The ISA Annual Conference was held at the Stratford Moat House Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon, between 10th to 12th May, in a beautiful setting next to the river Avon.
‘Many Double First customers were there,’ said Edina Champion, Customer Liaison Manager, ‘including members of the Alpha Plus Group who recently placed an order for all their schools and colleges.’
Edina added, ‘A number of the Alpha Plus Group schools came to tell us how very much they were looking forward to having Engage installed. In fact, some were already part way through implementation and gave some very encouraging feedback.’
Seminar – Inspectors – Friends or Foes
One of the main seminars was ‘Inspectors – friends or foes?’ where an interesting account of the work of the ISI (Independent Schools Inspectorate) finished with a number of statistics.
The imporatance of Management Information
‘One statistic in particular did not surprise me,’ said Edina. ‘The lowest mark overall for Autumn 2006 was for School Management at 67% in comparison with the high 90s for boarding and teaching.
‘It made me understand why so many schools are realising the importance and potential of a complete Management Information System such as Engage to inform and simplify school management.’
One versus Five Databases?
A Bursar from one school commented they ran 5 databases for different software products from Accounts to Adminstration to Attendance. ‘It’s almost a full time job just keeping them up to date, let alone extracting any useful data,’ commented the Bursar.
‘I can now understand why a Management Information System is so vital, let alone the time and cost savings. I won’t wait for our next inspection to tell me what I already know.’