[sims] Checking If Marksheets are complete in SIMS

[chrisateen]

Hi All

 

I just want to find out how you check to see if marksheets are complete for the whole school in SIMS. I know you can do a missing results reports but its really slow just doing it for one marksheet and do not like the way it tells you what results are missing. My initial plan was to create a marksheet with all the subjects for each year group then I realised years 9 and above might not do a specific course/subject.

 

So this got me thinking how do you check marksheets. I'm thinking there must be a better way or maybe I don't know how to use SIMS properly.

[vikpaw]

Put the onus on the HoD, we can't do everything for them!

[chrisateen]

Put the onus on the HoD, we can't do everything for them!

 

You are right but I just recently set up Assessment Manager up for the school so at this minute I may have to be a bit more 'proactive' up until xmas latest. Plus the school has a few staffing issues as well

[PhilNeal]

I think there is a report but the really slick way of doing this is using InTouch which can automatically email or txt the guilty.

[CAM]

Staff can tick boxes to say it is complete but in reality they either won't tick the box when complete, or tick the box thinking it's complete when it isn't (such as last minute additions to the columns or the "but I saved the results!" excuse). I've also found HODs are too unreliable to check their departments are filling in results as some of the HODs are the worst offenders for not filling them in and wanting delays because their testing calendar wasn't built round the assessment calendar!

 

Sadly this means the long winded way of checking each sheet individually and E-Mailing offenders. I'd recommend accounting for this delay in your assessment calendar.

[LosOjos]

Staff can tick boxes to say it is complete but in reality they either won't tick the box when complete, or tick the box thinking it's complete when it isn't (such as last minute additions to the columns or the "but I saved the results!" excuse). I've also found HODs are too unreliable to check their departments are filling in results as some of the HODs are the worst offenders for not filling them in and wanting delays because their testing calendar wasn't built round the assessment calendar!

 

Sadly this means the long winded way of checking each sheet individually and E-Mailing offenders. I'd recommend accounting for this delay in your assessment calendar.

 

Have to agree, as the saying goes "if you want something done right, do it yourself!"

 

I use a hybrid solution - I go through all marksheets manually, but I tick any that are complete (and untick any half done ones that have been marked complete!). Then I run a report listing all the incomplete marksheets for me and email the relevant staff and HoD's. This means that when I check again the following day, I can use my report to only check those I know to be incomplete. Still takes time, but you can at least save yourself a bit this way.

 

Another trick most staff don't realise - if you right click a result and select "view history," you can see the date that result was entered - that can be very handy when you have staff claiming they had already done them to their HoD and you can prove they hadn't.

[PhilNeal]

The solution I described does not rely on the teacher ticking the box for those very reasons you describe! InTouch and the report scans result sets for blanks.

[vikpaw]

What if you use a global marksheet, like a year based summary with everything, then for those odd years where that doesn't work, filter by course.

It's probably just as much hassle as a manual check which is what we used to do.

The thing is we have manual proof reading here, on paper (!) so they just get back incomplete sheets and the proof reader then takes it up with them ,be that a colleague or the dep. head!

Or if you already have course marksheets, use them, they are handy to have and useful for the HoD anyway.

[CAM]

The solution I described does not rely on the teacher ticking the box for those very reasons you describe! InTouch and the report scans result sets for blanks.

 

Hmmm will have to look into this. Where is the report in SIMS?

[LosOjos]

Hmmm will have to look into this. Where is the report in SIMS?

 

I guess it'll work the same way as "Reports > Assessment > Missing Results Report", but with the added extra of emailing/texting offending staff

[vikpaw]

..and don't select all + select all and populate cos it'll thrash your server!

[chrisateen]

..and don't select all + select all and populate cos it'll thrash your server!

 

I was tempted to do this and then I remembered how slow SIMS can be when copying columns and saw how slow checking one marksheet was as well and then thought it would be wise not to be lazy and try and check everything at once

 

Have to agree, as the saying goes "if you want something done right, do it yourself!"

 

I use a hybrid solution - I go through all marksheets manually, but I tick any that are complete (and untick any half done ones that have been marked complete!). Then I run a report listing all the incomplete marksheets for me and email the relevant staff and HoD's. This means that when I check again the following day, I can use my report to only check those I know to be incomplete. Still takes time, but you can at least save yourself a bit this way.

 

Another trick most staff don't realise - if you right click a result and select "view history," you can see the date that result was entered - that can be very handy when you have staff claiming they had already done them to their HoD and you can prove they hadn't.

 

Thanks for that suggestion. I knew that you can do "view history" in the marksheets to view historic data but didn't think to use it to check who and what date the grade was filled in. Thanks for that as it would definatley come in handy.

 

From all the comments on here it sounds like I am going to use a global marksheet for Year 7 and 8 then check each subject marksheet for years 9 - 11.

 

Another question for you guys do you use Comments Bank or Marksheets to do written comments?

Edited May 15, 2013 by chrisateen

[LosOjos]

Another question for you guys do you use Comments Bank or Marksheets to do written comments?

 

We were tempted by comment banks but the majority of teachers opposed them (although the fact they opposed comment banks and yet fail to spell check their reports is a major sore point of mine!) so we stuck to free text on a marksheet.

