[sims] Changing times of day midway through a school year

[simpsonj]

Thankfully this one isn't coming under my remit, but I've been asked to look into how it could be done.

 

Essentially, the school wants to move it's PSH (Tutor) period from the end of the school day, to the start. However, I can't find anything in SIMS.net that relates to times of the day, or the order in which periods are set. My assumption then would be that this is a NOVA6 issue, which I no nothing about, but would be grateful for any guidance from anyone!

 

1, How does a school change the timing for its periods?

2, Can a timetable be changed in the middle of an academic year without losing Attendance data or Course memberships?

 

Any help most appreciated.

[CAM]

This would be carried out by a timetable change. A school timetable is built by adding lessons to it's skeleton structure called a Cycle. The Cycle determines the length of each period, when they are and if any special consideration is given to those periods (eg, reserving them for certain lessons such as AM Reg or PSHE for the purposes of running Auto-Build).

 

You are free to move lessons from one period in the cycle to another at will, be aware that you often have to take ten steps back to take one step forwards and make everything fit! Changing the cycle however to alter the structure (such as changing the times of a Period itself instead of the lesson sitting in the period) halfway during a school year will require your timetable to be rebuilt and take an awful lot of steps backwards for one change. It may also affect SIMS but I have never done it before as our LA recommends against it.

[simpsonj]

As I and the school data manager feared then, not a simple job!

 

I can't see a way around it, staff will just have to put up with a skewed timetable from now until the end of the year. Going to drive Reception crazy chasing missing registers!

[CAM]

If you are moving it from Period 1 to period (example) 5 in a 5 period day then you will be fine.

 

If you are removing the first period that day entirely then tacking a new one on the end, essentially shifting the school day back a whole period's worth of time, then you have a rough road to travel.

[simpsonj]

We are moving a 1/2 hour PSH period that already exists from Period 6 (14:30 - 15:00) To Period 1, currently 08:30 - 09:30.

 

So the end result will be:

 

Old

08:30-09:30 Period 1

Periods 2-5

14:30-15:00 Period 6 (PSH)

 

New

08:30-08:50 Period 1 (PSH)

08:50-09:50 Period 2 (old Period 1)

[PhilNeal]

This is straight forwards. Please raise a case with your support unit.

[CAM]

Hmm, my guidance note must be off. :s Let us know how it goes though!

[simpsonj]

We've decided to work around until September, our support warned us off making the change mid academic year, and our data manager has enough of on her plate to keep her busy!

 

Thanks for the advice though

[athornton]

This is straight forward and is just a cycle change, believe it or not we have changed registration twice already this year going from am and pm to just am and now there is talk of moving the time of the am reg again!!

 

Capita can help if you get support through them, you need to amend the cycle in nova t6 and then pish through the changes. The first time I did this I panicked as I did a cycle change and applied it in sims and forgot to push through the curriculum again which meant there were no TT's in the system!!!

 

I think I have a guide somewhere on how to do it after my panic so drop me a message if your stuck