PhilNeal

Vik you know us better than that!

We've stopped issuing it to fix the Profile co-ordinator's ability to review other people's comments. If you've already upgraded we'll send instructions. The upgrade to the hosted system has been postponed for a few days until we fix it. Full details on SupportNet.

Fair enough! Please log a case if you don't get an answer!

I can't help on the tech question but have you considered using BACS it saves huge amounts of time, transaction charges are cheaper and there's no need for cheques.

For less confident schools, SLG has a number of control options. These include don't show anything before a date, only show dates & behaviour type through to show full detail.

It can also deploy onto new machines complete with everything else that is required.

Bev, I've been with Brian Lightman ASCL's General Secretary today who has been explaining the new inspection framework to us. His message to heads was crystal - whilst Ofsted inspections are not in themselves a reason to do something, it is clear that an evidence base is considered to be essential for any school. Inspectors give a day's notice and the school will be expected to provide evidence that every child is achieving their full potential. A school will fail if it takes the stance that "it knows it's pupils" if it cannot prove it. We are in a new era and whilst I accept that it's my view that teachers should have direct access to the data, I can't see any other way of achieving it. Obviously access can be achieved through several routes.

I spoke to Geoff Perry the prooduct manager today about the Behaviour improvements that are due in the autumn release. A lot of change requests have been implemented but not a full audit trail. However the person that created the incident is automatically recorded and there are new permissions to prevent ordinary users from changing content.

I'm not sure that I should contribute to this thread but through what ever route, your teachers should have access to the information on the pupils they teach. It is essential that teachers know about medical issues, unusal situations etc. Recording attendance as it happens saves huge amounts of clerical work and allows parents to be contacted within minutes of the start of the day if a child hasn't turned up - suppose something has happened to a child on their way to school? Assessment entered directly into the MIS is the only way forward - the school needs a holistic view of a child; its no good that being in a teacher's mark book. I recently listened to an account from a parent (also a journalist) of what had happened to his children at school; they both had specfial needs. When he complained that no teacher knew about his children the head proudly pointed to a row of folders on a shelf saying "I know everything about your child". This parent could not believe that in this day information about his children wasn't available to their teachers - it should be like going to a doctor who can just call up your record. If your school is in England the new Ofsted will look for evidence that SLT and teachers know about all the childrens' needs. Using the MIS should make that possible. If you can't do it don't expect to do well!

If you are using assessment or lesson registration a lot of the info you are trying to print is available by adding columns. The teacher/pupil view has a lot of target and behaviour data too.

I can't say I've heard of anything like you describe happening. Teacher access is tightly controlled - they can't just go into the basic pupil records and edit. Assessments are all audited with date, time and who made the entry. Pupil access is even more tighly controlled.

Shame because T6 saves SLT weeks and weeks of work. Perhaps that's the issue!

Simcfc73 David Stott has looked into this. His response is below. It's not clear whether he/she's talking about the All Staff timetable in T6 or in SIMS.net (we've provided both!) In T6, the order of the staff is determined by the standard Staff ordering specified by the user using the menu route "Tools|Ordering". Three options are provided: by Code, by Surname and by Department. It looks to me as if the All Staff timetable in SIMS.net doesn't have this flexibility: the staff rows are simply ordered by Staff Code. We should probably add this to the change requests. I've played around with the Year/band timetable in SIMS.net and have managed to get 10 periods across an A4 sheet: The control over the margins is pretty good. So the problem here is probably more specific and detailed than the comment would suggest. There isn't an option to remove the footer completely. (There are options to remove the row and column headings on "subsequent" pages) I suppose the idea here is to be able to stick the pages together with sellotape for a wall display. But frankly, if you remove the footer, you'd be in danger of losing the plot completely, as you then can't see which page is which! Much better to stick the pages together with the top of each page covering up the footer of the page above!! I do have a copy of the timetable print that proves that it all fits, but its too much to add to this post! Cheers Phil

For what?

We recommend linking to AD - you then have all of the controls offered by MS.

T4 won't stop working. I've just spoken to David Stott author of much of T4 & T6 and he doesn't think there is anything of significance not covered in T6 and SIMS now. Please email me if there are specifics.

T4 going was planned and announced quite some time ago.

I'm not an expert in this area but I'm pretty sure that Performance Analysis will do everything you need - it's part of the Assessment Manager suite. Discover is also able to do a fair bit of this too and more is due later this year.

A lot of SIMS is validated input - so there are tables for medial, doctors etc not free text which is the case with a lot of Facility. We produce guidance notes on what will and won't be taken across.

We know that SIMS works well in a properly configured virtual environment. We have however had around 10 schools that have complained bitterly that SIMS is failing to run properly in their environment and there is an expectation that we will be able to resolve the problems. As much as we would like to, we just do not have the knowledge of the individual set-ups and an expert is required to balance the systems. Matt is correct in stating that we are making a positive statement that we will support SIMS on these environments but we cannot resolve issues that are down to how the environment has been set up.

The way of achieving this is to create separate reports using the report generator which has virtually all data items available to it. If you are on a pupil a report will print for one child. Reports can be placed in favourites.

Definately something from the past!

I think Max is the highest?

Extended support isn't very helpful - MS will not retro fix issues.

We won't stop supporting schools on XP but if there are operating system related issues that don't occur on later systems we won't be trying to solve them.