[sims] [SIMS] import historical grade data, can it be done?

[iceman]

Haven't been here for a while but I remember how helpful everyone used to be

 

I played around with SIMS extensively producing assessment analysis stuff when I was teaching.

Since I retired my old school has used a company based online system to enter/store grade data and I have written a data analysis suite that downloads the data, stores it in a SQL database and performs various analyses, plots flight paths etc.

 

Now the schools wants to return to using SIMS to record the assessments and want me to overseee the process.

 

I can probably remember all the stuff about aspects/marksheets and result sets for 6 assessment points per year etc but I'd like to pre-populate SIMS with the grades they have been entering online for the past few years and which I now have in my database.

 

If I had an aspect called say 'Estimated_Grade', is there a way I could import all the historical estimated grades I already have for different students, subjects and assessment points and get them associated with the correct assessment point in SIMS?

 

I would have available name, upn, subject_code, class_code, date, grade_date, assessment_point and grade (plus other stuff) and could export from my SQL database in different formats such as csv, xml etc.

 

The issue would be around somehow associating the date or assessment point of each grade with a particular result set.

 

Would I be able to just have one called say 'Easter_progress_point' and use it to store grades from many different student/subjects and Easters from different years?

Edited June 11, 2015 by iceman

[LosOjos]

It sounds like you do a bit of programming, right?

 

If so, the simplest way I can think to do this is to write a script to export your SQL data in to an XML document you can then import back in to SIMS. You'll need to do some mapping between the results in your DB and the aspect they need to go in to. Export some arbitrary results from SIMS (Routines > Data Out > Assessment > Export) to get a feel for the format of the XML document.

 

Alternatively, it's a case of dumping it all in a spreadsheet and using the SIMS import tool, manually mapping every column to an aspect and date - doable if you've only got a few aspects and dates (and are happy to merge data points by, say month or term) but if there's a lot of data, it'd be an absolutely mammoth undertaking.

 

EDIT: also, you don't have to use resultsets in SIMS, you can just put in results by date, however that can make reporting on them a bit trickier. If you do associate with a resultset, then that resultset can only hold one result per student, per aspect, so you'd need to decide on a way of merging date ranges (by term sounds like a logical way to go if that's about the regularity of your data)

Edited June 11, 2015 by LosOjos
"moth of term" - sounds intriguing but was actually a typo.

[iceman]

Thanks LosOjos, you are one of the helpful ones I was referring to!

 

Yes I can program so going the XML route shouldn't be a problem. I'll experiment with what you suggest. I remember doing something similar with a test export when I needed the exact syntax to run a SIMS report with parameters from Delphi to get an export of attendance data from sims every night.

 

You seem to be suggesting that I would be able to import say, Fred's English grades for Easter 2013 and Easter 2014 into a single aspect and results set yet keep the chronology of the grades separate. Is that correct?

[LosOjos]

You seem to be suggesting that I would be able to import say, Fred's English grades for Easter 2013 and Easter 2014 into a single aspect and results set yet keep the chronology of the grades separate. Is that correct?

 

Not quite - you can either import the grades by date or resultset.

 

If you import them with their date (no resultset), then to find them again you set date ranges when filtering in reports/individual reports/assessment templates. The benefit is, when any grade is entered, it doesn't overwrite any previous grades (so long as it's entered on a different day)

 

If you import to resultsets, your filtering gets much easier because you have that resultset as a point of reference. However, as only one grade can exist for a student in a given aspect and resultset, then any other grades entered in to that aspect and resultset would be overwritten. However, it is that pairing that's important - you can have multiple aspects each holding a different result against the same resultset for different pupils.

 

For example, I have 3 aspects; English Estimate, Maths Estimate and Science Estimate. I then have a resultset, Autumn. An export of my results might look like this:

 

Johnny - English Estimate - Autumn - C

Susan - English Estimate - Autumn - B

Joe - English Estimate - Autumn - C

 

Johnny - Maths Estimate - Autumn - B

Susan - Maths Estimate - Autumn - B

Joe - Maths Estimate - Autumn - A

 

Johnny - Science Estimate - Autumn - C

Susan - Science Estimate - Autumn - D

Joe - Science Estimate - Autumn - C

 

Notice I'm using the same resultset for each, but different aspects. It's not the only way to arrange things, but I find it best personally to think of an aspect as your identifier (i.e. what kind of grade is it?), a resultset as a time stamp (when was it taken?). Now, if someone were to enter a new grade for English for Johnny under the same resultset, then the old result would be overwritten, as SIMS isn't interested in the actual date the result was entered, only the resultset it was entered in to.

