[sims] Tracking Grid/Progress Level Monitoring help

[ZombieBatman]

Hello everyone,

 

I've recently become a SIMs user and I've had a mammoth of a task.

 

I've exported about 1000 tracking grids in the past week. It has been way too time consuming

 

I need to make a quicker way to generate the same data

 

What I am doing is placing ks2 sublevels as the rows and ks3/ks4 as the columns

 

The 'target' would be the expected level of progress (e.g depending on year group 2 levels, 3 levels etc)

 

However the catch is I've been doing that for every class in every subject and there are dozens of subjects and roughly 500 classes.

 

I previously used chance analysis for this but the data needs to be printed with the students names.

 

Would this be possible to generate using a report template?

 

I just need something similar and a little more automatic than the grids as it will need to be used frequently

 

I'll be extremely grateful for any help or suggestions anyone can offer

 

Thanks

[ZombieBatman]

Also as I neglected to say: I do have discover. Any suggestion discover wise would be fine.

 

A marksheet idea would be fine too. Long as it can show the level of progress. I have that for ks4 but not ks3- if anyone can point me towards how to make a ks2 to ks3 levels of progress calculator on the marksheets- that'd be excellent in itself.

 

If using a marksheet- I guess I'd need a way to calculate the expected level of progress, the amount of progress the student is targetted to achieve, the current progress the student has achieved and whether the current progress is on target/above/below expectations.

 

If anyone has any help with that- that'd also be appreciated/excellent

 

I'm in the unfortunate position of having to get to these done as soon as possible so anything that anyone has would be a massive help!

 

thanks again

Edited March 2, 2014 by ZombieBatman

[PhilNeal]

I don't think it is necessary to export to loads of spreadsheets If you don't get help here try on Support Net where there are many AM experts.

[Banjo]

Also as I neglected to say: I do have discover. Any suggestion discover wise would be fine.

 

A marksheet idea would be fine too. Long as it can show the level of progress. I have that for ks4 but not ks3- if anyone can point me towards how to make a ks2 to ks3 levels of progress calculator on the marksheets- that'd be excellent in itself.

 

There is no official progress between KS2-KS3. KS3 is being phased out - no KS3 levels are being collected this year.

 

My advice would be to attend a HOF/HOD meeting and show them how to access the tracking grids and apply filters for themselves. They can then cascade this down into their depts.

[ZombieBatman]

thanks for the advice so far.

 

I am aware that ks3 is on the way out and not collected but this is an idea taken at a school level to try and aid staff monitoring their students.

 

I have setup a marksheet that calculates ks2-ks3 levels but the darn sublevels tend to make it slightly inaccurate.

[Ecclesbury]

There may be more, but I can think of 2 options for calculating whole levels progress from full levels in a marksheet template.

 

1. Create a second aspect called 'XXX Whole Level' with the lower bound of the level as the points and then use VALUE and MARKS TO GRADES to convert any sub leveled columns to whole levels and then work from there. This is messy as it creates multiple aspects and results but may have other benefits if you want to use the whole levels elsewhere.

 

2. Use 'Lookup Tables' to create a sub-level to whole level converter. Set it up as follows:

 

Type: Grade

From (yy/mm): 10/00

To (yy/mm): 20/00

Step (in months): 24

 

Grade Set - pick whatever KS3 sub level grade set you are using.

 

Click apply and you will see a grid with all of you sub levels as rows and the age brackets as columns. All you need to do is put in the whole level values into the relevant cells for all age brackets. So the 5C, 5B and 5A row would all be filled with 30. A little hint here is to click copy and paste this table into Excel which obviouslly makes it much quicker to fill in the table. Then copy the whole table in excel and click paste on the lookup window which will transfer all of this in.

 

Once you have this lookup table set up you can use the LOOKUP function in a template to do whole level calculations on sub level columns.

 

I might be over complicating (I often do!) so I'd be interested to hear if there is a more elegant way of doing that!

[CAM]

Try this:

 

- Make a marksheet with KS2 level, form group and their KS3 level for a Year Group (or KS4 or whatever you want).

- Export to Excel and put it into a PivotTable (Ensure student names are not split!). These are very useful, learn them now!

- Set form group as filter, KS2 as row and KS3 as values.

- Fiddle with the data to your heart's content. Do not be afraid to experiment by dragging fields between boxes, above/below each other, etc.

[tombry]

Try this:

 

- Make a marksheet with KS2 level, form group and their KS3 level for a Year Group (or KS4 or whatever you want).

- Export to Excel and put it into a PivotTable (Ensure student names are not split!). These are very useful, learn them now!

- Set form group as filter, KS2 as row and KS3 as values.

- Fiddle with the data to your heart's content. Do not be afraid to experiment by dragging fields between boxes, above/below each other, etc.

 

This is how I always did it, now I use chance analysis, as only the head and I look at it, and it's helpful to see the names.

[ZombieBatman]

Thanks for all the responses,

 

Some good ideas here!

 

The sheer number of classes that I am producing these for was the issue. I tried the pivot table idea as well before posting on here but with over 500 classes and 2 tracking grids required per class I had 1000 pages to produce (and on a regular basis). So even 1 minute a page would still be 1000 minutes worktime.

 

I've found a solution though (thanks to help you've all given).

 

I've calculated the level of progress data I require as an assessment/marksheet (it displays all the same data as the tracking grids i.e who is on target etc hence condensed two tracking grids into one). I used Ecclesbury's Lookup table suggestion as it meant I could create one uniform template for all my subjects. I had some results as sublevels and some as whole- converted them all to whole using Lookup tables and 'Marks to grade' on the result to turn it into a level.

 

With that done I could simply clone my template and switch aspects in the formulas. So everything is now automatic AND I get more detail AND its less paper used. I just have to update the result sets every time and hit print.

 

In regards to chance analysis- I used that until recently but have recently required more detail.