21st October 2016 –The UK’s largest multi academy trust has selected a software-as-a-service (SaaS) education solution from Advanced. Academies Enterprise Trust will move its 66 academies to a centralised IT infrastructure to unify its entire system. This will enable the Trust to deliver a learner-centric solution to its academies, helping them to achieve compliance with Ofsted’s rigorous regulatory requirements, whilst significantly reducing costs.

The Progresso management information system will help to deliver an expected saving of £1.5m by centralising a key support system currently operating across the Trust’s national framework of academies, enabling it to refocus resources to maximise the impact on its learners.

The learner-centric approach within Progresso places ‘progress and attainment’ of the individual at the core of the solution, linking and using all key data, with a single view of the ‘learner’, to enable informed decision making and intervention.

Teaching and learning is enhanced with reduced administration and improved capture of learning events or evidence, allowing teachers to input key information at source, over and above normal validation expectations.

Chris Meaney, the Trust’s ICT Director, comments, “As a large, nationwide trust, it was critical we united all of our localised systems in order for us to illustrate success at both academy and trust level. Our senior leaders and teachers will be able to access important data to gain a real-time view of learner progress – at the trust, academy, cohort or learner level - facilitating an efficient and rapid response to any immediate issues identified, and fast dissemination of positive best practices. In short, this software will empower our academies and staff to positively impact outcomes, in an instant.

“The cost savings of £1.5m will enable us to reinvest in our network of schools, staff and resources to ensure the best possible learning environment for our students, and help us to realise our vision of delivering world-class learning outcomes.

“After a comprehensive market test it became clear that the Progresso solution from Advanced is both customisable and easy to use, making it very flexible, allowing us to construct different layouts for different levels of user access. In addition, its learner-centric approach enables staff to access relevant data-driven dashboards and widgets, at any time and on any device. This not only helps to improve outcomes by facilitating informed decision-making, but also reduce teacher workload.”

Seeking a SaaS management information system, the Trust’s wanted to realise savings from infrastructure and management, with a single supplier for all of its academies. Advanced will complete a data export and migration programme from the Trust’s existing MIS and its variety of subsidiary systems.

Once implemented, Progresso will link to external data sources in order to provide users with a 360-degree view of the learner and any environmental impacts that may be affecting their progression.

Nick Wilson, MD, Public Sector and Enterprise, Advanced, concludes, “With the regulatory landscape of Ofsted becoming increasingly more complex, AET needed to be much more proactive in improving learner progress with transparency and insight. This implementation will enable leaders and teachers to access real-time data, ensuring learner-centricity is at the heart of what they do while remaining agile enough to respond with speed and accuracy.

“We are thrilled to have been selected by one the country’s largest trusts, as it reaffirms our position as sector leaders in education.”

-ENDS-
Note to editors
*Advanced Computer Software Group was renamed Advanced on 11 April 2016, as part of a global rebrand.

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About Advanced
Through our enterprise and market focused solutions we positively impact millions of people’s lives through continually investing in our people, partnerships and own technologies to stay focused on our markets’, customers’ and their stakeholders’ needs.

We enable our customers to drive efficiencies, savings and growth opportunities through focused, right-first-time software solutions that evolve with the changing needs of their business and the markets they operate in.

True partnership is the defining thing that makes us different from the competition.

We pride ourselves on delivering focused software solutions for public sector, enterprise commercial and health & care organisations that simplify complex business challenges and deliver immediate value.

Advanced is a Sunday Times Top Track 250 Company 2016 and was ranked in the Deloitte UK Fast 50 which recognises the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK and a winner of the Tech Company of the Year in PwC’s UK Tech Awards in 2014.

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