the year, and while they reveal less, they're usually worth a quick look.

And that is indeed the case with the January 2018 census figures, which I've just got hold of. Unsurprisingly, there isn't a great deal of movement (not many schools choose to move MIS over Christmas), but there are useful nuggets of information that can be gleaned from the data nonetheless.

But first, here's the table of the latest data, alongside the October 2017 numbers for reference:

Supplier	Oct-17	Jan-18	Change	% market share
SIMS	17,636	17,580	-56	80%
RM Integris	2,196	2,195	-1	10%
ScholarPack	822	850	28	4%
Advanced Learning	459	443	-16	2%
PupilAsset	301	317	16	1%
Arbor	214	223	9	1%
Bromcom	193	206	13	1%
Schoolpod	107	107	0	0.50%
Others	27	37	10	0.20%
iSAMS	26	23	-3	0.10%
Grand Total	21,981	21,981	0	100%

To summarise:

• Scholarpack, Pupil Asset, Bromcom and Arbor all keep growing, continuing impressive trends we've seen consistently now for five years. 
• SIMS and Advanced Learning continue to see falls, though with SIMS, it should be remembered that when you start with an 80% market share, a 56 school net decrease is equivalent to a 0.3% drop, so is hardly reason for panic.
• RM and Schoolpod held steady, though RM's pre-existing 10% market share and firmly embedded status as the second largest vendor in the UK will make them the happier of the two with this state of affairs.
• iSAMS isn't yet showing much traction with English state schools, though it should be noted that their business is much more focused on the independent sector, which this dataset does not cover.

A final note: in my day job I run Assembly, a schools data platform that has relationships with most of the companies mentioned above. For that reason, I stick to data-driven observations in these posts to help people interpret the data, and I don't personally express MIS preferences or offer recommendations. 

MIS MARKET MOVES 2017: 860 schools switched MIS in the past year!

The English state school Management Information System (MIS) market is a peculiar beast. Nearly all schools buy a MIS, and larger secondaries can pay £10k+ for the pleasure, so there's proper folding money involved. I'd guess the total market is worth comfortably over £100m, and that juicy figure has led 15 companies to offer a product in the space in the past 8 years. And yet, in spite of the healthy competition, until a few years ago the only real takeaways from an analysis of the data were that SIMS remained huge, and schools don't like switching.

In 2012 for example, just 1.4% of schools switched their MIS (300 out of around 21,500 for whom we have data), implying that the average school was on track to stay with the same supplier for around 72 years. And to be honest, the 2011 and 2013 markets weren't much perkier.

But more recently, the market has finally shown signs of life. Over 600 schools have switched MIS in each of the past three years, with the number peaking at 860, or 4% of schools, in 2016/17.  What's more, the competition is now fiercer than ever. Consider this: in 2011, only one company managed to win more than 30 new schools (SIMS, naturally, who gained 262 that year). Even as recently as 2014, only four got over the 30 school threshold. However, in 2017, fully 8 suppliers topped that number.

It's hard to pin down definitively the reasons for the greater activity, but I would hypothesise that the following three trends are driving the increase:

1. Schools want the cloud. Some 4,000 schools are now using a cloud MIS, up from 3,000 only two years ago. With SIMS now fully on the cloud train, this is set to shoot up in the next couple of years. Mind you, until now a move to the cloud meant a move away from SIMS; so it's hard to know what effect SIMS's cloud conversion will have on switching numbers.
2. Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) are flexing their purchasing muscle. Increasing numbers of MATs are choosing a single MIS to use across the trust. Others are allowing for differences, but make their schools choose from a framework of preferred suppliers.  
3. MIS vendors are differentiating themselves more and more. As I wrote in August, Scholarpack focus on primaries only; Arbor have gone big on data analysis, SchoolPod promote their low price, and Bromcom are flaunting their suitability for MATs. 

Anyway, enough waffle; time to show you the data. Repeat visitors to this blog will know the drill by now: below is a Tableau data visualisation showing you some key market stats from the past 8 years. Have a rummage around for yourself to see who's up and who's down. Then skip to the bottom for a bonus observation and a final data source caveat...

Now, to my bonus analysis...

