PhilNeal

I never know what the freebe is beforehand. They keep that quiet!!

It's for support units which is why it isn't visible.

I can confirm that the attendance marks are all audited as it is a legal requirement.

SQL Express is free and should be fine for 4 users.

For those that are interested, there is a web cast on 16th June @ 1.30 "Spotting the trends – Can this improve school performance?" Details on SupportNet.

JPS I don't think you are reading the original posting correctly. Feebs if you need help in this task we have experience.

Assessment & Performance Analysis are licenced as one product.

As several have said, they've not really looked at PA which is where it all is!!

The document that you refer to was written in co-operation with the MIS suppliers i.e. we practically wrote it! SIMS AM & PX does all of the things that are listed in the guide without exporting to a spreadsheet.

VikPaw, yes they do and its incredibly powerful! I don't think it is as easy to use as it could be (hence Discover) however on the Capita-CS.UK.CO site take a look at the Norbury School Talking Head (search for "Norbury"). This is a middle school head talking about her use of it. Equally take a look at the "Featherstone" case study, a secondary school that has achieved "outsanding" status and attributes much of their success to PA.

Thank you all for your constructive comments Our ISP connection went down.

Not so - please email me if you have advice that suggests this.

Just to reitterate. Fault codes are generated at run time and help us to pin down the failure to specific lines of code. If a fault code cannot be found in our solution search, it has never come up before (unless our process fails!) so we will have to investigate.

Falmouth school has written a case study for ASCL's magazine in which they describe students looking at and entering in self assessments directly into SIMS as a peer excerice. We had 6 of their pupils at our national LA conference two years ago where they spoke to an audience of 450. They were hugely supportive.

Just to pitch in we're very proud of NOVA but Timetabler is a worthy competitor. Timetabler uses the same links as NOVA so this should not be a problem. If you don't know NOVA you might find it cheaper to buy Timetabler than do the training. Obviously we will try to make NOVA the best

Assuming this is SIMS you need to ask your support unit for a licence key to unlock the menu route. It is FOC.

We do not test on pre-release software as revisions completely invalidate all the test work that has been done.

They are unlikely to have access unless its been granted.

We haven't tested on R2 yet so it isn't supported. You can buy R2 and downgrade under MS's licencing.

If an LA is saying that and you are still using cheques, the school needs to push back. BACS has a complete audit trail, is safer than cheques and there is no excuse not to make use of it. Serious savings can be made. Similarly, FMS has links to the DCSF OPEN marketplace and this can save a similar sum by bypassing paper, stamps and seeing what each supplier is charging.

Don't forget BACS - this can save a school >£1000/year. There's also Direct Debits for fee paying schools.

The reporting enhancement is for the NOVA style reporting which has been well received. There is no date for moving the rest over to MS Reporting Services because the simple version is too restricted and the one with power is far too hard for ordinary people to use.

It's due in the autumn release.

Microsoft have alerted us to the fact that they are putting up the price of SQL Server 2008 later this year by around 20%. At education prices that is probably only a few pounds but you still might like to buy sooner rather than later.

To be fair to your LA we didn't confirm until this afternoon. Upgrade turned off until corrected version released - hence "no updates"