 

I hope this makes sense!

[iceman]

Thank you for taking the time for a clear explanation. Having different results sets for each occasion makes sense. I suppose that when creating a report (say as a mailmerge) one could include several resultsets at once so that progress could be indicated.

[LosOjos]

Thank you for taking the time for a clear explanation. Having different results sets for each occasion makes sense. I suppose that when creating a report (say as a mailmerge) one could include several resultsets at once so that progress could be indicated.

 

Yeah when you create an Individual Report (essentially SIMS' version of a mail merge), you select an aspect and resultset, and SIMS pulls the matching result for the current student from that. You can also use date ranges, with the added qualifier of 'latest', 'first' or 'best' result over that date range. If you can get away with resultsets though, I find them much more manageable personally.

 

An added benefit to resultsets is you can lock them, so once you have set up all your data entry sheets you can lock/unlock result sets to prevent teachers entering data in to the wrong column or overwriting old data once it's complete. To do that using date range fields, you'd have to manually lock each column (this involves opening the template, finding the column, then ticking 'lock' for every template - very time consuming!)

[MattMitchell]

You can import them, and specify date & resultset, or just date.

 

Couple of things:

1 SIMS won't overwrite results if the date on the import result is older than the existing entry

2 You can omit the resultset, and then (I suspect) no. 1 won't apply

3 You used to be able to omit resultset and aspect nodes from the file, as long as you're using aspects that already exist (saves some grief in outputting the XML)

4 The V7 format is easier, since it doesn't put a GUID on everything. That said, if you want to replace results rather than just add them, it can be helpful

 

 

The other way to do it, is to produce an XML spreadsheet format file, which has the aspectexternalid and resultsetexternalid, along with the respective suppliers, in the hidden rows at the top. Export a marksheet as XML to see what you need for this one ;-) You can actually make an XML spreadsheet this way using formulae in excel!

[iceman]

Useful stuff. @MattMitchell I can't use a speadsheet directly as my database already contains around 200,000 grades, far too many to put into a spreadsheet with one grade per row.

[bobsmith]

but you could output a series of smaller spreadsheets and import them, perhaps a year group or result set at a time?

[vikpaw]

Yep, i was going to say an good middle method is to set up marksheets in SIMS, and export them as spreadsheets as per @MattMitchell's second way.

You then just have to copy data into it. With multiple subjects along the top you can hit 10-15 grades per row, i.e. one student per row, so can do a whole year group at once.

 

In theory, depending on how you do it, you could set it up with many more columns and do a year's worth of data at once, with each year group having a fixed number of columns. I can't remember what the column limit is though, you'll probably hit it for KS4 and above.

 

Whichever method, you are going to need a unique way to match students, so i hope you have got a unique field that links to SIMS in your database so you can at least do some v/h-lookups . Otherwise you'll have to rely on the SIMS name matching.

[bobsmith]

lucky that the OP has UPN in his SQL DB

 

still may have to do a precheck that the UPNs all match, it IS possible some were temporary or erroneous before the migration.

[iceman]

Hi Vikpaw - another name I recognise from the old days!

Thanks for all the ideas from everyone. Yes I do use the upn, although a long time ago I also used the sims admission number because although it was technically possible to have duplicate UPNs in the early days it was not possible to have duplicate admission numbers unless the studente was enrolled twice.

 

The online system as it stands at one time did extract the upn together with the students' names from SIMS, so the UPN I have downloded from it should be able to match straight back into SIMS again.

One question @LosOjos though, I'm a bit reluctant to use result sets because if I understand it correctly I need to make a new result set - with a new name - for every data collection point. So with six collections a year, after a few years I will have lost of different names for my result sets. My concern is how I would then be able to automate the analysis of the data outside of sims when there is no obvious way, apart from the textual name, to tell the chronological order of results. Using just aspects at least would allow me to use the date to identify when the result was captured and the order of results. Is this right?.

 

Great help from everyone. - There will probably be more postings from me soon as I have just had a meeting at the school to discuss their new vision for doing criteria referenced assessments instead of simple gradings - by September!

[MattMitchell]

You can still run a report to export results by date, even if they're tagged by resultset. Exporting results is a lot faster when you're filtering by resultset, in my experience.

