The office also uses SIMS (School Information Management System), which has a series of modules for different tasks, that are undertaken by most schools, including Reports, Exam Entries and Results, Stock Ordering, Attendance.

Reports are done on OMR (Optical Mark Reader) sheets. 

Above: an example of an OMR form used by a college to collect student details for enrolment

Departments produce "comment banks" of common statements and then mark OMR sheets to specify which statements they wish to use for each student. The office then feed the OMR sheets into the OMR reader, which generates the report. In comparison with the old system of handwritten reports, the aim is to achieve greater speed, accuracy and better presentation. However, many staff and parents have been critical of the OMR reports because they are thought to be impersonal and because the OMR Reader is "fussy". The college will shortly go over to a system whereby staff produce reports on a word processor, with the aid of utilities which copy and paste from statement banks.

The college has to enter students for examinations with the various exam boards. We also have to report our exam results for publication. Accuracy is vital because a mistake might cost a student an exam and because our results have to be declared to the government. This administration used to be a highly time consuming task and the SIMS module has made the life of the examinations officer much easier. However, as the work has got easier, more has been required. For example, she is now asked to produce statistical analysis of results. The SIMS system is sometimes inflexible and this causes problems. For example, it gets confused by half a GCSE or students who take Maths a year early. This is a common feature of IT systems, which are not personalised to the needs of an individual organisation (tailor-made software is extremely expensive).

The SIMS Attendance module replaces the old fashioned paper and pen registers. Staff fill in OMR forms to mark a student present, absent or late. These registers are fed into the OMR reader, which generates a weekly absence sheet. Staff then enter the appropriate code for an absence when they get an absence note to explain why the student was not at school. Codes include V (educational visit), M (medical treatment such as a doctor's appointment), S (sick) and H (approved holiday). Some staff have found the new register difficult to adjust to and others complain that, even when they get used to the system, it is slower than the system it replaced. Mrs H agreed that the input was slower but she said that the output was easier and better. For example, attendance statistics can be easily generated, the system can print out letters to parents with dates of absence and it can identify which students were not in school at any particular time.

Impact of IT on the office staff:

• Extensive training had to be provided.
• The system is highly reliable. It has only crashed once and was restored on the same day
• It is difficult to prove that the system has saved money. The hardware and training was extremely expensive and more office staff have been employed in recent years, not fewer. However, this is largely a result of increased work that schools now have to do, following government policies such as LMS (Local Management of Schools).
• The environmental impacts include a great increase in the use of paper and staff discomfort resulting from hours staring at computer monitors.
• The office does a backup every day
• Accuracy is not guaranteed because human beings make mistakes on the input of information.
• Quality of output has been improved. Letters are word processed, students get computer generated timetables, and so on.