A prominent person in the industry recently challenged me to dive into the data and look at how likely switchers were to stay with their new MIS. I have spent way too many hours down this rabbit hole, but my conclusion is that in general, once schools switch, they stay switched. Of the 338 schools who appear to have switched more than once in the past seven years, I could find only 45 instances of a school returning to their former MIS. And from the remaining 293, 220 were forced to switch at least one of the times (for example when Pearson e1 left the market). Furthermore, I can't see any evidence of a supplier that is more prone than others to winning, and then promptly losing, business.

This should offer encouragement to the challenger brands: school business may be hard won, but once a school has made the move they are unlikely to want to shift again any time soon. In a sense therefore, the MIS market is to edtech what current accounts are to banking.

A final postscript for those geeky enough to read to the end: as Keith Johnson (of Timetabler fame) correctly pointed out in the comments on my last post, the data used for this blog covers only English state schools, which means that MIS which are popular with independent schools (such as iSAMS, SchoolBase and WCBS) are missed out of the analysis. Sadly that's a hard gap to fill since I use FOI-ed public data, and there's no equivalent source for the Indie sector. It's also worth noting that the data excludes Welsh schools (who mostly use SIMS, with a notable minority using Ceredigion Teacher Centre) and Scotland (where more or less all schools use the council-owned SEEMIS).

MIS MARKET MOVES: 2017 mid-year update

Since MIS market information is collected by the DfE every term as part of the school census, in theory it's possible to request the data from them on a termly basis. However,  I normally only bother doing analysis annually, using data from the autumn term. This is partly because schools have historically preferred to switch over the summer, meaning the termly data doesn't usually show big movements; and partly because people laugh at me if I spend too many evenings writing about education technology.

And yet, after skimming through the May 2017 data (requested in an FOI by Richard Harley, founder of Scholarpack), I thought the numbers were interesting enough to whack up a quick blog post / Tableau viz of the data. I have also heard from reliable sources that Wauton Samuel (WS) is exiting the market, having come to an arrangement with Scholarpack for a large proportion of their schools to switch to them. Since WS had 115 schools at the last count, that'll inevitably boost the total 16-17 switching number further, so it looks like it will be a (relatively) busy year for the MIS market.

Anyway, here's the data in a few tables and charts. My analysis is below.

My key takeaways:

1. Nine companies now have over 100 school customers. This compares to just five in 2014, making the market more competitive than ever. I consider 100 schools to be something of a magic number - many MIS founders will tell you the first 100 are the hardest to come by, and it's also a level of market share that could conceivably sustain a small business, or at least give confidence to shareholders eager to see growth to justify their investment. Of course, the exit of WS will take this down to 8 come next year, but still, that's plenty enough options for schools to feel like they have good choices.
2. 534 schools in England switched MIS between September 16 and May 17. That's a lot by historical standards. Unfortunately I don't keep tabs of the in-year numbers, so I can't give you accurate, like-for-like numbers for previous years, but I do know that 659 switched in the whole of 15-16, and I'd take an educated guess that the number has typically been lower than that in recent years. Given the Wauton Samuel news, I now think it's highly likely that we're on track for 700+ switchers in the academic year. 
3. Scholarpack are the big winners, followed by Arbor, Bromcom, Schoolpod and Pupil Asset. Scholarpack gained 213 schools net in the first two terms of the academic year, with net increases of 36 for Arbor, 27 for Bromcom, 26 for Schoolpod and 17 for Pupil Asset. These five companies have all shown significant year-on-year growth for the past five years now, and between them they represent 6.4% of the market. 
4. SIMS still has over 80% of the market. Just because others are doing well, it shouldn't be assumed that SIMS are struggling. Indeed, if you can retain an 80% market share in the face of increasing competition from those around you, you're doing something right. 
5. Advanced Learning (AL) may turning the corner. In the past six years the AL market share has dropped from 6% to 2.3%, and while there were further net losses this year, there are also more positive signs for the company behind both CMIS (locally hosted) and Progresso (cloud-based). The net loss of 80 schools over the two terms is likely to be weighted heavily towards CMIS (the two systems aren't separated out in the data), and the company will no doubt be encouraged by the 46 new school customers (presumably for Progresso). Stripping away those losses, after Scholarpack (214) and SIMS (125), AL actually ranked third overall in terms of number of new customer wins, which will please fans of a competitive market.
6. MIS are increasingly finding ways to differentiate themselves. That's not just my view; it's evident from vendors' own websites: 
1. Scholarpack say they are "built for primary schools". In other words, they aren't focussing on the secondary market.
2. Arbor promote their data and analysis capabilities, pitching themselves as the system that will "integrate all your data in one place"
3. SchoolPod care about price-competitiveness so much that they say "if you can find a cheaper price, we will match it."
4. Bromcom claim to be the "MATs’ number one choice for a Cloud based MIS", and proudly display the logos of several Multi Academy Trust customers on their homepage

