LosOjos

They have to be in ascending order, and both the Index and Match have to cover the same range - - - Updated - - - Doesn't this round to nearest though? EDIT: No, you're quite right! One of the great (but sometimes frustrating) things about Excel is there's usually more than one way to do something

Can you use credit for hardware? Thought it was digital content only?

I used to do that, but it became problematic when we started getting larger ranges, you'd end up with huge lists of values covering every possibility - the INDEX/MATCH was a lifesaver when I figured it out, you simply enter boundaries and it returns the level

I rarely play my 360, so not going to spend money on DLC, especially when I predominantly play Minecraft on PC. I might consider a new game on 360 though if it's not available on PC...

It is possible with an 'IF', but can become convoluted very quickly. A better/more expandable way IMO would be an INDEX/MATCH - I've attached an example for you Index-Match-Example.xls

Already got it

Title sums it up. I won some credit ages ago that I've never fully used. Got a lovely email telling me I have until 22nd November to use the balance, or it's gone. So, what shall I spend it on? I rarely play my 360 any more, don't have an XB1 (and am unlikely to buy one in future), and I spent an hour last night on the Windows 8 Store; I bought Dragon Lair for the nostalgia factor but my $deity, what a load of tosh that store is! Any recommendations?

I have a VBScript which will take a folder full of exported marksheets ('unformatted', XML), resize the columns to auto-width, fit them on one page for printing and save as xlsx. It could of course be adapted to do whatever you like to the sheets, but will give a good basis to develop on '========================================================================== ' ' NAME: ExcelXMLtoXLS_Fit.vbs ' ' AUTHOR: [email protected] ' DATE : 04/02/2011 ' ' COMMENT: Batch converts Excel XML files to XLS and fits them to one page for printing. ' HOW TO USE: Drag a folder containing the XML files onto the script. '========================================================================== Option Explicit Dim Arg 'Script argument Dim FSO 'File System Object Dim oFol 'Folder object Dim oFil 'File object Dim oFils 'Files Dim myExcel 'Excel object Dim myWorkbook 'Workbook object Dim mySheet 'new worksheet Dim filePath 'Path to file (need for Excel to open the file) Dim sGroupName Dim oCell 'Check arguments If WScript.Arguments.Length < 1 Then MsgBox "Drag a folder containing Excel XML files onto this script", vbOKOnly, "Error!" WScript.Quit End If Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Arg = WScript.Arguments(0) If FSO.FolderExists(Arg) = False Then MsgBox "Drag and drop a folder onto this script to print the contents." Set FSO = Nothing WScript.Quit End If Set myExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application") myExcel.Visible = True myExcel.DisplayAlerts = False 'Get folder informaton Set oFol = FSO.GetFolder(Arg) Set oFils = oFol.Files For Each oFil in oFils '-- enumerate files in the folder using For/Each. Each oFil is a File object. filePath = oFil Set myWorkbook = myExcel.Workbooks.Open(filePath) Set mySheet = myWorkbook.Sheets.Add() myWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").UsedRange.Copy mySheet.Range("A1").PasteSpecial mySheet.Cells.Font.Size = 14 mySheet.Cells.EntireColumn.AutoFit mySheet.Columns("A").ColumnWidth = mySheet.Columns("A").ColumnWidth / 2 'find the group name sGroupName="" For Each oCell in mySheet.Columns(1).Cells if left(oCell.text,len("Group Name")) = "Group Name" then sGroupName = right(oCell.Value, len(oCell.Value) - inStr(1, oCell.Value, ":", 1)) exit for end if Next 'Add title mySheet.Range("A1").EntireRow.Insert mySheet.Range("A1").EntireRow.Insert mySheet.Range("A1").EntireRow.Font.Bold = True mySheet.Range("A1").EntireRow.Font.Size = 18 mySheet.Range("A1").Value = left(FSO.GetFileName(oFil), InStr(1, FSO.GetFileName(oFil), "-", 1) - 1) & " -" & sGroupName With mySheet.PageSetup .PrintArea = mySheet.UsedRange.Address .Orientation = 2 .LeftMargin = myExcel.Application.InchesToPoints(0.25) .RightMargin = myExcel.Application.InchesToPoints(0.25) .TopMargin = myExcel.Application.InchesToPoints(0.75) .BottomMargin = myExcel.Application.InchesToPoints(0.75) .Zoom = False .FitToPagesWide = 1 '.FitToPagesTall = 0 End With myWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1").Delete myWorkbook.SaveAs oFol.Path & "\" & left(FSO.GetFileName(oFil), Len(FSO.GetFileName(oFil))-4) & ".xls", 56 myWorkbook.Close False oFil.Delete Set mySheet = Nothing Set myWorkbook = Nothing Next myExcel.DisplayAlerts = True myExcel.Application.Quit Set myExcel = Nothing Set oFils = Nothing Set oFol = Nothing One thing worth pointing out - for some reason I've never been able to work out, the sheets that come out of SIMS will not fit to one page properly in Excel. If you copy them to a new sheet in the same workbook however, they do. Odd, but it works, this script does that part automatically for you.

How are you estimating at all baskets being filled? Taking the mean to populate empty slots, or something else?

