What is Incerts?

Incerts is a simple tool that accelerates pupils’ learning and makes more efficient use of teachers’ time.

What does Incerts do?

It records, in detail, a teacher’s assessment of each pupil’s skills and understanding; and from this it calculates levels, tracks progress, identifies next steps for progression, and finally writes about 80% of the pupil’s report.

How is Incerts different from other systems?

There is nothing else anything like the Incerts system.

Incerts is a web-based system, like an internet bank or an on-line bookshop, that runs on our own servers. This means that schools don't have to install, update, or maintain Incerts themselves, they just connect to it like any other web site, using Internet Explorer.

Secondly, rather than adding every conceivable function and option, we've kept the Incerts system small, its design clear, and its features obvious. It's just a very elegant implementation of a very simple idea.

This "simple idea" is the way that Incerts records very detailed teacher assessments against each National Curriculum Statement of Attainment. See the next answer for an example.

How are assessments made against the National Curriculum?

An example is very helpful here. The first National Curriculum Statement of Attainment is "Pupils talk about matters of immediate interest". So a teacher would record an assessment of a female pupil at one of three levels: "She is beginning to talk about matters of immediate interest", "She is developing the ability to talk about matters of immediate interest" or "She talks about matters of immediate interest".

How will Incerts improve the lives of my classroom teachers?

Incerts will dramatically reduce the time that classroom teachers spend on some non-teaching tasks, which is one of the objectives of the recent Workforce Reform Agreement. If they have internet access, teachers can access the Incerts system from wherever they want to work—and they won't need a copy of the National Curriculum documents beside them.

The assessments of the Year 1 teacher can inform the planning of the Year 2 teacher at the start of the year. However, it's at the end of the year that classroom teachers see the clearest benefit: with a couple of mouse clicks the system produces detailed academic reports on each pupil and loads them into Microsoft Word.

How will Incerts improve the education of my pupils?

Classroom teachers record their assessments of their pupils in Incerts regularly throughout the year, and the system shows them clearly how each pupil and the whole class are learning. Incerts helps the teacher keep every pupil appropriately and continuously challenged, and avoid under-stretching or over-stretching any pupil.

Incerts will eliminate "dips" caused by poor understanding and communication of assessments from one teacher to another or from one school to another.

How will Incerts improve the management of my school?

Incerts can show headteachers, curriculum coordinators and other senior teachers exactly what each pupil, class, and year group has learned. Pupils and classes can be compared so that strengths and weaknesses in teaching and learning can identified and illustrated very easily.

(Seasoned users of software systems will know that the graphs and charts they can produce only truly have value if the data on which they're based is up-to-date and accurate. In this case, classroom teachers provide the data when they record their assessments—but, they're well motivated to do so because Incerts saves them time! Headteachers will not need to nag their colleagues to put data into Incerts.)

Which schools can use Incerts?

Incerts is available to all primary schools and nurseries in England and Wales.

Mae Incerts yn gwmni cwbl ddwyieithog sy’n cefnogi’r Cwricwlwm Cenedlaethol yng Ngymru.

How much does Incerts cost?

There is a one-off charge of £1999 for primary schools that take in only one new class per year, and £2499 for larger primary schools. These prices are exclusive of VAT.

Pricing for secondary schools will be different—please contact us for details.

Are any discounts available?

Yes, substantial discounts are available to smaller schools, groups of schools who buy together, etc.

How much money will Incerts save my school each year?

Consider this very conservative estimate: a time saving of just 50 hours a year for each of 7 classroom teachers whose employment cost is £29 per hour taught is a cost saving to a school of over £10,000 a year! A larger primary school would have more than 7 classroom teachers and would save much more.

Please make a quick estimate of how long each of your classroom teachers spends on assessment and planning through the year, and report writing at the end. Add in the time spent on Key Stage 2 Target Setting and year-end transfers. Incerts really will reduce the time taken by all these tasks by 50-90% as soon as you start using it.

Must I pay for Incerts again each year?

Not really. It's our intention to make our money by selling the Incerts system for a single, one-off charge, rather than by "locking-in" schools to large annual payments.

Crucially, though, we must never rely on finding new customers to meet the costs of running the system for our existing customers. So we make a small annual charge for "hosting" to keep our servers on-line, secure, and upgraded as necessary.

What do you charge annually for hosting?

The hosting charge for the first year is already included in the one-off charge for the system.

The hosting charge for the second year is £249 for primary schools that take in only one new class per year, and £349 for larger primary schools. These prices are exclusive of VAT.

We will keep this annual charge unchanged for subsequent years, unless there's an unexpected and dramatic increase in the cost of running our servers.

Where/how can I buy Incerts?

If you're thinking about buying Incerts for your school, or have any further questions, please contact us without obligation.

Can I try the system first?

Yes, in several ways.

There's a fully-featured on-line demonstration version of Incerts on our web site, which you can experiment with freely whenever you like. If you have any questions or comments about the demonstration, or would like us to talk you through it, please get in touch.

If you do decide to buy the system, we won't ask you for any money until the system has been up and running in your school for a month or so and you're happy you made the right decision. If for some reason you didn't want to continue using Incerts you would owe us nothing.

Do I have to pay extra for support?

No. Telephone and email support, for all your staff, is free. There is no limit on the number of calls you can make and we won't charge anything for the calls. We will provide an 0845 telephone number, so most telephone companies will charge you at local rate only

Is my school a "larger" school?

A "larger" primary school is one that takes in more than one new class each year. So, for example, a primary school with 11, 14, or more classes would be considered a larger school, while a school with 7, 4, or fewer would not.

What happens if I find a bug/glitch in the Incerts system?

Incerts has been in use since early 2004, and it's proved very reliable. But if you have a problem that turns out to be a bug or a glitch in our software, our development team will fix the problem as soon as possible, and at our expense of course.

We are very grateful for any reports of possible bugs/glitches, because every problem we fix improves the system for all our customers.