We’ve been hearing misgivings around the delayed roll out of both the new SEEMiS Schools MIS as well as the SEEMiS Early Years Management System that have long been planned by SEEMiS (Scottish Electronic Education Management Information System).
SEEMiS are 100% owned by the 32 Scottish authorities and their current MIS, Click ‘n Go, is used by all 2,500 Local Authority Scottish schools as well as almost 2,000 Early Years Centres and Nurseries.
In 2016 SEEMiS decided to replace their aging MIS with a cloud-based system and went out to tender to find a developer to work with. They didn’t want to take an existing product and ‘bend it’ to fit the Scottish education system, instead they specifically wanted to create their own bespoke system.
Around the same time, SEEMiS were also tasked by the Scottish Government to develop an MIS for the 2000+ Early Years Centres and Nurseries across Scotland, which would incorporate all the functionality required to manage these settings, including that around the newly introduced Early Years funding for parents.
An award was made to a company to develop these systems, but we understand the relationship with the chosen provider fell apart after a couple of years, leaving SEEMiS having to continue developing the new systems using their in-house teams.
7 years on and neither the new schools’ MIS nor the Early Years system have been rolled out.
In fact, we hear there is increasing dissatisfaction amongst some of the Scottish Local Authorities with the promised MIS being put on hold for at least a couple of years, meaning LAs are beginning to consider having to procure a commercial MIS rather than continue to wait on SEEMiS being able to develop one. Whilst this continues to be merely rumour and conjecture, it does indicate the level of concern around the need for a modern, cloud-based MIS that fulfills the requirements of Scottish schools.
The SEEMiS Early Years platform is now being promised for the summer of 2024, and the MIS sometime later but with no fixed date or even year for this. Meanwhile, schools and local authorities struggle on with a system that is over 20 years old, which we are being told is becoming unreliable and no longer truly fit for purpose.
Three different sources are telling us that one or two LA’s have already started investigating commercial Early Years systems and that confidence in SEEMiS’ ability to deliver is fairly low.
We’ll continue to monitor the position and publish any relevant news, but we must repeat that this is rumour and speculation only at this point.
