[sims] Year 6 Admissions/CTF

[chrisateen]

Hi All

 

I have recently taken over admissions and unfortunately my LEA only provides the student information via CSV and therefore manually update SIMS admissions. At the moment our school is also getting them to fill in a student information form with further information and I am not prepared to manually update SIMS with this as well

 

However I think I wasted a lot of time here and I should have just emailed the primary schools and get them to send us the CTF files rather than updating SIMS admissions manually.

 

I just want to find out from other people when they normally ask primary schools to send over CTF files? As if I can get the CTF files early then all that needs to be done is to check that there is no information that needs to be updated based on the information form

[PhilNeal]

The whole DfE process is around primary schools providing data via CTF/ATF files. I'm pretty sure LAs should be facilitating the exchange of this data in CTF format as a part of their responsibilities.

The DfE etc will need to re-examine this process in light of the new GDPR regulations where sending unencrypted data in files will be an absolute no no.

[Sylv3r]

We get the CTF's from the primaries schools, but theres so many inconsistencies with the data provided - all in Uppercase, Random names in the contacts etc, that theres always a bit of tidying up to do based on the information provided by parents in a data collection exercise as part of the admission process when parents visit the school prior to the start of September. We also get them to complete additional forms for photo, internet, trip permission etc.

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

According tot he DfE regulations, a student's previous school is only required to send 1 CTF to the new school a student starts at within 15 academic days of them starting at the new educational establishment after the have left the last one. Any other CTFs requested by the new school are on a purely voluntary basis.

 

“shall transfer the pupil’s common transfer file and educational record to the responsible person of the new school no later than fifteen school days after the day on which the pupil ceases to be registered at the old school.” (source The Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2005 The Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2005, 9. (3))

[chrisateen]

We get the CTF's from the primaries schools, but theres so many inconsistencies with the data provided - all in Uppercase, Random names in the contacts etc, that theres always a bit of tidying up to do based on the information provided by parents in a data collection exercise as part of the admission process when parents visit the school prior to the start of September. We also get them to complete additional forms for photo, internet, trip permission etc.

@Sylv3r when do you normally request the CTF files

[Sylv3r]

Generally around the start of June, we get them added to SIMS etc in advance of their school transition visits which are happening now (one primary per day for 2 weeks) so they all have accounts on our cashless system etc as it's syncs automatically.

[Fifi]

The LA should provide an ATF, but the previous school should upload CTF to S2S (DFE website) within 2 weeks of the child leaving and is usual for the previous school to upload these regardless whether the KS2 data is in or not, usually by the 1st of July. if you don't have many feeder schools, you can arrange with them for you to send an early CTF, so this will enable you to do the checks of the data on the application forms etc. If you do this manually, then sometimes if the address etc, phone number are different to what is on the MIS at the previous school, the CTF will override/add the info from the previous school, so that is why it is best to get a CTF uploaded to the S2s from the previous school. I hope that makes sense.