Head’s Blog: Internet Issues

Last week was pretty frustrating for many of us at Fearnhill. A change of Management Information System was always going to be complicated. There are many overlapping processes that involve student data working in sync: card payments for the canteen, timetables, rewards & sanctions, registers, safeguarding records, assessment information, medical information and SEND records to name just a few. Often the data exists on various software platforms that must be able to transfer data seamlessly and securely.

It was always going to be a busy week for many of our operational staff whether they work in IT, student data, finance, administration or the pastoral team.

This task was made much more challenging when the fibre optic cable that provides the school’s internet connection snapped on Tuesday night somewhere along Icknield Way. It took some time for Virgin Media to diagnose the problem, but they have now replaced the damaged cable and we have the internet working again.

This has set us back with our re-implementation of Edulink, but you should receive access shortly.

I am very grateful to our amazing operational staff who have been doing so much work to ensure that the new management information system makes school life more straightforward in the long run and who also helped us to cope with the various challenges we faced without any internet for three days.

Thank you for your patience with these challenges last week. Here’s to a less eventful week to come.