I very glad you asked, Ian :-) The electronic registration module survived live teacher tests with no technical problems whatsoever (a few misspelt names, couple of people being assigned the wrong role in the DB security - all administrative stuff). It is definitively being used from September in the initiating school, along with the ICT Helpdesk module (currently in beta) and the effort check system (currently in alpha awaiting interface input from teaching staff). We're still struggling to find funding for the core developers, but we're persevering in that. We have interest from some other schools, who are being asked for a £3k one-off contribution towards developer costs including first year's support and implementation. If proper funding is secured (LEA/DfES/educational trust), then £2k of that money will be refunded. If anybody's got any schools that would be interested, we're establishing a network of education-focused companies willing to provide support (currently the North is fairly well covered but we've got nothing south of London - my personal belief is that after implementation most support requests will be happily handled remotely, but schools are harder to convince). Regards Chris PS Screenshots will be up on the Hobarte site by the end of next week, using the soon to be released bluegrey content management system -----Original Message----- From: Ian Lynch To: Chris Puttick; 'suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com' Sent: 7/11/02 2:42 PM Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Starting the revolution? On Thursday 11 July 2002 11:40, Chris Puttick wrote:

Is anyone out there seriously considering the alternatives?

<snip> What's happening with free software alternatives to SIMS, Chris? -- Ian