[bobsmith]

The way I use resultsets (which i guess is fairly common) is as follows:

 

year 7 autumn 1, year 7 autumn 2 etc

 

Now you don't actually need to create any more than those, because the student themselves only ever has 1 result in each resultset, so running a report on a combination of "students currently in year X" and "resultset = year X autumn 1" returns a unique set of results.

[LosOjos]

Just echoing others rally, I follow the same system as @bobsmith, this gives you a really tidy way of tracking progress.

 

However, this falls down in sixth form, where it's common for students to resit years. The problem arises when a student resits, says, AS English, and the resultsets are already populated from their previous term in Y12. As @MattMitchell says, when reporting you can filter by date and resultset, however you can't do this in templates (just in case it's been a while since you looked at SIMS, templates are where you set up your data entry sheets).

 

My way around this is to change things slightly in sixth form, so rather than having 'Y12 Autumn' & 'Y13 Autumn', I have 'KS5 Autumn 14/15'

 

You're right that you can end up with a lot of resultsets in SIMS this way, but it's not really an issue in practise - better to have dozens of descriptive identifiers than rely solely on date ranges IMO - it makes looking at historical data much simpler.

[iceman]

@bobsmith

 

But how do you then easily analyse the results over time?

ie suppose I want to know who in Year 7 has increased their score from 'autumn 1' to say 'spring 3' ?

Or maybe I want all the scores so far for Year 7 so I can plot a flight path graph.

As the result sets all have completely different names it would appear I have to do a different, rather lengthy query for every report I want ie show me 'year7 autumn 2' & 'Year 7 autumn2' & 'year7 spring1 & Year7 spring 2' etc

or maybe subtract 'year 7 autumn 2' from 'Year 7 autumn2'.

 

If I don't use result sets then I can just give the aspect (is that the right word) the single name 'Year 7 score' and ask sims to 'show me all the scores for year 7, by student, ordered by date.

Am I misunderstanding here?

[bobsmith]

If we are talking about within SIMS then you can bring up the relevant result sets in the order you want them in marksheets and in the various group,aspect and chance analysis grids.

 

If we are talking about extracting in SQL or some other external system, you would have to tell it which order you want to pull resultsets out in and populate the output from there.

 

Bear in mind that extracting ALL the results for your fictitious year 7 student would require a variable number of columns as it would be quite possible for a student to have more or less data items recorded than any other, whereas resultsets gives you a common framework for all students in a year group.

[iceman]

By all results I really meant all results for a particular aspect (using the English term not necesserily sims)

 

eg The school I am working for wants to do an assessment and record a numerical score for each of 6 assessment objectives (AO1, AO2, AO3 etc..) for each subject, giving around 50 scores per student per assessment.

It will cary out this assessment several times a year, probably 6 or 8.

 

After each assessment, for each student it then wants to perform some analysis within each subject (say, take the average of the 6 Assessment Objectives) and also cross subject (say take the average of one Assessment objective over all subjects taken). All this will be reported to parents along with a RAGed indication for each score indicating whether the current score for each of the fifty assessment objective / subject combinations is better, worse or the same as the one from the previous assessment date.

 

I will try to do much of this directly in SIMS but will suspect I will probably find it simpler to just replicate all the relevant data; staff, students, classes, subjects, scores etc in a small sql database, populate it each night via automated reports and then write an external program to query the database, do the analysis and generate the final pdf reports. That's what I am used to doing with other data.

 

Certainly in such a case the data would be very row oriented, not column oriented. ie to store a single score the data fields might be something like

UPN, Subject_code, AO_number, Asssessment_date, Score

with one row for every combination of UPN, subject_Code, AO and Assessment_date

 

I may be rather dumb though but so far I cannot understand the benefit of using result sets or not in an application like this since a result set can only hold one set of values.

[bobsmith]

The answer is that the assessment date is something that comes from SIMS, and this is the date on which the data was ENTERED.

 

In the following scenario:

 

A member of staff goes back to change the result the day after you collect it due to something like a typo being noticed or internal moderation.

 

WITH resultsets you overwrite the old result

 

WITHOUT resultsets SIMS creates an additional record

 

An added complication is that your staff are highly unlikely to enter all their data on the same date, so in reality you'll want to extract data that was entered within a date range. However if two or more results were entered (due to amendments of data) for the SAME data item within this date range, you'll be extracting extra superfluous data.

[iceman]

Ah, OK I see the distinction. The bit about not entering data all on the same day is particularly relevant. I'll prototype using results sets and see how it goes. Thank you.

