As the New Music Hubs are starting in September, there are loads of changes about to happen within the following few months. One of them is Music Services’ Art Council England (ACE) returns that need to be completed in June instead of during the Autumn term as previously.
The summer half-term is closing in, and all music service admins and leaders have their hands full, so we want to do what we can to reduce the burden. In June, we will launch an ACE reporting tool for music hubs and services to give your admins and back-office staff a quick break.
A proper Music Hub Management System has to be able to provide the admins with all the necessary data for the annual survey. We, here at Eepos HQ, know that while Eepos stores the necessary tuition and invoicing related data, this process should be more streamlined.
The MEH Annual Survey Questions
The MEH Annual Survey has several tabs requesting information on music activity per school, classroom instrumental lessons, workforce, learning provision, CPD, and instruments and so on. The questionnaire needs to be manually filled and then sent to the ACE portal, but the root data needs to be easily accessible.
The MEH Annual Survey spreadsheet can be found here.
What we are in the process of building and will be ready in June is an ACE report that pulls out the required information in an easily copied/pasted format, saving hours of data mining in the management system.
Currently, Eepos can provide (if recorded correctly) most of the information to the questionnaire tabs:
- A – Schools form (schools)
- A – Schools form CIL
- B – Workforce
- C – Learning provision, and,
- D – CPD and Instruments.
Some of the more generic questions will require a few searches in Eepos. For example, the schools your Music Hub engaged with on one or more Hub activity can be found in Locations, but some of the information isn’t stored in Eepos (questions A4 – A7).
The report will focus on pupil, staff and tuition specific data. It will provide you with the required information in the following Tabs:
- A – Schools form CIL
- B – Workforce
- C – Learning provision, and,
- D – CPD and Instruments.
Instructions to admins
There are some data cleansing bits admins need to take a look at before using the report.
- Please make sure the location information is updated. This means making sure that any updates on school/location lists (merged schools, no double entries…) or required changes on school names, DfE numbers, billing information have been made.
These updates are required for the Tabs A – Schools form (schools) and A – Schools form CIL.
- Please make sure WCET or CIL groups have Group tags set for Year Groups, and if necessary, Groups tags for Instrumental only, Vocal only, and Mixed instrumental and vocal
This piece of information is required for the Tabs A – Schools form CIL and C – Learning provision.
- Please make sure teachers and staff members’ titles are set and selected, and that DOBs are in place. Currently, Eepos doesn’t store information about teachers’ ethnicity or sexual orientation, so these are data items that cannot be reported through the Eepos ACE report tool, even though MEH Annual Survey Questions ask for this.
This piece of information is required for the Tab B – Workforce.
- Please make sure pupils’ DOB, Ethnicity, Gender, and special characteristics information is updated. Pupils that are missing these pieces of information can be found using the Search tool.
This piece of information is required for the Tab C – Learning provision.
- Please make sure the HR (background checks and CPD) information is updated for the teaching staff.
This piece of information is required for the Tab D – CPD and Instruments.
- Please make sure the instruments and instrument loan information is up to date and relevant Instrument tags and Loan tags are in place.
This piece of information is required for the Tab D – CPD and Instruments.
Looking forward to seeing you in Sheffield
Eepos developers will have the MEH Annual Survey questions open while developing the ACE report tool. The first version of the tool will follow the requirements of the academic year 2023-2024 survey, but we are aware that the questionnaire might change the following year.
The ACE report tool will be launched and demonstrated in the next User Group meeting in Sheffield on the 14th of June. This will give us and the Eepos sites a great opportunity to plan the ACE reporting tool’s future versions and understand how the actual users would expect a tool like this to work.
See you in Sheffield!