matt40k Posted July 1, 2009 Posted July 1, 2009 I think this might cause a few new members to appear (like Uniservity), hopefully it won't be as bad. If you could try to keep it on topic Right, just been told about SISRA Online - SISRA ONLINE : WEB BASED EXAM RESULTS ANALYSIS : HOME, I've been told it's rather expensive (I have no idea, I haven't seen costs) and that there sales people are working there way across the county trying to flog there wares. Personal opinion is, why is only hosted? And can't SIMS already do all that without the hassle of sending your sensitive data to a 3rd party? (Side note: OMG they run on Gradwell)
MattMitchell Posted July 1, 2009 Posted July 1, 2009 SISRA is rather good actually! In terms of price for what it is, it's very reasonable - i can't remember what we're paying but it's certainly worth it compared to comparable software, namely a custom-written piece of software or a mid+ range statistical package plus someone who can work it effectively... It produces a good range of reports and analyses on exam results (or targets or predictions), handles residuals well, shows results broken down by teaching group, etc and works well with the kind of data most schools produce for exam results. In other words, it can handle the appalling non-normalised spreadsheets with silly column headings that most schools, and software like sims, tend to produce! Our exam officer, who is neither a statistician nor a developer, has learnt to use it and has made a very full and effective set of analyses that i would be happy to show an ofsted inspector! All this, and we can make as many read-only logins as we want to allow our subject leaders to see their own reports without any help. Get it. Seriously! SIMS really cannot do what this can, and it's going to save me a lot of work. 3
matt40k Posted July 1, 2009 Author Posted July 1, 2009 Thanks MattMitchell, might ask them to show us some reports then try replicating them in SIMS, so far nothing I've seen can't be done in SIMS. Anything you know of that can't be?
MattMitchell Posted July 2, 2009 Posted July 2, 2009 (edited) Actually quite a few things can't be done in sims - plot a chance graph of attendance against performance, calculate capped points score against anything outside of the exams module, calculate CPS in general., calculate residuals without opening a multiple sequence of marksheets to perform calculations, do anything in assessment analysis plotted against any non-assessment fields... There is a lot that sims CAN do though, and most of the time people slating sims just don't know what it can do/how to do it. Data analysis in schools seems to be a relatively new field, and some of the stuff we're implementing here like estimated CVA scores is beyond the scope of what most people are working at, so in some senses i probably have a skewed opinion of sims's capabilities. That said, the vast majority, if not all, of the things being done in our school in excel at present, can be done easily in sims and i am looking to have everyone enter all their data directly into sims and nowhere else. Edited July 2, 2009 by MattMitchell Predictive text typos
matt40k Posted July 2, 2009 Author Posted July 2, 2009 Yes it does seems stupid when people insit on there lovely excel spreadsheet. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some good ones in my time, but lets have the raw data in SIMS first. Just a bit worrying sending your data off to a 3rd party who has a [shared] shell hosting account. How does it export the data and sends it? Is it a single .exe file? Do you need to have the SIMS Application installed for it work? It's just a don't seen them as a business partner or a SQL partner.
MattMitchell Posted July 2, 2009 Posted July 2, 2009 Yikes @ shared hosting site... It was already being used before I started, but thanks for the heads-up: I'll look into that. Ironically, our LA has recommended it to me as well, although as I said we're already using it. As far as data transfer goes, it just takes a csv file as input, with student names, class codes, socioeconomic factors like FSM, etc, and then a series of columns for exam names. You set which subjects are which types of exam (GCSE, BTEC 1st Cert, etc) and also can indicate maths, English and science (for those pesky National Challenge headline figures, etc.) It will work with anything, not just SIMS, and does not interface directly with your software or site in any way, shape or form. You just upload data to the webpage. It calculates capped points score, grade residuals per subject (and will factor in the national averages too in order to get a more useful statistic), and can do most analyses I can think of (off the top of my head) that you would, or could, do provided with the student basic info and the exam results. The security aspect does concern me somewhat, and I shall get in contact with them. If there is that risk there, then I shall provide our exams officer with a replacement set of no-names: just a (non-identifiable) set of unique IDs to use and something like "John/Jane Doe" for the student names. This will remove any data protection concerns, and yet still provide the analyses. I think I might have a chat with our LA team as well... I'll post back here once I've had a proper look!
