The IMS vision is that essential management information will be routinely held, shared and used electronically by all schools to underpin high quality leadership and learning. Electronic management information will be part of day-to-day school business and will help to raise educational standards.

The IMS aim is to contribute to raising standards by making significant and tangible improvements in the way that information about pupils and maintained schools in England is defined, collected, analysed, shared and used.

'Information' is the essential, prescribed numerical and textual information, that is authorised for collection and sharing with schools and local authorities for the purposes of developing, implementing, or evaluating Government policy, and for meeting statutory requirements.

IMS stems from taking forward work to optimise teaching time in schools, and to streamline managerial and administrative requirements, especially data collection and handling. IMS also stems from:
NGfL objective - 'by 2002.. general administrative communications between education bodies and Government and its agencies cease to be paper-based'
Modernising Government objective - 'by 2002, 25% of business interactions with Government (will be) electronic'
The wishes of Ministers and senior DfEE managers to improve the management and utility of data flowing to, from, and between schools, local authorities and central government.

New Relationship with Schools

New Relationship with Schools document (pdf format) - published 15/6/2004 - outlines proposals to streamline and improve schools' relationships with local and central government, schools' self-evaluation and planning, data collection from schools and communications with schools

Protocol on Data Sharing and Rationalisation in the Schools Sector document (pdf format) published 02/2004 - outlines DfES' aims to minimise burdens of data collection, to automate collection and sharing of data, to collect data only when its value outweighs the cost and to protect personal data. 

FOUR data sets are planned with information at: pupil level; adult level (teachers, support staff and governors); school level; and LEA level. National implementation commenced in January 2002 with the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) (now known as the School Census) which focused on the data set for pupil and school information.

ALL schools now undertake the termly School Census in January, May and October.

CBDS also establishes standards for transferring data between schools and between hardware and software systems (interoperability) in a common format using XML (extensible mark-up language). Schools' administration systems allows schools to transfer and receive data using the Common Transfer File utility.