[SIMS] switch to vertical tutor groups... in january!

[philjones2000]

Hi

We are looking at switching to vertical tutor groups (i.e students registered and tutor led in groups with mixed years in them instead of single year groups). I know this has been done many times before, but has anyone ever done this in the middle of an academic year?

For those of you that have done this, can you think of any issues that this is going to cause us here? Is it even possible?!

Thanks

Phil

[glennda]

We moved at the end of last year - so the students came back in Sept with it - as far as i am aware it was just a case of restructuring sims to represent the new format

[fiza]

We did ours at the start of last Academic Year. Not sure its recommended to do this after the start. Why January? Why not just start the year as you mean to go on?

[vikpaw]

I might have this for two year groups next year, so will be looking into it. Can't see why it would make a difference mid-year, apart from the history of the old reg groups. Who will the new tutor be, and will lesson monitor / attendance cope with the change in membership. You might need to manually alter the little bars that show membership, but hopefully not.

What are you new reg groups called, a lot of our reports / sorting rely on the fact ours are numerical, so if 10 and 11 join, they become 1011a 1011b 21 ks4-1 ... just thinking.

If possible i would suggest doing a trial on a test server. Look at how it affects reports, and also end of year reports. We print out by year group, for distribution, this would get complex. Also, they would have some reports for this year with one reg group on and others with a different one. I'd rather wait.

[glennda]

When we did it all out tutor groups are called (house Initial)(tutorinitials) then they are just listed in the order in aplabetical order.

[NorthernSands]

I can't really see this being a problem. You can completely change the pastoral structure part way through the year. Some advice:

• Always do this in advance, ie do it before January and forward-date the 'Current Pastoral Structure' date to January 1st or whenever.
• If Reg Group names are changing DO NOT rename the existing ones; remove and add new ones (all on the forward date).
• Year group memberships will be unaffected, however always update both NC Year and Year Group for a student if they're being kept back / forward a year (even if they remain in the same reg group).
• Don't 'verticalise' two year groups together if there's just one or two students being kept back / forward a year, modify the year memberships instead.
• Don't make the whole school as one vertical structure unless every year group has students over-lapping with the year groups above and below; you can have several vertical structures (please ask if you want examples).

HTH