Twenty-five pilot schools give Serco Learning thumbs up as Progresso cloud-based Management Information System goes live

The eagerly anticipated next generation management information system, Serco Learning Progresso, goes live in November 2011, having been in development with 25 pioneer schools for over a year. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) October 28, 2011 - The schools, all of whom have given Serco Learning Progresso a very positive thumbs-up, will be the first to benefit from its powerful cloud-based technology and to have real-time data and reports on attendance, assessment and behaviour available anytime, anywhere, to support school improvement and enable transformation for the delivery of education in modern 21st century schools. The launch, which is right on track, has sparked significant interest, as schools clamber to sign up for the Serco Learning Progresso national launch event programme taking place nationwide http://www.sercolearning.com/progresso-launch-events.

"Raising standards and the accurate assessment of GCSE results were primary concerns for us. It was something we always managed, but before the arrival of Progresso was an extremely lengthy process - extracting data from our MIS into spreadsheets in order to perform analysis. Over the last two years the number of pupils leaving the school with five A*-Cs rose by 18 percent. We want to see this trend continue and improve. Progresso will help us achieve this by providing staff with real-time data on pupil progress and targets and enabling them to make fast and effective decisions", said Alison Jacobs, Data Manager, London Academy, Edgware.

"The analogy for me is that 'Toys R Us' slogan", said Andrew Daly, Deputy Principal, Swavesey Village School, Cambridge, "everything under one roof. Combined with an easy-to-use point of entry, this kind of integration makes it possible for teachers - whether classroom specialists or senior leaders - to rapidly collect the information they need on any student or group. That's vital when a school's focussed on improving life chances for students. We've done a lot of school improvement work with other schools as well as our own, and really the need is to keep things simple - straightforward data at peoples' fingertips."

A multitude of new and enhanced features much welcomed by the teaching community distinguish Progresso from traditional school hosted MIS systems. Its intuitive easy-to-use web interface incorporates 'push' technology, in the same way as popular websites such as Facebook and Twitter, to deliver a live dashboard of personalised information to all users as soon as they log in.

"Most staff in our school are under 40, are web-literate and familiar with Facebook", said Tim Murphy, Assistant Head, Sandringham High School, St Albans. "Progresso is a system that any form tutor can readily use regardless of their IT literacy levels - a system with a highly intuitive interface. Information is pushed to the desktop alerting them that something's changed or needs to be looked at. Isn't that great? The teacher gets an automatic alert saying, 'These students underperformed in a Geography assessment'. So she can say, 'What happened in Geography then?' It changes the whole nature of the conversation."

Centralising school communications, Serco Learning Progresso combines SMS and email messaging under one roof, so teachers and SMTs can communicate with selected groups of students, teachers and parents, without exiting the system. Anytime anywhere access to data simplifies life further and allows staff with web-enabled PCs and smartphones to action priorities quickly wherever they are located and to perform essential duties remotely at a time and place that suits them without the need to spend long hours at the school.

Another major benefit is the reduced cost of ownership - the school no longer needs to purchase, manage, maintain and replace dedicated school servers and associated infrastructure. Freedom from the time-consuming overheads of local system administration including local back-ups and upgrades allow ICT staff to focus their efforts on other school priorities that impact directly on teaching and learning.

"Our MIS is currently backed up on two large servers, which will no longer require lengthy maintenance, freeing us up to undertake more productive work and allowing us to put our IT kit to better use elsewhere. Further time will be saved using the automated reports and letter templates", added Alison Jacobs.

Concluding, Mohamad Djahanbakhsh, Managing Director of Serco Learning, said: "We are very excited about the launch of Progresso, having worked with the most forward-thinking schools in the country from grassroots level to grow and shape its development. These schools are proactively anticipating change by implementing this fourth generation management information system to improve the way they have done things for years. By choosing to move to the cloud in this way they are set to drive transformational improvement and re-focus their time on embedding ICT into teaching and learning."

For further information about Serco Learning Progresso, please contact Serco Learning on Tel: +44(0)1 332 660 555, e-mail: enquiries ( @ ) sercolearning dot com or visit the website: www.sercolearning.com/progresso. Follow ( @ ) Serco_Learning on Twitter.

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