Freedom of Information request

[enjay]

So, assuming @bmaloney is going to re-submit to schools in a valid way, has anyone come up with a SIMS report which would gather the answers to questions 4 and 5? That is the time-consuming bit. The rest of the questions would only take a few minutes to answer, but doing 4 and 5 manually would be lengthy (possibly too lengthy)

[Edutech98]

But lets not forget progress is also stifled when time and tax paper money is wasted on challenging the blinding obvious.

 

I'm not saying I include you in this but I read quite a few of the hearing outcomes and was suprised by how many shared a common theme. Driven by conspiracy theories, 100's of pages of documents that don't prove anything, usually a trigger from years ago, usually start of with a legitimate request and eventually turn it into an obsession, multiple user of the FOI system, multiple court appearance on different matters. A good chunk of them usually share this theme so something to be conscious of.

 

Again I'm not including you in that, but just something I was surprised about. I'd be willing to help you come up with a better solution to try and maximise the amount of data you get back as the topic is something I'm interested in. The offer is there

[djrscally]

So, assuming @bmaloney is going to re-submit to schools in a valid way, has anyone come up with a SIMS report which would gather the answers to questions 4 and 5? That is the time-consuming bit. The rest of the questions would only take a few minutes to answer, but doing 4 and 5 manually would be lengthy (possibly too lengthy)

Is that hard to do in SIMS reporting? I was previously somewhat surprised at people saying it would take too long on the grounds that it took me about 10 mins in Progresso.

[TechMonkey]

You seem to be upset that I don't want to be overloaded with work. This decision is a setback, it requires me to make some changes, but I've already got responses from about 20% of schools, I have a solution to avoid the issue of links in emails and it won't require a significant amount of work from me. If it did I would have to abandon the project and the data collected so far would be wasted.

 

Thank you. Progress is made when we challenge the assumptions, otherwise we'd all think the world was flat and if you went too far you'd fall off the edge!

 

I'm not upset about you not wanting to be overloaded, I'm just confused that you seem to think everyone else should do the work for you and that you don't seem to understand or recognise that a project like this needs time and effort, especially when you are trying to deal with 20,000 recordsets.

 

Off topic, the idea that ye olde people thought the world was flat is a myth, even the Greeks knew the earth was a sphere and that view never faded. It appears it was a slur generated by the Protestants against Catholic teaching. So sometimes progress is always there, we just don't see it.

[DJ-1701]

Thank you. Progress is made when we challenge the assumptions, otherwise we'd all think the world was flat and if you went too far you'd fall off the edge!

 

What?! Of course it's flat... what do you think it is? Round?! Ha, that would be amusing!

 

Taken from my Satellite, I give you Exhibit A...

 

[TechMonkey]

Is that hard to do in SIMS reporting? I was previously somewhat surprised at people saying it would take too long on the grounds that it took me about 10 mins in Progresso.

 

I can't think of an SQL query off the top of my head and can't remember how SIMS marks relationships but it shouldn't be an issue. Something along the lines of find all records where pupil is current where contact record for mother is not null and contact record for father is null.

[enjay]

Is that hard to do in SIMS reporting? I was previously somewhat surprised at people saying it would take too long on the grounds that it took me about 10 mins in Progresso.

 

The catch is reporting on students who have a mum listed but not a dad, and vice-versa. I haven't spent much time on it yet (due to not having a reason to!), but I'm not sure how I'd go about writing that report.

[Ditto]

What?! Of course it's flat... what do you think it is? Round?! Ha, that would be amusing!

Taken from my Satellite, I give you Exhibit A...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]48515[/ATTACH]

Exactly. Good heavens, I can't believe the flatness of the world is being questioned in this thread. May I refer any doubters to the following Edugeek thread http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/190341-flat-earth.html?highlight=flat+world and continue with a *serious* discussion.

[Garacesh]

I'm not upset about you not wanting to be overloaded, I'm just confused that you seem to think everyone else should do the work for you and that you don't seem to understand or recognise that a project like this needs time and effort, especially when you are trying to deal with 20,000 recordsets.

This is precisely the issue.

 

Nobody is saying you shouldn't be asking for this information. Again, I want to reiterate that I actually support what you're trying to do. It just comes across that you're trying to do some of it the wrong way.

Asking for this much information from this many schools means someone, somewhere, is going to have to put in a lot of effort to match up all the responses, map trends, etc. There's a lot of analysis on these datasets.

You don't want to do all that analysis yourself. Y'know what? I don't blame you. That's a lot of work. I wouldn't want to tackle that all on my onesie either!

 

Simply put, you're asking for more information than your organisation (i.e. you) is able to reasonably process.

 

That is not our fault. It doesn't mean you get to just offload it onto the Schools and onto Google without any input from yourself.

 

Consider, then, the issue lies with the amount of data the request generates, rather than the amount of effort it would take to sift through all the data..

Perhaps cut down the request?

Maybe only ask two or three schools per county? That would still get you an incredibly good sample. Yes your information wouldn't be quite as accurate, but it would be enough to point out a trend and say "Hey, look, I think there's something here we should be looking at...". From there you could approach organisations sympathetic to your cause (perhaps a charity of some sorts?) that could offer you some resources towards further investigation, or maybe crowd-fund the money required to hire a company who could handle the information from every school?

Edited April 17, 2018 by Garacesh
More suggestions, better wording.

[Bedders]

Email servers store and forward emails, . Websites are a real time connection which doesn't hang around.

 

Thanks for the reply, @bmaloney, however that doesn't really answer my question. Are you implying that because email servers store and can send emails, they are less secure than a web server?

[CAM]

Is that hard to do in SIMS reporting? I was previously somewhat surprised at people saying it would take too long on the grounds that it took me about 10 mins in Progresso.

