Year Roll Over - SIMS for me but not necessarily restricted to

[Stuart_C]

Our SLT have decided they want the pupil roll over to happen earlier and alter the admission dates so all the pupils appear in SIMS a bit earlier so essentially the academic year starts August 1 as far as SIMS is concerned. Not really sure what the problem is but apparently it's what they want.

 

So presumably it's just a case of setting the start of term/end of term to whatever they want, specifically the first of August and away you go. So my question here is what's going to go horribly wrong.

 

So far I've got:

You can't edit the current year and I've no idea what overlapping the academic year would do.

It's incorrect data, the students are not here so there. (Being indy I suspect we might be able to get away with a little bit but not sure)

I've no idea what kind of headaches would occur with downloading and analysing the exam results

Possibilites of all kinds of headaches over the lesson/session attendance

 

Any other suggestions? And anybody actuallly roll the academic year up earlier than the actual start of the year?

Edited June 9, 2014 by Stuart_C

[LosOjos]

I can't see the benefit to doing this - you can change the effective date to a future date to see how things will stand in the new term. Is there a specific reason they feel the need to do this?

 

The first thing that comes in to my head is census - I imagine this causing all sorts of odd queries on your census with regards to under-age pupils being admitted, long periods of "no attendance possible" and quite likely a major headache for whoever has to deal with your Post-16 Learning Aims...

 

Personally, there's no way I'd set my SIMS term dates to anything but the proper ones. Far too much potential for fall out later on.

[sparkeh]

Yep Census is going to be fun, what about attendance? That could get funky. Personally I would not do this.

 

Best idea would be to find out why they want to do it so you can assess if it can be done in a less dodgy way (like effective date as said above).

[Stuart_C]

Cheers for the responses. I hadn't thought about census stuff.

I have already asked for feedback on the "why" as I agree that there are better ways to handle this.

 

Any more responses greatfully received.

[Chunks_]

Only benefit I can see is you have an extra month of attendance. They would put B marks (educated offsite) and this would essentially up all their attendance figures across the year. I'll let everyone else discuss the moral/legal implications of that one.

 

I certainly would not do this myself.... I can see exams, census, course manager (learning aims), attendance all being issues. Might be worth a call to your mis support see what they say.

[Stuart_C]

Ouch, sounds like an awesome situation to be in.

Id be refering this to the data manager and persons responsible for SIMS and run like the wind in the opposite direction.

 

That would be tricky as I suspect both of those are me.

[jrma91]

This would really mess up learning aims, as if sixth form students courses are back-dated to the start of term, ie 1st August, then they when they actually start of September 1st it would have been a month that they would have been doing the course, and could affect completion rates and therefor funding. Which I am sure that nobody wants reduced funding at the moment!

 

Regards,

 

jrma91

[Stuart_C]

This would really mess up learning aims, as if sixth form students courses are back-dated to the start of term, ie 1st August, then they when they actually start of September 1st it would have been a month that they would have been doing the course, and could affect completion rates and therefor funding. Which I am sure that nobody wants reduced funding at the moment!

 

Regards,

 

jrma91

 

Not a massive issue (I think). Being Indy I don't think that matters as the parents are all fee paying

[ICTLady]

There is an option to start next year's curriculum early - I wonder if that would achieve what your SLT want without the problems of changing your academic year?

 

See resource 20819 on supportnet.

[CAM]

Do private schools have to do the census? I know the Autumn return determines funding for state schools but I think it now relies on a grade being returned for each student with Completed status.

[Chunks_]

The grade was expected in the 2012 census and it was a massive flop, as there were soo many problems with pulling the grades through from exams. They retracted that last year and the grades no longer have to be submitted as far as I'm aware.

 

Funding is based on learning aims and how long the student has been in the course.

100% for a student attending the whole course.

100% for a student completing the course and exams even if its finished early.

50% if a student does more than 6 weeks but doesn't complete course.

0% if student doesn't last 6 weeks.

 

dont take that as gospel but i'm pretty sure its something like that as I looked it up the other day......

[Bananas]

I'll wager this is due to something similar to here. Email accounts are generated off the back of a data extract by Groupcall, this is then sent to county which automagically generates the student email accounts. It won't do it until the students start date is passed though. So even if you setup your new intake in July their email accounts wont be generated until say 5th September.

 

I'll bet it's something along those lines and as DM there's NO WAY I would do this, it's quite frankly a disaster waiting to happen. I find in this situation the best defence is go ask Capita support the question when they come back saying no don't do it, you can go back to SLT and stick it under their noses and say can't be done...

 

Found in the past if you just say no it doesn't work that way can't be done SLT slink off thinking it can be done and you're just being obstructive, hence the above solution.

[CAM]

The grade was expected in the 2012 census and it was a massive flop, as there were soo many problems with pulling the grades through from exams. They retracted that last year and the grades no longer have to be submitted as far as I'm aware.

 

Funding is based on learning aims and how long the student has been in the course.

100% for a student attending the whole course.

100% for a student completing the course and exams even if its finished early.

50% if a student does more than 6 weeks but doesn't complete course.

0% if student doesn't last 6 weeks.

 

dont take that as gospel but i'm pretty sure its something like that as I looked it up the other day......

 

Ahhh yes, forgot about that! I was one of the ones jumping with joy when it was announced too!

[vikpaw]

In addition to the above advice:

There is a document on SupportNet about admitting students early. It can be done. Some schools start the new curriculum early, after exams are over.

You can set your new year start date to be early, the end date of your current year will automatically get moved. This is not an issue. My academic year moves earlier each year.

I usually set my admission dates earlier than the start date, so we can start to do stuff with the new intake. If you need to change the already entered dates, i think it's a manual job - i think i have a vbscript to do this though if required.

I don't know what effect any of my answers will have with respect to statutory returns / exam results etc. which may be date based. I don't have to deal with them.

 

It's worth finding out exactly why this needs to happen, so you can work out if doing this is the right way forward. If it was say for emails as one example, then there could be much easier workarounds.