 

One thing to bear in mind if you go down the Profiles route is that the various phases of Profiles need to be fully understood by all involved in report admin. I can't remember the specifics off the top of my head, but essentially once Profile reports are put in to a certain phase, they're impossible to edit. This is one of the reasons we don't use Profiles (I'm going back about 18 months now, things may have changed in that time)

[chrisateen]

We were tempted by comment banks but the majority of teachers opposed them (although the fact they opposed comment banks and yet fail to spell check their reports is a major sore point of mine!) so we stuck to free text on a marksheet.

 

One thing to bear in mind if you go down the Profiles route is that the various phases of Profiles need to be fully understood by all involved in report admin. I can't remember the specifics off the top of my head, but essentially once Profile reports are put in to a certain phase, they're impossible to edit. This is one of the reasons we don't use Profiles (I'm going back about 18 months now, things may have changed in that time)

 

The person from Capita who showed me how to do marksheets got us to set comments within the Marksheets. The reason I asked is that one teacher asked me why don't we use Comments Banks to do the reports instead. From what you said I might as well stick to marksheets as they are flexible on a marksheet

[vikpaw]

We use marksheets for the same reason. I think Profiles is still the same, once you lock a season or whatever the term is, it's hard to go back.

You can fiddle marksheets to give the semblance of a comment bank, within limits as you can use the aspect description to store a string and if that aspect is used pull the description in, but it's not worth the hassle. I had limited success with it for small groups where they wanted to show WTE,ME,EE type grades with an accompanying paragraph to go with it. The other ways are to do some clever scripting in the output, but not worth the effort these days.

 

With that marksheet history thing - just watch you look at entered date, not result date, as they can bulk alter result date!

[Stuart101]

Hi, could you please let me know how you create a report listing all the incomplete mark sheets? Many thanks.

[LosOjos]

Hi, could you please let me know how you create a report listing all the incomplete mark sheets? Many thanks.

 

The focus is "Assessment Manager > Marksheet"

Add whatever details you need i.e. Marksheet name

Filter on 'Completion status' is 'Complete'

 

Done

 

You may want to add a filter for 'Marksheet name begins' so you can pre-filter the list, but you can just as easily do that in Excel afterwards

[Stuart101]

Thanks for the reply but I go to 'Focus' but then I don't have 'Assessment Manager'. I only have 'Assessment' then 'Mark Sheet Entry'? Am I going to the wrong place?

[LosOjos]

Thanks for the reply but I go to 'Focus' but then I don't have 'Assessment Manager'. I only have 'Assessment' then 'Mark Sheet Entry'? Am I going to the wrong place?

 

Sorry, to design a report you first go to "Reports > Design Report", you then have to choose a focus for the report, which would be "Assement Manager > Marksheet"

 

It might be worth having a look at Capita's documentation on this if you can find it (if you have a login, this search brings it up as top result in right hand column: https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk/search/All?q=designing+and+running+designing+reports+handbook&sort=relevance), or giving your local SIMS support team a call if you have one, I'm sure they'd be able to send you a copy. Sorry but I can't share the document here, Capita forbid it.

[SouthCoastSaint]

I check all ours manually too - via templates. To check a year group, year 10 for example, I put Tracking Year 10 in the template name, search and then subject by subject go through the whole of Year 10 sheet for that subject (as opposed to the class marksheets). Open, sort by class name, scroll down, make note of any unfinished classes. Exit marksheet, use template list of marksheets to see teachers. It doesn't take that long. When revisiting, using the list you made previously, you can see from the last used date if it's even worth checking again or if nothing has been done since you last looked.

[KSimp]

To check for missing results in marksheets I use the report in Reports | Assessment | Missing Results Report.

Select the relevant Result Set(s) e.g. Year 9 Summer Term and click search

This brings back all marksheets with a blank in an aspect with the corresponding Result Set(s).I then click on 'Type' so all the class marksheets appear in the list together and bulk tick them.

Click on Populate and the Missing Results screen will populate (this sometimes a while to generate depending on the number of marksheets that are selected.

I then export this to Excel and produce a Pivot Table ordered by Teacher, Marksheet Name (which includes the class code) and aspect. This gives me a nice table of how many results each teacher is missing.

If I re run the report at a later date to check for updates I just export the data again and refresh the pivot tables.

The whole process takes about 10 minutes which we found much quicker than checking the marksheets manually and also ensures every missing result it picked up as it's often easy to miss one missing result on a marksheet.

 

We have used Profiles Comment banks. As others have stated, they are a bit of a pain if someone spots a mistake in a comment bank after the session is open as the comment bank can be amended, but any selections already made will not be updated. They are also a pain as you can't add classes once the session is open. Having said that we still use them, we are just stricter with checking the comment banks and classes before they go live.

 

Kate

[SouthCoastSaint]

Hi Kate

 

I haven't used the missing results report for a while now as when I tried it when it was first released it gave a duplicate result for the class teacher and the HOD. Has this changed now?

[KSimp]

We have our class marksheets assigned to class teachers only. If your HoD see the marksheets that are assigned to the whole course rather than classes then it wouldn't duplicate as by sorting by the marksheet type before selecting the marksheets you would be excluding any 'course' marksheets.

[SouthCoastSaint]

That's interesting, I will have to check it out. All my class marksheets have Multiple ticked in the template listing but this is an automatic feature pulling in the HOD. If I look at a teacher who is a HOD's group list (in manage classroom staff) I see all their own classes with teacher next to them and all the other classes with Supervisor. Maybe the missing grades report has improved since I last used it so i will give it another go.

[KSimp]

If I look at HoD in Manage Classroom staff they only have their own classes listed. There are no classes listed with supervisor against them, this maybe the difference?