 

I've just tried and can't figure out how to do this in a reasonable timeframe. So far I have managed to get every student with their contact relationship, but Father appears multiple times (Father, Step-Father, etc). So I can't exclude Mother and other contacts and look for a Father count of 1 as some students have 2 father contacts, so would get excluded from the result. Each contact also returns one line at a time if I display their relationship so students occupy multiple lines with blank names appearing.

 

You would need to export every student and manually check each one line by line (bearing in mind many occupy at least two lines with father and mother). That would take hours upon hours of work to complete.

 

Maybe there's a quicker way but I can't see it in the reporting system as we cannot run a SQL query within SIMS to filter this.

[TechMonkey]

I've just tried and can't figure out how to do this in a reasonable timeframe. So far I have managed to get every student with their contact relationship, but Father appears multiple times (Father, Step-Father, etc). So I can't exclude Mother and other contacts and look for a Father count of 1 as some students have 2 father contacts, so would get excluded from the result. Each contact also returns one line at a time if I display their relationship so students occupy multiple lines with blank names appearing.

 

You would need to export every student and manually check each one line by line (bearing in mind many occupy at least two lines with father and mother). That would take hours upon hours of work to complete.

 

Maybe there's a quicker way but I can't see it in the reporting system as we cannot run a SQL query within SIMS to filter this.

Surely if there is a father record count of greater than 0 you are golden? Doesnt matter if there is 1 or 2 fathers as long as you have something as the request wants records with only father contacts. Though you may have to include a NOT Grandfather statement, depends on your labelling convention.

 

Though you could say the request is not inclusive as 2 mothers would register as no father information recorded.

[enjay]

Each contact also returns one line at a time if I display their relationship so students occupy multiple lines with blank names appearing.

 

The blank names are because you ticked to suppress duplicates on one of the final screens of the report builder. Untick that, and their name will appear on each line. I'm wondering if there is a way to search/filter in Excel, but can't think how.

[enjay]

Surely if there is a father record count of greater than 0 you are golden?

 

No. A step-father and no father would also give you "father count = 1". You need to be able to differentiate between step-fathers and fathers (otherwise the whole point of this data gathering is ruined!)

[CAM]

Also, I have mother/other excluded and father included on the filter, but it still returns students with a father regardless of the status of the mother.

 

I think the data needs to somehow be put into an analysis tool. Maybe include Admission Number and use that to analyse it in a PivotTable? I'm using Preview at the moment, not been in Excel with the data yet.

 

SIMS reporting is complex and difficult for more complex queries. A little sprinkling of T-SQL would solve this in a few lines, if that.

Edited April 17, 2018 by CAM

[TechMonkey]

Ah ha. Got ya. Surely do an equals, rather than a like, on Father or a NOT on a hyphen?

[CAM]

Ah ha. Got ya. Surely do an equals, rather than a like, on Father or a NOT on a hyphen?

 

But they are still a father, step/foster or not.

 

Also SIMS doesn't use the hyphen. Contains father does work though, but I still can't figure out how to exclude students with a mother.

[djrscally]

The apparent complexity of what should really be a simple task for an MIS is a trifle worrying here! At bare minimum surely you can atleast export a list of Learners and their mother (or a null if they don't have one recorded)? You could fetch another one with their father and just use VLOOKUP in excel to see which Learners were in one list but not the other then.

 

Kinda ought to be easier than that though!

[CAM]

Is this right?

 

In the filter panel I am telling SIMS to use:

 

Year group Is One Of [Year 7]

AND

Parents [Exist]

WHERE

Relationship Is Not One Of [Mother, Step Mother, Foster Mother]

 

But SIMS still shows me students with a Mother, Foster Mother or Step Mother? The only column included is their name.

[enjay]

The apparent complexity of what should really be a simple task for an MIS is a trifle worrying here! At bare minimum surely you can atleast export a list of Learners and their mother (or a null if they don't have one recorded)? You could fetch another one with their father and just use VLOOKUP in excel to see which Learners were in one list but not the other then.

 

Kinda ought to be easier than that though!

 

Ah-ha, you might have it there. Two identical exports viewed in Excel, filter one to "mother" and the other to "father" (thus excluding step-parents) then a VLOOKUP to see how many lists each student is in. Compare those numbers against the total role in case you have any students with neither mother nor father.

Edited April 17, 2018 by enjay

[enjay]

But SIMS still shows me students with a Mother, Foster Mother or Step Mother

 

Take your full export out to Excel, and do the filtering there.

[CAM]

Take your full export out to Excel, and do the filtering there.

 

But it bugs me that SIMS Reporting is not doing what I am telling it to.

 

Student Where
  Number of Parents is greater than 0
     where
          Relationship does not contain mother

 

Returns: Students with a mother.

 

Even if I swap Greater than 0 with Exists it fails.

Edited April 17, 2018 by CAM

[enjay]

But it bugs me that SIMS Reporting is not doing what I am telling it to.

 

Student Where
  Number of Parents is greater than 0
     where
          Relationship does not contain mother

 

Returns: Students with a mother.

 

Even if I swap Greater than 0 with Exists it fails.

 

Is that because it is returning students who have a mother AND a father? Father is a relationship which doesn't contain 'mother'...

[CAM]

Is that because it is returning students who have a mother AND a father? Father is a relationship which doesn't contain 'mother'...

 

I can't figure out the obvious way to exclude mother but include only father in the Reporting tool. I'm missing something.

[Banjo]

An idiot proof system will always find a better idiot.

 

a) Put the school name and postcode or similar in the url, as well as your UID

b) Ask them to confirm the school name and pin code first, so you can reject the wrong ones

 

Can you ask a school for it's name/pin code in an FOI? You can only ask for information that is not in the public domain and has been 'stored' or derived from stored information.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Banjo