GeorgeFaux

All of these are certainly valid issues. I guess all I will be able to do is present the Headteacher with options. Any clarification on any of these issues would certainly be appreciated.

Thank you all for your responses. I understand that the advice is to start a new Dataset. As a technical solution this seems sound. I just wanted to play devils advocate to ensure that this will have no second order repercussions down the line. So:- Week Ranges:- In terms of creating the new data set I should be looking at a 52 week year running June to June (assuming they want to do this again next year.) This will probably create a calendar with too many or two few teaching days (isn't 194 statutory). Will this cause issues? What about the current dataset, should I change the week ranges to reflect when the year is ending, again this will create a year with too few days. Or should I just leave it. Attendance:- As stated this will screw their 2008/9 attendance figures. Is this reported to the DFES anywhere other than SLASC. What other issues might there be on that. SLASC:- As I understand it the final SLASC date for this year is May 21st. Since I will be starting the new timetable after this date this should not be a problem. However what about the Autumn term Slasc for 2009/10, will this be sent haywire by having the first term start in June? Is CMIS smart enough to just take the data from September 1st. Examinations:- I assume we will just import results back into the old database and this should not be effected by Timetabling or shortening the current dataset. Student and staff Records:- Any changes would just have to take place in the new Dataset unless they corresponded to Examinations I would imagine. What have I missed?

I think this document answers this. http://www.sercolearning.com/documents/MIS_technicalspecs.pdf Bottom Paragraph

Interesting there JMC thanks. I think I might try a roll forward on a stand alone system before I look for a SQL solution. Does anyone else out there roll forward their timetable I must say I have been tempted on occasion but never done it.

Top Idea Thanks I'm fine with both the bulk changes and the stand alone machine but yes I see how that can work. Just create it from the existing dataset and then at the end of year process roll over the timetable in full and bulk change the weeks again for next year. Sir I am in your debt.

I am working at a school who have asked me to pop in their designed timetable into CMIS using scheduler. (no problem here done it several times). However they want to begin this new timetable at the start of the last half of the summer term. This would mean importing the schedule into the current data set, otherwise i'm sure that they would have attendance and Slasc issues. Then once the change has been made rolling the timetable into the newly created dataset. The real pain here being that it would all have to be done on thier live database in one massive intergration just before they wanted to make the switch. However assuming this is the case, I was wondering if anyone else has done this before. What effect would it have on the current teaching groups? Would changes mess with current data especially assessment wise. Can it be done vice versa? create the timetable incrementally in the new dataset and then import back into the previous one?

Be aware that if moving from september the academy will need at least the last years historical data in the system in order to do Plasc which accesses the previous datasets attendance figures.

I suggested this once but never got it off the ground: If you have ever played an Xbox360 you will find that when you are playing a game, occasionally a little message will come along saying you have completed x achievement. These achievements are prolonging the life of games that kids were previously putting on their discard pile as they want to 100% complete the games and unlock every achievement. This is the type of psychology we want to be able to harness in our schools. Many children' attitude when confronted with a game is... if there is an objective hit it, if there is a number, make it higher and they are quite prepared to spend hours to reach elite status even if the tasks are very boring and repetitive. So why not use this in schools. Give every child a homepage with achievements to unlock. These can be for social, academic, healthy eating, homework, attendance etc. It doesn't matter but set them targets, make some of them REALLY hard so they are not all knocked out over the first couple of days. Link the achievement to badges or medals and when a student has enough let them trade it in for something, cash off a school trip, extended lunch free food. Special trip to Alton Towers. Ask the kids for the rewards that they would want and start up a leaderboard. Make a public profile so that students can see how many badges each other have got and make it viewable over the internet at home. Here are some ideas: Start a school Forum and have badges for number of posts. Link this to bitesize or some other educational tool, badges when modules are completed. Have bleep tests at break times, kids can get a badge when they reach a certain level. Have some 'fun' games that they can use to get past a certain points score on. (Bring on the hidden educational value). Healthy food linked to your schools cantine badges for eating well. Social action badges for recycling or answering questions on fair trade. Badges for coming up with ideas for new badges. The list is endless but I think if done well this could be something that really enthuses people. And you did ask...

