Graham Cooper - Head of Product Management

 “I get the greatest buzz from hearing schools explain how SIMS has helped improve decision-making and children’s life chances. That’s what SIMS is all about.”

In common with several members of the SIMS team, I have a background in teaching – some 13 years in fact – as a science teacher, Head of ICT and the Deputy Head of a large secondary school in Manchester. It was in this latter role where I first became passionate about the potential for SIMS to impact on student achievement, taking it from being used solely as a ‘back office’ system, to being used right across the school and leading to us being selected as one of the first SIMS Partnership schools in 2002.

I’m responsible for the SIMS product management team who work with schools to ensure SIMS supports them in meeting the challenges of running their schools effectively and efficiently.The team really care about making the software the best it can be – their passion for developing products which have an impact on pupils, whilst making the lives of school staff easier, is unbelievably infectious!

Seeing new software for the first time - looking over the shoulder of a developer who has written something new – is really exciting. I remember - many years ago - our technical team demonstrating how SIMS data could appear on the internet in sharepoint, leading to the creation of SIMS Learning Gateway, which is now hugely popular and making a real difference with parental engagement.

Winning a BETT award for product innovation, being shortlisted for BETT ICT company of the year in 2010, and launching the groundbreaking new data analysis tool, Discover, are important achievements for the SIMS teams. However, my proudest moment of all has to be seeing pupils at the SIMS annual conference talk about how understanding their SIMS data made a real difference in raising their expectations.  In fact, the best part of my job is hearing from schools themselves how the information in SIMS has helped with decision-making and interventions which have improved children's life chances. That’s what SIMS is all about.

 

Read about our Partnership Schools Co-ordinator

Read about our Managing Director

Read about our Technical Architect

Read about our Customer Services Manager

Read about our Services Director

Read about our Product Manager

 

Tip of the Day

Make clear decisions about how you want to track assessment and progress and then make use of all the tools in SIMS to do it - Assessment, Performance Analysis and Discover. Hodgson Academy