• Omnis desktop solution •
The Challenge:
The council required a system that enabled them to centrally manage the process of allocating school and nursery places, efficiently and accurately planning the placements to enable the council to plan appropriate staffing at the schools.
The Solution:
The council investigated the various options on the market but could not find an application that closely matched their requirements. The decision was made to use Omnis Studio to create their own Pupil Placement application using their in-house knowledge and experience to develop the application to their exact needs. The Council required compliance with Data Protection and security legislation, which was provided by the platform.
Pupil Placement connects to the councils existing website and enabled the council to further improve the user experience of parents requesting places for their children. It is intended to link into the forthcoming national parents’ portal.
The Institution:
West Lothian Council is a local authority in Scotland which provides services to a population of 172,000 people. There are around 30,000 children and young people in 84 schools and 15 nurseries. The authority centrally plans and manages the school placements for approximately 8,000 children every year.
Why Omnis:
“The Omnis platform is very feature rich, and working in Omnis means I was able to develop the application quickly,” said John Thain, Statistics and Pupil Placement Officer, who developed the application for West Lothian Council. “Omnis also has great connectivity allowing us to connect to several existing software applications, such as bespoke geographic information systems and import data from a range of well-established systems, which saves time for our employees and further reduces the councils paper and postage usage. Throughout the development we received great support from the team at Omnis Software”.
Developing with Omnis Studio meant the council was able to create a bespoke application that closely matched the departments needs and connect with the existing systems.
Manager quote: “West Lothian Council manages pupil placement centrally; the efficient process of allocating child places assists the council greatly in planning the schools teaching resources within available budgets”.
