[sims] Year end

[skell]

Hi all

 

I've been assigned to roll over the year in SIMS. I've never done this before, and I don't know enough about the timetable and such to do this on my own. The previous NM did the year end so its been lumped onto me to perform it.

 

Does anyone have any guidance about the information / staff I need to involve in order to get this done? I've downloaded the year end docs from Capita but it's not as helpful as I'd hoped.

 

Thanks!

[CAM]

Are you the data manager? They should know the most about end of year. It's a very complicated process (too much to list here!) and the handbook will be your best bet. Alternatively, any other schools in the area or your LA might have some training notes you can borrow. You WILL need to communicate with the timetabler, office manager and subject leaders (or their SLT link to obtain the class allocations).

 

It boils down to creating the new academic year, setting the holidays, adding staff, applying the timetable and moving students from one class to another for next year. The entire process left me worrying with shredded nerves the first time I had to do it, but if you have any specific questions let me know!

[skell]

That's the problem - the school doesn't have a data manager... I don't think it should be me really either, but that's beside the point.

 

Thanks for your support @CAM. I suppose I'll just have to muddle through... Although I'm more annoyed than nervous at the moment.

[PhilNeal]

There is a handbook available on MyAccount. Search for Year+End and its in the second page of publications. There's one for primary & one for secondary.

[CAM]

I can do it with my eyes shut, just finding the time to help you.

 

Any advice is at your own risk though. Mileage my vary, etc! How to start...

 

Start with your new academic year, this one is easy. ROUTINES - SCHOOL - ACADEMIC YEAR. Then follow the wizard to match your school day, set up term dates (holidays fall between terms), add half-term dates, bank holidays, INSET, etc. Double check every date, get the final details from the office manager as you will have difficulty changing it later. Once this is set your timetabler will be free to send their draft timetable to SQL for checking.

 

Find out whoever is managing leavers in Y11 and Y13. Get a list of who is leaving, their preliminary destinations. Hopefully someone from the office is doing this part, find out! If it's you, ROUTINES - STUDENT - LEAVERS.

 

Find out staff codes of new staff for September. Make sure the timetabler and Personnel are using the same codes for each staff member in FOCUS - PERSON - MANAGE CLASSROOM STAFF and in Nova-T6.

 

Setup the Pastoral structure for next year. Again, Personnel or office manager will have this information. There are lots of caveats, just read the notes on it for now as it won't be finalised until nearer the end of term. You will be in for part of the Summer Hols by the way. NEVER RENAME FORM GROUPS TO NEW ONES! Use the Re-use Previous Name option.

 

Start prodding people for class lists you need this data for over summer. Each student needs to be promoted (starting with Y12 and working down otherwise Y7 will get promoted to Y8 then into Y9 when you promote Y8, etc).

 

There's probably more. Just keep talking to the timetabler, Personnel, office and them talking to you. It's not just a computing exercise but one of co-ordinating multiple people in the school.

 

Most of all, DON'T PANIC!

[bossman]

@skell

 

Its not a case of "Muddling through" explain to SLT it is not your remit and you haven't been trained in the use of the Sims applications, you just maintain the infrastructure server which the software runs on.

 

Do you have a support SLA?

 

If not then I would recommend you get one either through your LEA or Capita whichever is the better service, if your an Academy then it will be the latter.

 

You cannot be expected to do something you have no idea about nor had the training for, it would be like telling a member of the teaching staff to do the HT job.

 

Seek advice from your union if you are a member.

[vikpaw]

Try searching My Account for EOY it usually spills the beans on the process...

[minimoo]

I think the issue here is to have an understanding of sims and also who does what within the school.

 

In the old days - *before* Nt6/sims.net - yes i'm going back 10 years or whatever. The design of sims was that there was a clear "academic year". Now, it's more fluid in terms of date ranges - As an example we created next year's academic year in sims back in December. So now, we have a whole step of processes that someone needs to have done before 1st September to ensure things go smoothly next year.

