There’s been lots of talk about the SEND system recently, whether it was the National Audit Office saying that it’s financially “unsustainable” without reform, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer promising £1bn of extra funding for SEND students in the Autumn Budget. While here at Bromcom we welcome this increase in funding as well as the Government’s clear ambition to tackle gaps in the education system, we feel it doesn’t address the £4bn deficits that have built up in local authorities.
But there are still plenty of things schools can do to better support their students despite the funding crisis and maximise the intended effect of the Budget. Namely, investing in technologies that enable them to save time and money they could instead spend on their students. In this blog, I’ll explore the different ways Bromcom MIS can support schools and special schools with this challenge.
Bromcom MIS helps schools unlock considerable cost savings
The most obvious way for a school to make sure the additional funds go directly to supporting SEND students is keeping their costs low. Following years of tight budgets and cost cutting, this isn’t a particularly novel or helpful recommendation for schools. But many of them might not have yet considered a significant cost-cutting method that’s proven to unlock a wide range of other benefits for a school: switching to a cloud MIS.
Whether they’re unaware of the high costs of their legacy system like the upkeep of its servers and the dear third-party apps required to make the system meet a school’s needs, or the fact that fully featured, cloud MIS don’t require costly add-ons, thousands of schools across the UK are missing out on potential savings.
Based on information from some of the large multi-academy trusts we work with, individual schools could expect to save thousands when they switch to Bromcom’s Plus and One-Stop Shop packages.
Many of our features also offer additional opportunities for savings, for example, with our top-rated parent portal app you can send free push notifications directly to parents’ personal devices rather than having to use email credits or send them a physical letter.
Our advanced technology frees up time staff can dedicate to children
We often hear from new customers that their legacy MIS has a clunky interface which is hard to navigate and slows processes down. Some even shared that their legacy MIS was so unintuitive, they regularly had to relearn how to carry out certain tasks despite using it for years, taking up yet more of their time!
We pride ourselves on offering intuitive, easy-to-navigate solutions which are simple to use and therefore streamline everyday tasks. By enabling users to minimise the time they spend in the MIS, they can spend more of it supporting students.
Plus, without all your third-party apps, you won’t need to waste time logging into different systems to carry out tasks. Users only need to sign in once to use Bromcom’s full functionality.
Our MIS’ features also help considerably streamline individual processes, such as by providing teachers with clear, bespoke dashboards of the information and insights they want to see, allowing users to automate workflows like instantly notifying the headteacher if a bullying incident occurs, or minimising the time spent creating reports with our Quick Report builder. One of the most impactful time-saving solutions we offer is Bromcom AI: or suite of AI bots which users offer quick insights and information while in the MIS.
Have a general knowledge question? Just ask the General Bot which is connected to ChatGPT. Want to run queries on your school data and pull insights to help with decision making? Try the Data Bot. Need a little help while using the MIS? The Customer Support Bot is always on-hand to provide instant advice and guidance.
Our adoption of AI is a great example of how our product team is always looking for new technologies to make our users’ lives easier and better student outcomes. We continuously invest in enhancing our solutions so our customers can expect to save even more time and money in the future.
Our flexible MIS is an all-in-one solution for SEND schools
The cost and time savings available with Bromcom MIS can obviously benefit SEND schools – but the MIS itself also offers exclusive benefits to special schools thanks to its vast capabilities. From fundamental features like timetabling and meal management to safeguarding and HR, schools can build an MIS that adapts to their specific requirements.
Schools can even customise modules like behaviour and assessment to fit their needs, for example: our behaviour module allows for users to record incidents in a nuanced way. Should an incident have several elements to it, like shouting and swearing, you can log them as one incident instead of having to spend time logging them as multiple separate incidents.
You can integrate specialist tools directly into our MIS, like Sleuth or CPOMS, too. So, if there are any third-party apps you want to keep when you switch, you can still bring them over to your new system. To find out more about why SEND schools love Bromcom, click here.
Learn more about Bromcom
Over 4000 schools have already chosen Bromcom to cut their costs, streamline their processes, and better support their students.
To find out more about our MIS for special schools and how much money and time it could save your schools, book a discovery call with our team.
