The survey, carried out annually by Pearson Phoenix at the BETT Show revealed that 45% of respondents felt interoperability between applications was a top priority, with 37% choosing reporting and just 18% putting administration at the top of the list.

The results indicate that schools are favouring software and applications that can be ‘joined-up’ reducing the need to duplicate admin tasks and for additional data entry.

Headway has been made by Becta to standardise interoperability through the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), which’ll become become the standard framework for all MIS systems by 2010 to allow integration with other applications to be quick and easy.

These changes may require some school software suppliers to make changes to their current products, which could be a complex and expensive task. However, in the long run it appears to be a positive move to improve the level of intergration between systems and therefore ultimately benefiting the end users!