At the end of the day the printer soultion is a very poor one especially if someone has to stay in the building for any length of time. Here are two solutions I have tried before. 1. The laptop solution, using an excel spreadsheet after the morning registration period ends, an admin assistant drops a report into excel, the spreadsheet setup to be able to filter between the classes easily. This can then be used for the registration. Does not take more than 5 mins. Pros - Even if the server is burning then this will work, accurate and ready immediately. Cons - Needs a laptop, needs excellent excel wizardry, needs an admin person to actually do it (and bring it out), there is only one copy so each class needs to be registered one by one. 2. PDA - For PE I have seen PDA's and Laptops used very successfully for registration. PE PDAs brought out and access MIS system to take registers. Pros - Accurate. Normal Registration procedures. Cons - Require wireless network and servers to still be working. Requires all teachers to be familar with PDA use. Only so many PDAs. Obviously these are not perfect and to be blunt when teachers took paper registers and can just carry them out with them it was far more effective. However barring getting teachers to print out their form lists this is unlikley to happen. OMRs are obviously still effective. Its just one of the challenges of the paperless office (school) but I have had some success with those listed above.

Well it's certainly a novel approach, but alas quite apart from the fact that it is against workload agreements I can't see the MIS companies able to phase this in until at least 2010. Support seems to vary wildly from place to place depending on local agreements, LEA agreements the composition of MIS systems within authorities and local personel. No company will ever get it right, Capita proberly have the worst of it due to the number of questions they get from different sources being the market leader. But the bottom line is its a conflict between flexibility and support. The more features an MIS has, the more it is used, the more features it encompases, the less able it is to support it. New features sell more product, bug fixes never do. Self defeating circle really, there will always be complaints about support. the most effective support is I feel when you can strike up a personal relationship with someone at the support centre. I always ask for full names and numbers to call back for progress. Often I get the brush off but when it pays off it tends to make life easier. People as well as process are generally the key to effective support.

I agree with Jenny many MIS systems will happily take the first afternoon lesson as the registration period. As to having a session last thing. This is a double edged sword, I have seen it tried but not seen any solid evidence it improves afternoon attendance. Firstly because it encourages long lunch syndrome, especially among those who are allowed off site. Secondly the last session is sometimes more sparsley attended by those students who see no value in it and from a statistical point of view this risks losing the whole afternoons attendance if they skip off early. Of course this is far more of a risk if the school does not use lesson by lesson registration. It all depends on how hardcore the truanters are and very much on the presence of the form tutors.

I was going to say a scheduled services restart and clearing out the audit log seem to be the thing until they fix it.

Indeed, I think that is becoming very popular, the idea of registration is starting to be an outmoded concept. Guidance is replacing it. Consider that two 15 min registration periods per day is over 100 hours of teaching time in a full academic year.

can you paste in an example of what its showing.

1) Students go to classroom to be registered in a very short registration period and then into assembly. That was initially however doing what you suggest will raise your attendance figures significantly and means you can use a registration period as guidance or do away with it completely. Certainly in my experience starting with a lesson as opposed to registration which is not valued by students will improve punctuallity for the less hard core offenders. 2) A Seperate broadband line into the offsite changing rooms and then e-portal on a laptop as if it was being accessed from offsite. (suprisingly cheap to do) 3)In an Ideal world yes, but there are resource issues here. Most MIS have a button for an instant print out of registers in a fire situation. The issues will be procedural, how fast can you print and do you have an offsite printing facility. What if the fire is in the server room. The only truly safe argument is to do what you suggest but there must be a better way. Certainly a PDF file can be created of the registers and kept on a laptop. 4)I have never seen anyone try to do this non school wide if only because it will seriously compromise you abilitiy to get accurate summary data and SLASC returns.