SISRAOnline Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 (edited) Hi Matt & Matt, just thought I should provide some clarity here with regards to our hosting before it snowballs! We use gradwell for our email and nothing else. All web traffic comes to the web servers here at our offices (in sunny Birkenhead). All hosting of school data is done by us! Thanks to Matt Mitchell for the kind words though. One of the huge benefits of our system is that each school pays for a site/school license (I won't discuss costs here but it is the same for all schools), meaning each school is free to add as many users as they wish onto their SISRA system. Some of our schools have 100+ users, all with the ability to analyse exams, mocks, assessments and targets from anywhere with internet access (not just from within the school). Users don't have to develop and build reports. Administrators simply upload data and prepare it. Then publish reports. Job done. All reports, (tables, charts etc), which a fully interactive and filterable, are then available to all users. With regards to sales, we don't really use 'salesmen' as such. Our support/technical staff provide online demonstrations to interested parties. Also, many of our member schools allow us to host a Roadshow event at their school so that any interested local schools can come and meet us and view a demo. The Roadshow demos are (more often than not) carried out by a nice chap called Michael Surtees. Michael is Deputy Head at Madeley High school in Staffordshire and he gives up his time to talk to schools about SISRA because, and I quote "It saves me so much time during the year that I want to tell everyone about it". We don't use pressure salesmen. You either want it or you don't. Admittedly most schools that see it are interested and I'd put that down to the fact that we have always listened to schools' requirements and will continue to do so, updating and enhancing the service as we are asked for more functionality etc - with all enhancements provided free to existing customers of course! Anyhow, again thanks to Mr Matt Mitchell for the kind words. It would be good to see you on the SISRA Forum at some point Matt! Only accessible from within the SISRA members area, but a good place for you to talk to us about how we could make our service even better for your school! Cheers Jon Williams Head of Development Edited July 7, 2009 by SISRAOnline typos galore! lol...
John_Howarth Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 As far as data transfer goes, it just takes a csv file as input, with student names, class codes, socioeconomic factors like FSM, etc, and then a series of columns for exam names. Is the file upload via a secure connection (HTTPS/FTPS etc.)? Yikes @ shared hosting site... It was already being used before I started, but thanks for the heads-up: I'll look into that. Ironically, our LA has recommended it to me as well, although as I said we're already using it. Does your school/LA have some kind of Use of Data Agreement in place with the company?
SISRAOnline Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 Is the file upload via a secure connection (HTTPS/FTPS etc.)? Yes, HTTPS. Does your school/LA have some kind of Use of Data Agreement in place with the company? We are registered with the ICO and recommend all our schools add us to their Fair Processing Notice. 1
Tonyoung Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 Yes, HTTPS. We are registered with the ICO and recommend all our schools add us to their Fair Processing Notice. How do you extract the data from SIMS ?
SISRAOnline Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 How do you extract the data from SIMS ? We don't extract data from SIMS. We don't interface directly with schools MIS. Schools upload their data into SISRA as CSV files via https.
Tonyoung Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 We don't extract data from SIMS. We don't interface directly with schools MIS. Schools upload their data into SISRA as CSV files via https. in that case you may wish to amend the FAQs on your website ? Q. DO WE HAVE TO MANUALLY INPUT OUR STUDENT DATA ONTO YOUR SYSTEM? A. No. We don’t believe in forcing you to duplicate work. You already have all the data we need within your school computer systems and so we arrange extraction of your student data from your CMIS or SIMS system.
SISRAOnline Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 (edited) in that case you may wish to amend the FAQs on your website ? Q. DO WE HAVE TO MANUALLY INPUT OUR STUDENT DATA ONTO YOUR SYSTEM? A. No. We don’t believe in forcing you to duplicate work. You already have all the data we need within your school computer systems and so we arrange extraction of your student data from your CMIS or SIMS system. No I think that's fine Tony. The question is 'DO WE MANUALLY INPUT OUR STUDENT DATA ONTO YOUR SYSTEM?' The Answer is No. You upload it. You also don't MANUALLY create the CSV files, the data can be pulled out of SIMS/CMIS/Phoenix etc. (we tell you what you need, StudentID, Name, Ethicity etc) into excel and then uploaded into SISRA. Just to clarify, SISRA is marketed to users such as exams officers and the like. Not neccessarily techies. So what a techie considers manual is very often different from what an exams officer would consider manual. In this context, manual means "Manually type each and every piece of student data into SISRA". If you showed that FAQ to any of our SISRA Administrators in any of the 75 LAs that we have a presence in then I'm confident they would agree that it is not misleading in any way. Edited July 8, 2009 by SISRAOnline more typos!
MattMitchell Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 The question is 'DO WE MANUALLY INPUT OUR STUDENT DATA ONTO YOUR SYSTEM?' The Answer is No. You upload it. You also don't MANUALLY create the CSV files, the data can be pulled out of SIMS/CMIS/Phoenix etc. (we tell you what you need, StudentID, Name, Ethicity etc) into excel and then uploaded into SISRA. I think it might be worth amending the answer a little, to explain that it's easy to upload the data from an Excel spreadsheet - that seems to be the benchmark for "achievable" for non-techie teachers, and I know that our non-DBA exams officer found uploading to SISRA simple, in fact far simpler than I find getting data into SIMS as a developer (SQL, C, C++, Perl, PHP, a little PL-SQL, etc).
SISRAOnline Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 I think it might be worth amending the answer a little, to explain that it's easy to upload the data from an Excel spreadsheet - that seems to be the benchmark for "achievable" for non-techie teachers, and I know that our non-DBA exams officer found uploading to SISRA simple, in fact far simpler than I find getting data into SIMS as a developer (SQL, C, C++, Perl, PHP, a little PL-SQL, etc). FAQ now changed accordingly. As I said earlier, we always listen to our customers (no offence Tony, lol!)
SISRAOnline Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 far simpler than I find getting data into SIMS as a developer (SQL, C, C++, Perl, PHP, a little PL-SQL, etc). Pity you're so far away Matt, we're recruiting at the moment!
