[sims] Your thoughts on importing SIMS CTF contacts?

[KeyData]

Hello,

We have unticked importing contacts when bringing in our primary schools' CTFs into SIMS since 2018 when a bug caused a lot issues.

 

2018 Edugeek Forum link - SIMS CTF issue

Urgent Capita SIMS Data Issue - Issued by childrens services

 

We are now getting ready to use Edulink with parents and want to quickly get their details and emails into SIMS and so we are considering re-ticking the import contacts option before importing our primary schools' CTFs.

I am very wary of having to manually sort out any contact issues this may cause and hoped people could advise if ticking import contacts was advisable or have any suggestions to help it run smoothly.

 

I'd really appreciate anyone's thoughts on this.

Edited June 17, 2022 by KeyData

[pete]

Don't. Data quality from the primary school isn't good enough in my experience. Partly due to parents not updating the school when information changes, partly due to primary school's lack of a dedicated MIS person.

 

Our secondaries ask parents of new students to fill in a MS Form (Student Record Form) with a unique ID code (sent to them separately in the welcome letter) to verify it is them and the contact info is pulled from there.

Edited June 17, 2022 by pete

[Linfit]

Don't. Data quality from the primary school isn't good enough

 

Exactly.

We also do not import contact info, and have not for several years. We use data from the admissions form and every year a large proportion of info on the form is different from what is in the CTF.

Primaries are generally very poor at keeping SIMS records up to date. Related example - end dates for FSM. the vast majority of students should not have an FSM end date but we get loads in our CTF's that have to be manually sorted out.

[KeyData]

Thanks @pete and @Linfit. I'll recommend we don't import CTF contacts to my school.