COMPUTING & IT RESOURCES
supervisors, office staff and teaching assistants. As the behaviour tracker is run on the MIS which holds family contact information for each child, the details of positive incidents can be shared with the child’s family or carers via email as a ‘Positive Note’.
Tracy says: “We didn’t want to make the Positive Notes a chore or add to staff workload, so the system was designed to be really simple and quick to use. It takes just a couple of minutes to log a positive behaviour occurrence and to send the note to parents or carers using customisable email templates.
“Our parents and carers tell us they love to receive our notifications to tell them about how kind or thoughtful their child has been, or how well they have done in class – it makes their day. We are told that the Positive Notes are often used as conversation starters, which keeps the momentum going and ensures good behaviour is recognised at home.
provider. Cloud-based systems are quicker, more secure and they are automatically backed up. Updates and upgrades are done online too, so you’ll always be on the latest version for the best user experience.
In our experience, the number one reason schools are put off looking for alternative MIS providers is the migration process. There is quite a bit to do, such as cleaning your data before you transfer it, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. Luckily, there are organisations who can help with the migration to ensure you are back up and running quickly and no data is lost.
MIS in action: hitting all the right notes for best behaviour
One village school used its MIS to encourage good behaviour from its pupils, by utilising MIS’s data processing power to create a reward system to positively impact children, staff and families. Cuffley School is a foundation, two-form entry primary and nursery school near Potters Bar, with approximately 450 pupils. In 2021/22, Cuffley School joined a two-year government project to further improve the behaviour of pupils. Standards at the school were already
very good and acknowledged by Ofsted, but the school felt they could still move forward and do better, particularly with regards to tracking behaviour data and encouraging good behaviour from pupils across all year groups. They had also noticed a change in the children’s understanding of the expected behaviours following Covid. Tracy Farmer, assistant headteacher at Cuffley School, said: “We used CPOMS to record serious behavioural concerns, but other than that we didn’t have a record of student behaviour – positive or negative – and this made it difficult to retrieve data and spot trends.
“On a school visit in her role as a School Effectiveness Advisor, our headteacher Wendy Wing discovered a school using their Arbor MIS system to track behaviour, and we started exploring if that could be a solution for us.” Tracy spoke to the MIS advisors at HFL Education and they created a tailored package in the Arbor MIS for Cuffley School. The behaviour tracker records all incidents, positive and negative, for all children from Nursery up to Year 6. Adding incidents into the system is easy to do using simple drop-down menus, and all staff are encouraged to use it – including lunchtime
“We felt we were quite good at recognising positive behaviour before, but we realised we weren’t really communicating it properly to parents. The Positive Notes are much more impactful for our children and their families.” In a recent survey carried out by the school, 90% of parents and carers felt that the introduction of ‘Positive Notes’ at Cuffley School had had a positive impact on their child’s behaviour. In addition, 87% thought the Positive Notes had improved parent communication. The system also allows the school to track negative behaviour. The details of negative incidents can be collated and this information is currently used to support teachers during proactive parent meetings to highlight issues and trends, so everyone can work together to get to the bottom of problems and help support pupils better.
Cuffley School moved over to the Arbor MIS system in 2022 with the help of HFL Education’s MIS migration team, and Tracy feels they are only just getting started with using the software to its full potential: “There’s so much potential in your MIS, you just need to have the right help and support to be able to access it.”
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www.education-today.co.uk
September 2025
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