Blatchington Mill School
Contact: Mark Leighton
Blatchington Mill is a mixed 11 - 18 comprehensive school of almost 1800 students. The 'BMS360' was set up in Sharepoint 2003 and subsequently upgraded to MOSS 2007, and now SharePoint 2010. It features areas for staff, students, parents, governors and community.
A particular emphasis has been on encouraging parents into the school community through greater access to their childs progress and attainment. Parents can access all of the student portal with its curriculum materials, as well as newsletters, information and guidance and parent forums.
Live information immediately accessible to parents includes assessment, profiles, registration and lesson attendance, behaviour/ achievements, timetable information, online rewards, and an online homework diary - all relating specifically to their son/daughter. All staff and students can access their network space remotely.
The student Assignment Diary was built in house. Work is assigned to students by staff online, and is immediately available to view by the student or by their parents, via the online diary. The following is a staff view of a student's homrework diary online.
We have developed Student Tracking web parts which interrogate SIMS Assessment Manager and display target grades, attainment grades, and progress traffic lighting for parents to view on their child's progress, and for students to check on their own progress at any time:
Capita Learning Gateway web parts have been installed and allow the parent to drill down to examine more precise details. This information is read directly from SIMS.net with no further intervention by staff. Examples of some of the web parts are displayed below.
In addition to the data available to students and parents, staff also have access to their timetable, the daily cover sheet, to lesson registration and can complete reports remotely.
View of home page with Parent menu open
A student's Achievement points and Behaviour points from the SIMS Behaviour Management module are displayed to the student via an online behaviour webpart which shows points accrued together with associated graphics
Although there are many more developments planned for it, there has already been considerable interest shown in Blatchington Mill's portal.
It has featured in articles in The Guardian, TES, various education journals, and presentations have been made to ASCL, NAHT, SLICT and at numerous SIMS National Conferences. It also features at BETT each year on either the Capita or Microsoft stand.
Guardian January 2008
Microsoft Case Study December 2008
Microsoft Case Study December 2009 (pdf)
Microsoft videos on parental engagement at Blatchington Mill 2010
SharePoint 2010 and Parental Engagement at Blatchington Mill : Microsoft Education Blog 2011
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