 

I've effectively been co-ordinating this at my place for a number of years, and every now and again have hit an issue in july or september - as we've got caught out on something (in some cases things that sims didn't do, but now handles automatically)

 

Capita's handbook on it does a nice list of tasks, some of which make sense for the IT person to help with - others e.g. "Print Registers for OMR for new year" if applicable, I'd expect someone in the office is already doing. One of the issues I find is whether the other staff remember what they did 12 months previously

@CAM - "Start prodding people for class lists you need this data for over summer. Each student needs to be promoted (starting with Y12 and working down otherwise Y7 will get promoted to Y8 then into Y9 when you promote Y8, etc)." ??? really?? Pretty sure i've never had to do anything in a set order - we are talking academic groups here right and not pastoral?

[PhilNeal]

"explain to SLT it is not your remit and you haven't been trained in the use of the Sims applications, you just maintain the infrastructure server which the software runs on."

 

Alternatively, seize the opportunity to become a member of the SLT. I know a lot of techs that have risen to very senior positions through their knowledge of what a MIS can achieve and helping the school to become very effective.

[CAM]

@minimoo: The advice I got from my LA (quite a while ago) was work top to bottom and I've followed it since. Although some parts of the promotion process I worked out how to do manually because the wizard always breaks for me.

@PhilNeal: With the exception of the bursar, SLT generally requires you to be a teacher. I know of a few exceptions to this rule but I wouldn't bank on being promoted to management! Timetabling and End of Year Process as a skill does make you a considerably more valuable asset though.

[skell]

Thanks everyone for your input.

 

I went to my LM and explained the situation. Long story short, we're getting someone in from the LA to assist us, and the admin tasks are going to be spread around to actual admin staff.

@CAM: I started to create the NAY yesterday, but it failed when I tried to start the new year from the 6 July. Apparently the current year runs to 22 July in SIMS. Joy...

[vikpaw]

I thought it auto truncates the current year, i know it extends it, i guess truncation is dangerous. So long as kids are gone by the 6th, i can't see why you can't shorten the current year first. But check the documentation and with your support team as editing the current year has risks and certain conditions.

[CAM]

Do you start your academic year early? Normally the year will run from your first day back in September until the day before your first day back for the following year (eg, mine ends last day of August as we come back 1st September for an INSET).

 

EDIT - Checking my guidance notes, the new academic year is automatically assigned an end date 365 days after the specified start date.

Edited June 2, 2015 by CAM

[Pink_Panda]

Hello, thanks for this, it's really helpful. My manager, the DM, has just been tasked with setting up the new academic year, which previously had been done by the timetabler/Deputy Head...

[skell]

@vikpaw

 

The students won't be gone, just moved up a year. I'm waiting for the LA to get in touch, but I'm assuming the answer will be no, which will be fun!

[vikpaw]

All the info is in the notes on Capita's My Account. @skell no problem going up a year if the current year has ended. Do it early and things could go awry with the timetables etc.

[minimoo]

Are pink panda and snell related ?

@vikpaw - equally, I've said i'm happy explain to skell what we've(I've) done for last 14 years of using sims. We get to deal with lovely school census and the works - however, the 'early curriculum' is a different matter outside what we do -> where sims uses NT6/Course manager for the school census for learning aims (although how that works changes on a yearly basis) and you use sims for results analysis, it becomes important to be clear with what you are doing. Otherwise you'll end up with a nightmare with census return in October. I'm guessing census' don't apply to you?

[nickbro]

We've done the Year End thing and new timetable on Monday. I had it all set up before that. Everything seemed to go ok, just had to manually edit all of the Year 11 leavers and Year 13 leavers so they were back in those year groups and had a separate form. Couldn't get the promotion rules to do it. We are not allowed to take them off role until the exams are over. We had so many changes with the timetable that going straight to the new academic year early was the easiest option.

 

The biggest issue I had was waking up in a cold sweat on Monday morning (3 hours after going to sleep) worried about how Go4Schools was going to behave with the SIMS change over. Mostly it was fine, I just needed to input the calendar and set up some new feed rules.