[sims] Exporting simple data from SIMS to third party site

[siv2081]

Hello,

 

I hope I am posting in the correct place, apologies if not.

 

I am a science teacher and I'm creating a website (it will be owned and run by myself not the school, so a business). I'd be grateful if anyone could clarify whether or not, as a third party site, I could extract simple information from SIM's into a SQL database (obviously with schools permission). Very simply, it would be the student UPN number, surname, first name, year group, class name, science teacher associated with class name, KS2 average score, target grade, tier of entry, student email address and parents email address (most being optional for schools).

 

Does anyone know if I would need a license (I'm getting very confused) from SIMs and whether there is a fee for this. Also if anyone has any experience of this any help with where to find any open source code or tips to help set this up I would be obviously be extremely grateful!

 

Many thanks

[MattMitchell]

Talk to David Grashoff at Capita, who's in charge of partnership licensing (as I recall).

 

Something to bear in mind with all this, is that writing a web application that's secure against outside attack isn't all that simple! SQL injection is the first thing that comes to mind, for instance.

 

Depending on what you want to do, you might find that using something like office365 could be a good way to do it - if you use the right licensing plan, you can do quite a lot in excel and still hide the underlying data and code from users.

 

To be honest, though, if coding secure online web applications isn't your area of expertise, writing something to process and serve student data online might need some outside help if you want to ensure data security.

[siv2081]

Hi Matt,

 

Ooo don't worry I'm definitely getting a website developer to create the site! However, I doubt they will have much experience of SIMs, so before I ask them I'd like to know whether it's even possible! The reasoning behind wanting to extract information from SIMs is that as a teacher myself, I know how little time we have for things like data input and as such want to make it as easy as possible.

 

Thanks for your suggestions and advice.

[MattMitchell]

There is a third-party command line tool for pulling report data out of SIMS, as well as more complex api-based access. There might be a small fee for the command line one, but you can get schools to run a sims report and the upload the output.

 

I've come across a few online apps for schools lately that don't secure the data properly (or sometimes transport it encrypted even); and these would not pass any kind of data security audit. Unless you understand the security issues involved, you won't know the data is safe online!

[siv2081]

Again, very sound advice, thank you! I'll have to do some reading on this, don't suppose you have any sites you'd recommend?

[David_Grashoff]

Talk to David Grashoff at Capita, who's in charge of partnership licensing (as I recall).

 

Something to bear in mind with all this, is that writing a web application that's secure against outside attack isn't all that simple! SQL injection is the first thing that comes to mind, for instance.

 

Depending on what you want to do, you might find that using something like office365 could be a good way to do it - if you use the right licensing plan, you can do quite a lot in excel and still hide the underlying data and code from users.

 

To be honest, though, if coding secure online web applications isn't your area of expertise, writing something to process and serve student data online might need some outside help if you want to ensure data security.

 

Siv please email me at [email protected] and will try and clarify your options.

[PhilNeal]

As a general rule the UPN should not be used as a link - the ICO is very strict on the use of this code.

[siv2081]

Hi Phil

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "used as a link" and "ICO"? I won't be using it as a link but as a way of identifying students within a school.

 

Thanks

[MattMitchell]

Hi Phil

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "used as a link" and "ICO"? I won't be using it as a link but as a way of identifying students within a school.

 

Thanks

 

You're not meant to fly it around places as it's seen as an identifier that allows access to information on students. The safest bet is to use the third-party reporting studentid (person_id), or second best is admission number.

[bobsmith]

Hi Phil

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "used as a link" and "ICO"? I won't be using it as a link but as a way of identifying students within a school.

 

Thanks

 

https://ico.org.uk/

 

"Information Commissioner's Office"

 

And as MattMitchell said, don't use the UPN! It's akin to using someones NI number - it is uniquely identifiable.

 

Out of interest - would you be using your website for more than 1 school?