The benefits of IRIS Ed:gen MIS for MAT leaders

IRIS blog 3 | The benefits of IRIS Ed:gen MIS for MAT leaders
By Tim Cropper-Williams | 7th April 2021 | 2 min read

Leaders of MATS have an overview of the whole school and academy community. They need to have visibility across multiple school sites, and it is their overriding mission to give each school the best possible platform to succeed. It is they who define strategy and they who are ultimately responsible for the smooth running of the entire academy trust. 

The IRIS Ed:gen management information system has been designed with MAT leaders in mind. Wherever they may be, it gives them a clear picture. Its dashboards give a single view of all data in real time, in one place, across the whole MAT group. Our cloud-based system can be accessed from anywhere, on any device, meaning they can work flexibly. It also allows custom reporting, a modular system that can scale as a MAT changes, and keeps finance, payroll and HR all in one place. 

Key use examples: 

There are numerous examples of how IRIS Ed:gen can benefit MAT leadership: 

Communicating strategy, vision, policies and procedures  

IRIS Ed:gen allows leaders to communicate information at the right time, to the right schools and academies, with consistency and clarity. All information is created only once but shared across the MAT seamlessly.  

View all data at once 

With other systems, data gathering and manual analysis by MAT leaders is a frustrating, time-consuming process. IRIS Ed:gen however gives a top-down view of data. This means emerging trends across areas like absence tracking, assessment, and behaviour are available at the click of a button and cascaded down to schools immediately.  

Level monitoring and interventions  

IRIS Ed:gen improves resource allocation, attendance, attainment and behaviour. How? By turning data into actionable insights, Trusts can distribute resources more effectively. For example, a trust leader seeing real-time data from two schools will be able to see one school over performing in Year 11 and another underperforming. A decision on teacher and support resources can be made there and then, best practice can be applied, and performance improved. What’s more, a MAT leader will see daily attendance, behaviour, and attainment in real time. This means they can monitor standards, spot trends and make timely interventions more quickly and more effectively. 

Encouraging intelligent data driven decisions  

A real-time MAT view of data across school and academies and being able to evidence how your MAT uses data more effectively to drive improvements, is looked on positively by OFSTED. IRIS Ed:gen helps MAT leaders understand their data, showing they are an effective leadership and management team. This ultimately makes them better prepared for OFSTED through having evidence of applying intelligent, data-driven, decision making across the trust, and improving outcomes for pupils. 

Realise the benefits of Ed:gen for your school or MAT. Talk to our team today. 

About the author

Tim Cropper-Williams

Product Director

Tim Cropper-Williams is responsible for all communication and engagement products at IRIS, including PS Connect, ParentMail, +Pay, BioStore, Truancy Call, IRIS Looked After Call, IRIS Engage and Accountant Go. Tim has worked in the communication and engagement space for over 14 years in training, support, management, sales and product.