A final observation: with Capita having announced revamped, cloud-based versions of SIMS for both primary and secondary in 2018, every vendor in the English market is publicly pinning their future on a cloud-based product. Perhaps unsurprisingly (given that I run Assembly, a cloud-based schools data platform), I think that's a good thing. The cloud offers flexibility and simplicity that should bring significant benefits and savings to schools.

MIS Market Moves 2016: Schools Are On Cloud Nine (Options To Choose From)

The first rule of journalism is: be fresh. Nobody likes old news.

So thank goodness I'm not a journalist. Because this blog post publishes school Management Information System (MIS) market data from September 2016, which I've been sitting on since December. But enough people have asked me about school MIS stats recently that I felt shamed into updating this series of "MIS Market moves" posts I started in 2014.

Anyway, to business. For the benefit of those who haven't read this blog before, a cheery bunch of education data folks (including Twitter's own @GrazReed and @DavKellyPro) submit Freedom of Information requests to the government for up-to-date MIS market stats, who happen to collect data on school MIS choice as part of their census data collection process. I then piggy back off their hard work by plonking the data into Tableau (the data visualisation tool of choice at Assembly, the schools data platform where i work.)

The following Tableau Story takes you through the main headlines in the market. The first visualisation (or "Viz" in Tableau-speak) is the most flexible: you can use the menu options to filter the data by school phase and MIS vendor. Below the Tableau Story, you'll also find my commentary on the state of the market.

So as is seemingly the case every year, the biggest story is... there isn't a big story. (Don't get me wrong, there are medium-sized stories, so please keep reading, Just not a really big one...).  The MIS market moves slooooowly; changes in market share of 0.5% or greater (basically, a move of +-100 schools) are unusual, and therefore can be considered a BIG DEAL.

With that in mind, the big risers are Scholarpack (460 schools up from 305) and Pupil Asset (261, up from 119). It's no coincidence that both are proudly primary focused - it's been apparent for a while that primaries are happy to accept a thinner product than secondaries, providing it is tailored to their needs. They're also apparently quicker to perceive the benefits of the cloud; while RM (by far the largest cloud vendor by market share) serves both primaries and secondaries, its customer base is mostly in the primary sub-sector. Bromcom also deserve an honourable mention for rising from 93 to 155 schools; the biggest increase among MIS suppliers working across all phases.

The biggest drop in terms of absolute number of schools was SIMS (17,888, down from 18,162). However, in terms of market share, the move is hardly spectacular: a drop from 82.6% to 81.3%. Advanced Learning (576, down from 714) also continue to fall, presumably because of customers leaving their legacy "Facility CMIS" product. (The company also provides a newer cloud MIS called Progresso, but the government stats don't separate the two, so it's hard to tell exactly what's going on.)

However, individual vendor data tells only half the story. When you aggregate and compare cloud and non-cloud systems (the second viz on the Tableau story), you see that the market share of cloud vendors continues to rise significantly - up from 11.6% in 2014 to 15.9% in September 2016. In a slow-moving sector, that's a sure sign that something is happening. And actually, these figures understate the rate of change, since I've not been able to count Progresso schools in the "cloud" column, and recent high-profile MAT procurements from Harris (who moved to Bromcom) and AET (who moved to Progresso) are not reflected in the data.

Even more telling is the third viz, which shows how the net gains are all from cloud vendors. There are, in fact, fully nine cloud MIS suppliers with 25 or more state school customers, compared with just two locally hosted systems left in the market (SIMS and CMIS). It's in this context that the recent big announcement from SIMS of a move to the cloud in 2018 should be understood. Of course, many schools still love SIMS just how it is today, but clearly the company's future health is tied to how SIMS measures up to the ever growing crop of cloud contenders.