What is the purpose of the Pastoral Structure in Sims!

What the purpose of the Pastoral Structure in Sims. The reason I ask is that if I make a room change in the Pastoral Structure to a registration group this change is not reflected in the relevant Staff Timetable. I would have to make the change in T6 and then send the SQL db into Sims for the change to the rooming to be shown in the Timetable. This raises my question what is the purpose of the Pastoral Structure if the data entered is not used anywhere else in Sims. Any help would be much appreciated.

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Originally Posted by SimsKitten

What the purpose of the Pastoral Structure in Sims.

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In a primary school (who won't have any timetable module) the pastoral structure dictates which pupils (based on their year groups) can belong to which classes, it also sorts out what classes (class names) are valid throughout the year, and it is where you would associate a teacher with any given class.

I'm not overly certain on the role of the pastoral structure in a secondary school, but I would have thought that it is used as a repository for the data from Nova T and then SIMS uses the pastoral structure as a reference for what goes where rather than having to go off to Nova every single time it needs to access the information.

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Originally Posted by SimsKitten

The reason I ask is that if I make a room change in the Pastoral Structure to a registration group this change is not reflected in the relevant Staff Timetable.

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Since you do have the Nova module I would have thought all your changes should be being made there rather than in the PS. As to why the change isn't reflected in the staff timetable. Where do you go to get that once you have made the change, are you getting it from SIMS or going back to Nova?

Just some thoughts.

Normally all rooming changes I make are done in Nova T6 and then send into Sims, and up until last week I have never been asked to make a rooming change to a Registration Group. I went into Nova T6 as ususal to make the change but it doesnt work the same when trying to change rooms for Registration Groups as T6 locks all Registration Rooms so they are read only. Therefore I made the change in the PS and then looked at the TT for the relevant Teacher (staff, timetable) but the change to the room did not come through. So I have one room in the PS and a diff room in the staff TT which is problem. A second issue is that my T6 .SPL file and my Sims are now out of sync. Do you know when staff go into their Register does it pick up the data from the PS or T6. Because PS states which staff are assigned to a Registration Group but it doesnt tell you on which day they take the register for a shared class as that data comes from T6. Sorry about another 3 questions in there.

SimsKitten,
I would advise you to join Capita SupportNet. http://support.capitaes.co.uk/newlogin/login.asp
And if you are using SIMS then you really ought to get some training. This is not really the best place for you to get advice from and working from only superficial knowledge in this area is a very dangerous thing!

I'm not too confident on how things work, but the pastoral side is just that, the pastoral side. You allocate students to reg groups and allocate teachers and rooms. The timetable is something different. The registration periods aren't necessarily timetabled at all. With that in mind, i don't think you need to even put rooms into the pastoral structure, the changes you need to make will be in T6 within timetabling. Not sure why it's locked for you, it could be the way they've been set up. There are ways to fix a person / lesson's default room, maybe that is a factor.

The only time info from pastoral structure comes through would be in reports if you choose pastoral overview for teacher name. It will also determine permissions for viewing marksheets, and should populate groups for the homepage panels. If you are using attendance it will populate info for the am/pm reg also i believe.

For more definitive answers i'd refer to the manuals and also check out Capita's SupportNet are you a member? SupportNet

oops, too late - ^ pipped to the post :)

Defo another vote for Supportnet.