Supporting the COBIS conference theme of ‘Leading Learning’ are two hotly discussed topics which are relevant to both UK independent schools and international schools, these being:
1. Investing in a Pastoral System to support the wellbeing of students to comply with the Prevent Duty and GIRFEC Guidelines.
2. The duty of schools to protect the personal data and privacy of students, parents, staff and teachers by complying with the impending GDPR Law.
We look at both these topics and why you should be considering a technology solution to enable you to support and comply.
1. A pastoral system to support the Prevent Duty and GIRFEC guidelines
The resounding trend is the approach that schools are taking to invest in resources, processes and technologies to improve outcomes and support a student’s wellbeing. Compliance with the Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) guidelines or the Prevent Duty is crucial for any school in today’s world. At the core of this is the software solution to support pastoral care in your school.
iSAMS, now the leading MIS supplier to independent schools in the UK, has over 750 schools using the platform which it continuously seek feedback from clients and the wider community, to ensure it remains the most usable, versatile software solution.
Following this feedback, the need arose for a solution to capture all pastoral and safeguarding needs in a single place. The iSAMS Pastoral Manager fulfils this exact requirement. It’s a highly intuitive module which offers schools the ability to:
- Manage all records in a single place and provide an evidence trail for inspections
- Record concerns against single or multiple students, and actions related to those concerns
- Identify moments which have significant impacts on a student which should be highlighted to all, using the Raised Pastoral flag feature
- Record Life Events which have a substantial effect on a student at a certain time of the year
- Audit all captured activity, view historical data to compare changes
- Support the Scottish Governments GIRFEC (getting it right for every child) initiative
- Support the Prevent Duty act
Institutions have a duty to care for students by providing pastoral support. Let iSAMS help you achieve this by implementing a powerful pastoral system which integrates with a robust MIS administrative platform.
Visit iSAMS at on Stand #84 at the 2018 COBIS Annual Conference.
2. Complying with the impending GDPR data regulation
It is the duty of a school to protect the personal data and privacy of students, parents, staff and teachers. By May 25, 2018 every school within EU member states will need to fulfil The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements or risk being imposed with penalties and fines.
The GDPR protects basic information such as name, address, and ID numbers, along with web data such as location, IP address, cookie data and RFID tags. It also protects health and genetic data, biometric, racial and ethnic, and political data. It will affect every school that stores or processes personal information.
The GDPR compliance may seem daunting and complicated to integrate which is why iSAMS, with the support of an external consultant and lengthy discussions with several schools, developed the Data Protection module.
This easy-to-use module will help simplify the complexity of the GDPR requirements by providing schools with the ability to:
- Create, configure and manage consent registers with Consent management, including capturing consent from parents at the start of the Admissions process via the Admissions Portal
- Simplify the recording of information relating to any data breaches
- Access a centralised area for the recording of all erasure requests
- Record impact assessments carried out
- Maintain a record of data protection audits carried out and their outcomes
- Maintain a comprehensive record of all DSAR’s from request through to completion
iSAMS looks forward to working in partnership with schools and third parties to address and support the process of GDPR compliance. If you would like to learn more about the iSAMS Data Protection module contact iSAMS on +44 (0)1604 659100 or email sales@isams.com
