Founded in 685, Royal Grammar School Worcester is one of the oldest schools in the United Kingdom and caters for day students aged 11-18 years.
RGS Worcester is one of the leading Independent secondary schools in the West Midlands, offering students an extensive range of opportunities both in their studies and in their co-curricular activities.
Why did you start looking for a new MIS at the beginning of your journey?
We were unhappy with our current MIS as it did not have the functionality that we required, and we weren’t obtaining the support we needed to develop the system or resolve the issues we were experiencing. It was also not very user friendly.
“As a Data Manager, iSAMS’ overall reliability and general ease of use as an MIS is important. We have 4 schools, and it is very helpful to us that we can have all 4 schools on the one MIS system.”
What made you choose iSAMS?
iSAMS has the functionality that we required. For example, dedicated functionality for Independent schools. It was also user friendly. We felt that we would receive good support and that there would be on-going developments and improvements.
What do you like most about iSAMS?
The ability to set up our own SSRS reports or modify reports that are set up by iSAMS, with only limited SSRS knowledge, is crucial in my role. More recently, the Student Registers module has been a great addition to iSAMS system, due to its flexibility and functionality. It has allowed us to set up the SEN information in a more user-friendly format for teachers and the SEN department, for example.
“On the whole, support over the last 14 years has been very good. The support documentation has been very useful at times and iUniversity videos have proved helpful, for example, with the move of SEN to Student Registers.”
How was your experience of the iSAMS implementation and migration process?
It was some time ago now, but it was excellent. We imported data from our Prep schools at a later date and this all worked very well. It was very important to have the flexibility to add the extra school’s data to our existing iSAMS database.
“We always have excellent support from our Customer Account Manager. So, if we do have any particular outstanding issues, it is reassuring to know I can contact them and they’ll always endeavour to help.”
Do you use any third-party integrations?
Yes, the third-party integrations give us some extra functionality. We only use a few third-party integrations as iSAMS provides our core MIS and we prefer to use the modules in iSAMS where we can.