School information management system (SIMS) – Harrow High School

Harrow High School worked with a BSIA member to integrate their access control systems and school information management system (SIMS).

SIMS was introduced at Harrow High School to help manage, analyse and report on the information that it needed to keep on staff and students, including a range of personal and academic performance records.
However, the school also maintained another database of staff and pupils to manage its security and access control systems. Although these two systems were managed completely independently, much of the information contained within them was the same and therefore an integration of the data to one system would represent an area for potential saving and maximise efficiency of the system.

Having completed field trials, the new system now delivers key benefits to the school, allowing for greater flexibility in operation. Some of the benefits of the new system include being able to configure access rights for different parts of the campus for certain groups. Also, specific groups can be tagged as ‘trackable’ by the security system once their access cards are used to access preset areas. Standard management reports can then be run directly from the system to monitor security and movement.

The data entry workload has been considerably reduced as have the operational costs and the risk of data error posed by two systems. The system is now also integrated with enrolment meaning it is always up to date as students or staff who leave have their access rights immediately withdrawn, further improving site security.

Click here for a BSIA member that can provide an integrated security management system.