MattMitchell Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 ;-) It might be worth your while looking at becoming a SIMS partner - I know that if a SISRA add-on existed for SIMS, I'd probably be pushing for us to get it! It probably wouldn't be a huge stretch to implement, and with a bit of care you could have a common code base for a web and a SIMS version - just a thought...
SISRAOnline Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 (edited) ;-) It might be worth your while looking at becoming a SIMS partner - I know that if a SISRA add-on existed for SIMS, I'd probably be pushing for us to get it! It probably wouldn't be a huge stretch to implement, and with a bit of care you could have a common code base for a web and a SIMS version - just a thought... We do like our current 'one size fits all' use of Excel as a staging post for school data. It gives us plenty of flexibility; there always seems to be schools who don't have everything they need to report/analyse on SIMS (students studying out at college etc) - and also if we did this sort of thing for SIMS then our CMIS/Phoenix schools would also expect something similar. I'm not dismissing it, I see where you're coming from and it's something we'd perhaps look at in the future - but we'd have to study the return on investment Edited July 8, 2009 by SISRAOnline If i said typos, would you believe me?
matt40k Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 Are all your staff (enhanced) CRB checked? (Something else to add\update)
SISRAOnline Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 (edited) Are all your staff (enhanced) CRB checked? (Something else to add\update) All relevant staff have been CRB checked Edited July 9, 2009 by SISRAOnline added a tongue pull, lol.
matt40k Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 All relevant staff have been CRB checked You have to get delivery drivers CRB checked, so I doubt that's not enough. Problem with the rules are there alot of grey areas and there are lot of people who follow them to the letter. I mean you have to get a CRB check per role per person, I mean whats the point of CRB checking a technican 4 times for each school they work in? It's going to come back the same!!
SISRAOnline Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 You have to get delivery drivers CRB checked, so I doubt that's not enough. Problem with the rules are there alot of grey areas and there are lot of people who follow them to the letter. I mean you have to get a CRB check per role per person, I mean whats the point of CRB checking a technican 4 times for each school they work in? It's going to come back the same!! LOL on the 4 check for 1 technician, it is madness what goes on! We have staff who do not have any kind of access to student data in any way and would never visit a school on our behalf. In fact, the cleaners here wouldn't even know how to switch the computers on, let alone log in and then launch Query Analyser and come up with an SQL query! . I'm pretty sure that even the grey areas do not include such people. The whole thing's madness though isn't it!
matt40k Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 LOL on the 4 check for 1 technician, it is madness what goes on! We have staff who do not have any kind of access to student data in any way and would never visit a school on our behalf. In fact, the cleaners here wouldn't even know how to switch the computers on, let alone log in and then launch Query Analyser and come up with an SQL query! . I'm pretty sure that even the grey areas do not include such people. The whole thing's madness though isn't it! No comment. It's the rules, we just follow them. They would need CRB checking, you never know, you could have some "bad" cleaner that might use your system out of hours. You'll be suprised how easy it is to get data from a "secure" company.
SISRAOnline Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 No comment. It's the rules, we just follow them. They would need CRB checking, you never know, you could have some "bad" cleaner that might use your system out of hours. You'll be suprised how easy it is to get data from a "secure" company. Nah, not having that Matt, lol. There is no way that we would force a person to get a CRB check for something they are actually unauthorised to do in the office. That's like saying "I don't trust you to just come in here and do your job that has absolutely nothing to do with kids at all in any way and also I think that you may at some point illegally force your way onto our servers and look at some data that would say something like 004040 Joe Bloggs, WBRI, FSM=Y, LAC=N, which you wouldn't know what to do with anyway." If you look at these two Category codes regarding CRB: Any office, employment or other work which is concerned with the establishment or operation of a database under section 12 of the Children Act 2004 , and which is of such a kind as to enable the holder of that office or employment, or the person engaged in that work, to have access to information included in the database. Any office, employment of other work which is of such a kind that the person is or may be permitted or required to be given access to a database under section 12 of Children Act 2004. Off the top of my head I think these are the categories that refer to us and both of them state that these people would be permitted access etc to the databases. At no point do they suggest that even users who are not allowed access should be included. There's covering all your bases and there's taking things way beyond the point of reality. Next it'll be that if someone walks past they need a CRB check as they may just at some point break in!
matt40k Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 The point out the delivery driver was that they enter the school, walk into reception, then exit. Upon the route they are unescorted. Which is where the problem lays. Again, I can't comment on your company, but surely you would say, all staff have been CRB checked, if you feel the cleaner isn't important enough to be CRB, then fine. You run the risk of them being a convicted paedophile who has physical access to your servers (which removes a layer of security), then that's your [companies] decision. FYI Most high streets CRB check everyone, including any temp [3rd party] cleaning staff. Basically my point is, if your happy everyone who needs to be CRB checked is check, then fine, put all staff are CRB checked on your homepage, at least then we can all laugh when it's on BBC News that you've been hacked by a known crimnal\ paedophile (Joke) (You have no idea how idea how safe I was playing my Google search to find the correct spelling of paedophile lol)
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