[vikpaw]

back @iceman

I like resultsets because they are easier to deal with when it comes to reporting. You know exactly what data you are bringing in and no messing with dates.

 

I'm gonna throw some other thoughts out there. A resultset is still like a date value, in as much that you can tie it to whatever date you like. If you were querying for an assessment date, you now bring back resultset and "know" that 'Y7 collection 1' is september of whichever year they were in Y7. It depends on how you will be querying SIMS, either directly, or via reports. If you get the data in via marksheets, you could even just export them to Excel in order to populate another database.

 

I'm currently thinking along the lines of directly extracting data, or just doing a complete database replication, i.e. restore a backup that you manipulate. You mention a query, but if you are doing a database query, you won't have to specify each resultset you can just pull back all linked information on that student.

 

Other things to consider, apologies if already mentioned:

 

 

• When you're looking at marksheet data, even with resultsets, it has an associated data entry date. There is also a result date, which i believe is used for calculations, such as reading ages etc. It's hard to get staff to put this in (it will default to data entry date), but you could for your import ensure that the result date is fixed, then perhaps use this if you prefer to pull back all data and then sort by dates.
  
• Also if you right click on any cell in a marksheet, you'll see a nice history for that Aspect, regardless of resultset, and it will include values not tied to a resultset of which you can have multiple as mentioned before, alongside resultsetted ones.
  
• Lastly, do you actually need all historical data in SIMS? If you've built a fab database with analyses, AND you intend to export future data into it, what will you gain by doing all of this? I would import one year back, so at least for most courses the teacher could see the last year's grade. Other than that, you're going to give them way more meaningful data. Unless you want to generate historic assessment reports in SIMS, i'd just start data entry now, with a well thought out system, and not worry about the older data. Having it stored somewhere easily accessible in a spreadsheet is probably way more convenient, than going into a marksheet and changed the group membership date back, or looking at the history tied to a student record.
  

[iceman]

Yes, things have slightly moved on as the school now want to use the numerical 1-9 GCSE grade for scoring, right from Y7 so the historical data would need some manipulation to allow things like my flight paths to seamlesly span before and after changeover. It might be worth me telling the school it can't be done.

 

I almost certainly would be using reports that are run each night to extract data and insert it into my SQL database so that I know my db is always up to date. Then I would be using the db and the system I have developed to do the analysis and generate 'paper' reports for parents/ slt etc as I need to combine the assessment data from sims with other data from external online agencies.

 

I try to completely avoid any manual operations such as putting stuff into Excel and then moving it somewhere else / doing mail merge etc.

My systems expect users to just click a button on a menu to get the whole job done.

 

But a question: If I wanted say the last 16 assessments for French for a particular Y9 student (so we can see progress over time) then at 6 assessment points a year that would span 2.5 years, Y7, Y8 and half of Y9. A sims report requires me to say which result set I want, so how would I tell it I want 16 different result sets all at once - together with the date of the result set so I can later tell what chronological order the scores are in?

 

Bear in mind that this a a computer doing all this, not a human, so the computer wouldn't know that by 'Y7 collection 1' I mean the scores for all these students when they were in Y7 as opposed to the scores for students who are currently in Y7. Or would it?

 

Sorry for these daft questions. Since retiring from active teaching I've been continuing to develop data analysis software to aid school improvement, mainly for the school where I used to work, so I haven't actually touched SIMS for a while, although some of the software I wrote five years ago downloads stuff from it every night. But now the school wants to move back to using assessment manager and need me to help them design the system.

[vikpaw]

For the different grade types, you would need some intervention, but you may be able to match the underlying point scores if there is some kind of mapping. Or just tell your system that an A* = 9, or whatever formulae needs to go in there.

 

With regards to your system, take all data from SIMS, make it logical in your DB, then request 16 results. How that happens depends on your system, it might need a loop / counter variable looking for data ordered by date.

You're pretty okay with SQL, then you could clone your SIMS DB, then try to write code to rip it out directly from there, if you order all data by result date, then take the top 16 would do it. I still don't see why it needs to come from SIMS. I can understand why they want to input data into SIMS now, and how you can do that, but if you will nightly move it to an analysis system, then don't request 16 grades from SIMS, allow your system to handle that. Either way, you can using the result date get the info from SIMS. I'll attach some sample results below.

 

Many people throw SIMS data into an off-the-shelf product like 4Matrix, SiSRA, PupilAsset, Classroom Monitor, Go4Schools .. . (the list is v.long), once it's there, it shouldn't matter what you want, it won't be coming from SIMS anymore. The source could just as easily be taken from handwritten teacher notes, or word of mouth. Your system should be better as you can tell it to do whatever you want.

