Although the move to academies and multi academy trusts has been controversial, it is undeniable that we are seeing more innovation from MATs than was the case when schools were run by local authorities. This is unsurprising given that in MATs schools are united by vision and values not simply by proximity, but the increased diversity of a system where each MAT pursues its own goals in its own way presents a challenge for software providers as we try to develop solutions with the flexibility to enable all our users’ development strategies. This is why we have made Power BI integration central to our development of MAT Vision. The entirety of the MAT Vision database can be queried via a secure, live connection and used to feed dashboards that can also link to the trust’s financial/HR systems or any other data sources. The BI content is embedded in MAT Vision, giving users a secure, read-only view of live data that has been tailored to show the exact visualisations and key performance indicators that the MAT want to track.
To help this fledgling community grow in size and skills…
Our ambition doesn’t stop at merely providing this platform though, we want to build a community of developers who can make the most of it and by doing so, help their organisations transform pupils’ lives. The BI resources we’ve developed for MAT Vision are open source and we are encouraging our users to take, tinker and improve them. Already early adopters like of James at Oasis Community, Sam Jukes at Bedfordshire Catholic Schools Trust are developing sophisticated models of their own and sharing their expertise with newer users.
It’s early days for those deploying Power BI to make Bromcom MIS and MAT Vision even more powerful and flexible but we’re doing everything we can to help this fledgling community grow in size and skills. We are helping users in individual schools connect to BI as well as MAT customers and are starting a course of free monthly webinars to answer user queries. We are excited about the future possibilities of the software and are exploring ways in which machine learning can further enhance the analytical capabilities of MAT Vision. The era of one size fits all solutions in education is dying with legacy MIS systems, we’re proud to be stepping into a future of flexible tools, designed in partnership with our customers.
