The Hub
Licenses
Find out more below about copyright licences for schools and how the local authority purchases licenses for the majority of schools in the Borough, for their management information systems (MIS).
The Department for Education (DfE) provide licences from the following copyright management organisations (CMOs) for all primary and secondary state-funded schools in England:
- Copyright Licensing Agency, for print and digital copyright content in books, journals and magazines
- Schools Printed Music Licence, for printed music
- Newspaper Licensing Agency, for newspapers and magazines
- Educational Recording Agency, for recording and use of radio and television programmes
- Filmbank and Motion Picture Licensing Company, for showing of films
- Performing Right Society for Music and Phonographic Performance Limited, for musical performances and playing recorded music
- The Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, for making CDs and DVDs containing copyright music
- Christian Copyright Licensing International, for hymns and other Christian music
These licences cover:
- local-authority-maintained schools (including maintained nurseries)
- academies
- free schools
- special schools
- non-maintained special schools
- pupil referral units
The licences do not cover:
- sixth-form colleges
- academies for 16- to 19-year-olds
- independent schools
For further information, see the DfE's guidance in this area.
You can find more information on copyright hub.
Management information system licences (SIMS licences)
The majority of maintained schools in the Borough use the SIMS Management Information System (MIS) from Capita.
The Local Authority has an arrangement to purchase a licence centrally for all schools who use SIMS. The Local Authority then re-charges schools later in the financial year for their share of the central licence.
This is determined from the Number on Roll at the school, plus costs for any additional modules that the school wishes to add on to the standard package that the Local Authority has subscribed to.
The Local Authority will write to each school in November/December to confirm the licensing arrangements for the next financial year.
Schools are, of course, free to choose their own MIS and should take note of the DfE's guidance if they are considering selecting a new school MIS.
It should be noted that the Local Authority merely administers the purchase of the central umbrella licence. The Local Authority has no involvement in providing SIMS support to schools. Any technical queries to do with the SIMS software, patches and upgrades should be directed to the school's SIMS support provider or Capita itself.
- all schools under the umbrella licence receive their SIMS support from third party suppliers.
- when confirming the licensing arrangements for the next financial year in the November/December before, schools should also confirm the name of the school's SIMS Support provider for that year. This is so that Facilities Management (FM) agreements can be put in place between the Local Authority and Capita, which authorises those SIMS Support providers to resources, in order to provide central support to those schools.
- if a maintained school using SIMS converts to an academy during the licensing period, they are no longer able to be licensed from the Local Authority's central licence. This is because they no longer fall under Local Authority control. However, if the new academy continues to use SIMS after conversion, and licenses themselves directly with Capita, the academy can obtain a pro-rata refund from the Local Authority, for the period from when they converted up until the end of the licence period that they have already paid for i.e. the end of the financial year.