 

I'd focus on how you will store / collect future data in SIMS, if that is what you want to do, and how to get that out to your analysis tool. I think you'll be better off attacking the DB directly, well a clone of it (DON'T TOUCH THE LIVE DB!). Maybe there is even a free(ish) off the shelf bit of software than handles the extracting of data from SIMS. It's not a new problem.

 

This was generated with a report based on the "Results" area, I haven't filtered apart from to show only grade type columns. If you filtered for English in the aspect name, as long as it's there enough times, you'd get what you wanted. This could be done in SIMS as part of the query, or more easily in your system.

[TABLE=width: 576]

[TR]

[TD]Grade[/TD]

[TD]Result Date[/TD]

[TD]ResultSet[/TD]

[TD]Aspect Name[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]12/09[/TD]

[TD]23 October 2011[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y6[/TD]

[TD]KS2 Form X Reading Age[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5c[/TD]

[TD]19 December 2011[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y6[/TD]

[TD]KS1-2 Rising Stars Y5[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5c[/TD]

[TD]19 December 2011[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y6[/TD]

[TD]KS1-2 Rising Stars NC Level[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5c[/TD]

[TD]09 May 2012[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y6[/TD]

[TD]KS1-2 Rising Stars Y6[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5c[/TD]

[TD]09 May 2012[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y6[/TD]

[TD]KS1-2 Rising Stars NC Level[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13/05[/TD]

[TD]17 May 2012[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y6[/TD]

[TD]KS2 Form Y Reading Age[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]02 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Physical Education - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]02 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Physical Education - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]05 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Art & Design - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]06 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 PSE - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]08 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 French - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]08 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 French - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]09 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 English - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]09 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 English - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]11 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Science - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]11 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Arabic (Non Speakers) - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]11 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Art & Design - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]11 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Mathematics - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]11 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Mathematics - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]11 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Science - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Arabic (Non Speakers) - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Music - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Drama - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Geography - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Geography - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Drama - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Music - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 IT - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]12 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 IT - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]18 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 History - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]18 December 2012[/TD]

[TD]First Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 History - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]28 April 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Art & Design - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]12 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 PSE - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]20 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Music - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]20 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Music - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]21 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Physical Education - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]22 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 French - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]22 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 French - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]25 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 History - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]3[/TD]

[TD]28 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Physical Education - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]29 May 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 History - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]05 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Art & Design - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]05 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 IT - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]05 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 IT - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]05 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 English - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]05 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 English - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]08 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Mathematics - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]09 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Mathematics - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]09 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Drama - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]09 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Drama - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]09 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Science - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]09 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Science - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]10 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Geography - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]10 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Geography - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]12 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Arabic (Non Speakers) - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]4[/TD]

[TD]12 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Arabic (Non Speakers) - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]14 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Hist & Geog SA - Effort[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]5[/TD]

[TD]14 June 2013[/TD]

[TD]Second Semester Y7[/TD]

[TD]KS3 Hist & Geog SA - Attainment[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

[bobsmith]

But a question: If I wanted say the last 16 assessments for French for a particular Y9 student (so we can see progress over time) then at 6 assessment points a year that would span 2.5 years, Y7, Y8 and half of Y9. A sims report requires me to say which result set I want, so how would I tell it I want 16 different result sets all at once - together with the date of the result set so I can later tell what chronological order the scores are in?

 

Bear in mind that this a a computer doing all this, not a human, so the computer wouldn't know that by 'Y7 collection 1' I mean the scores for all these students when they were in Y7 as opposed to the scores for students who are currently in Y7. Or would it?

 

It's not a daft question at all, we all have to get our heads round this at some point!

 

A student would have a set of results with different year identifiers in the resultset name, such as Y7 Autumn 2, Y8 Autumn 2, Y9 Autumn 2 - so if your report attacks it from the angle of the student THEN the resultset you'll have no issues.

 

If you were to ask the system for all results with a resultset of Y7 Autumn 2 coming from the focus of results, then you would indeed get results for the current year 11s when they were in year 7, as well as the year 10s, 9's etc.

 

All a matter of how you start your query/report.

 

There will be times when coming at it from a different angle will give you different data that is showing something you want to know, for example, how did my CURRENT year 7s do compared to last years year 7 (CURRENT 8) at the same point in their education.