[sims] Transition Data Collection

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

I work at a secondary school.

 

We're looking to digitise the capture of parent/carer information when students come from their various primaries/juniors to our school. At the moment this is done with hardcopy. The problem with find is that the ATFs/CTFs are missing a lot of information, or are out-of-date. So it's an opportunity to get a fresh set of data from the parents e.g. phone numbers, email addresses.

 

We could of course use something like Office 365 Forms or similar which makes it a bit easier, but it still means copying and pasting between this and SIMS for over 200 students.

 

Do Capita produce a product to help with this, or are there any 3rd party products out there?

 

We already use EduLink One, so it's easy for parents to update their data once they've joined (and we have a current email address), it's the transition period that's the issue.

 

Thanks

[lwalshaw]

You can do this using Edulink One, once applicants have reached the accepted stage in the application process in SIMS, accounts for these parents will be created allowing them to update the information in the same way that parents who have a child already on-roll do.

 

These parents don't need to have an email address to be able to do this, but you will need to let them know their login details for Edulink One. If you need further advice on this our support team will be happy to help

Edited June 4, 2020 by lwalshaw

[Gongalong]

Interesting. I think the difficulty though is we ask for a lot of things*, not just email and address, some of which has to be manually transcribed. Also if email addresses are out-of-date we can't get the account to the parent/carer, unless presumably we copy out the details and send it via letter?

 

*I made a list of the fields in the form we use:

 

Student Surname

Student Forenames

Address

Student Preferred Name

Phone Number

Present School

Ethnic Origin

Religion

Home Language

Date of Birth

Date of Admission

 

Contact

Name

Occupation

Address

Number of children in family

Siblings at Court Moor

Contact Number

Mobile Phone

Work Phone

Email

Communcation Preference

Parent Disability

 

Student's Country of Birth

Student's Nationality

Student's Proficiency in English

Family Doctor

Other Medical Services

Student's Disabilities

Student's Illness that Could Affect School Life

Custody and Court Orders

Adoption etc. Order

 

Parent/carer Serving in Armed Forces

Parent/carer Serving in Armed Forces in last 4 years

Eligible for Free School Meals

Eligible for Free School Meals in Last 6 Years

Awareness of Particular Family Circumstances

[jmak]

Capita have introduced this on the latest update (only 8 years after@matt40k developed a solution...)

 

https://www.edugeek.net/showthread.php?t=99098

 

I'd be amazed if it does all of the fields you're after, but the ATF from admissions should have a good chance of the pupil and parent names being as well the contact email address being accurate (since that's the email the offer of the place would have been sent to). At least you could then automate sending a request to the patterns for the rest of the information.

[Gongalong]

@jmak Thanks. Looks like it's basic, but I'll have a look in more detail. I found an article on the SCOMIS website with detail at least on how to get to it, along with where to look in SIMS Documentation https://faq.scomis.org/kb26013/

 

We definitely use ATFs and CTFs already, but we have this hardcopy form because they can be so lacking in detail. In any event we need to move to a digital form.

[jmak]

@jmak Thanks. Looks like it's basic, but I'll have a look in more detail. I found an article on the SCOMIS website with detail at least on how to get to it, along with where to look in SIMS Documentation https://faq.scomis.org/kb26013/

 

We definitely use ATFs and CTFs already, but we have this hardcopy form because they can be so lacking in detail. In any event we need to move to a digital form.

I'd been working at the school for years before I found out that I could have had an electronic version of the ATF from county. It was in pdf format, but it was a helluva lot easier to convert that to a spreadsheet that manually type the details across.

[Gongalong]

I can't seem to find anything on what it does. SIMS Help lists that it's a function, but doesn't tell you anything about what it can import and how to format the spreadsheet (!).

 

I'm trying our county support...

[Gongalong]

Looks like you can only import the student's email address and telephone number, which is essentially useless for us. To import anything you need to have first name, surname, and UPN as well in the spreadsheet.

[Gongalong]

Not sure if Capita were listening, but just received an invite (from Capita) to a webinar for a product called Admissions+ by Applicaa.

 

Brochure here.

[Gongalong]

Looks like they're a developer for SIMS called Applicaa, and they do a specific Y7 transition system/app https://applicaa.com/transition-plus/

[AdamV]

Just thought it was worth mentioning here that since Autumn 2018, these three items are no longer required by the Census:

 

Student's Country of Birth

Student's Nationality

Student's Proficiency in English

 

DfE guidance makes it clear that schools MUST NOT collect the first two, following a high court judgement (climate of hostility and all that).

GDPR would make it clear that unless you have a specific reason to collect the proficiency in English then you should not collect that either, since the main reason (census) is now no longer the case.