@NormalDistribution - thanks for sharing. Looks a lot like what we're doing (unfortunately can't share in it's current form, but will try to get round to anonymizing it if any one interested). Like the idea of your 'What If' scenarios though - will look to adapting that

That's a new one to me Does the report run properly in SIMS itself?

Rename or convert? (I know it sounds pedantic, but one is great, the other is a potential nightmare...)

"Top 5" is going to need a Pivot Table - create one on your selected range, then use the column you want the Top 5 for as both the Row Label and Value. Make sure the Value display type is Count and ordered by Largest to Smallest (right click the value, Value Settings, Summarize By Count, Shw As Rank Largest to Smallest), finally filter your Row Label, choosing Value Filter > Top 10, which will let you alter it to Top 5 in a pop up. Hope this helps, I'm rushing the explanation a bit!

Bev - it's all to do with the 'flight path' now and 'assessment without levels'. Rather than looking at what level a student is currently at, we're now supposed to simply say whether they're making sufficient progress to meet their KS4 target. What worries me about that is a child targeted a B might be working towards a C, D, E, F, G or fail, and we're only supposed to say "no, not on target". Of course, we won't do this, we'll come up with a way of monitoring how far off target they are using some kind of granular system with varying levels of measured performance... hang on, isn't that what levels were? I've been working on our new monitoring systems this week using AWL and P8 so maybe I'm just feeling bitter, but I'm really struggling to see the benefit, to anyone, from these changes. Change for the sake of change, or so it appears to me right now...

You're correct in thinking it's usually around now, however I suspect they're going to bypass FFT Live in favour of Aspire this year. A document doing the rounds from our LA portal says that Aspire data will be available from w/c 20th October for Primaries, w/c 3rd November for Secondaries and December (no date mentioned) for KS5

It looks as though you're using 'tab' to separate content from list number - is that correct? If so, use Word's built in numbered list, it'll format correctly then.

Yeah totally with you RE no one data set being the whole but, as you said, with performance related pay we have to provide a comparable benchmark. I think what worries me about Prog8 is it's so vague, we have no history, no contextual data, NOTHING by way of comparison other than taking the DfE's word that their estimates represent national average - a 'fact' we know is as good as false as it's based on incomparable retrospective data! The figure alone just doesn't seem to mean much. I mean yeah, OK, it's supposed to show you where your school sits in term of national average and yes, you have that -0.5 floor standard, but how do you translate that to relevant areas of intervention? The only way to guarantee a positive VA is to make all subjects aim for a grade higher than Prog8 expected, when they're already struggling in some cases to meet it. Perhaps it's a problem for our school, but I suspect many will be in the same boat. We're just lucky we have such a high % of low attainers - they smash their P8 expected!

Missed my main question! What are you all doing in terms of P8 analysis?

I've just "finished" (it will change, I have no doubt about that!) my first lot of Progress 8 based analysis. It's a major change and it's meaning we're having to really change the way we look at data. As it's such a new thing, I'm wondering what methods other school have gone with to analyze this? For each subject, I have calculated an expected average grade based on the expects Attainment 8 score for all the pupils taking that subject, plus the current estimated average grade (all 'fine' grades, i.e. +/=/-). We're basing this on 2013 estimates for now as this is the latest we can currently find from the DfE. In the past, we've always provided % on/under target for subjects and initially we tried to do the same with P8 by rounding the expected P8 to the nearest grade and comparing our teacher's estimates to that. This highlighted a problem though - if you try targeting like that, because of the range of points assigned by the expected P8 table you could potentially end up with 100% "on target" but a VA of -0.9. This is a problem. We also looked closely at Maths and English and noticed another issue raised by P8 - three levels of progress is not necessarily good enough any more. For instance, a student coming in to school with a KS2 fine level of 5.2 (5c) would need to achieve at least a grade B at KS4 to have a positive P8 VA - which is fine, 3 LOP as we're used to. However, a student at just a 5.6 (middle of a 5b) would need an A to have a positive VA - 4 LOP. This raises questions as to how English and Maths will be judged in future, as clearly if we're targeting for 3 LOP, we could potentially be dooming the child to a negative P8 VA whilst our analysis looks as though they're on target. So what I've now decided to do is scrap on/under target measures and provide just a VA for each subject/student. This is better because it doesn't give the false impression of adequate progress, but frustrating for staff because they might have a kid estimated for a C, making 3 LOP, but with a negative VA, and I know that getting these students to a C was hard work, a B almost impossible! On the flip side, the lower end of the table (level 1s and 2s) have such low expected P8 scores that most of ours have incredibly high VA figures. As a school we look set for a positive VA, which is great, but how we monitor this at a subject level I'm struggling; if a students expected VA is 42/4.2/D-, who do you put the pressure on to get that student a C to ensure a positive VA?

A more useful answer: I find the vast majority of templates are really just clones of another template, with only a few aspects changed. For instance, all of my Data Collection sheets have about 6 consistent aspects, a target aspect for the subject and 5 estimate aspects for the subject. I'll set this up for one subject (usually Art simply because it comes first alphabetically) then clone this. In SIMs 7.158 or later (possibly a version before this, I forget), you're then given the option to substitute aspects. So long as the aspects you want to use share a common gradeset/type, you can use this tool to easily clone out a master to any subject you want to, replacing the target/estimate aspects in my example with the subject relevant ones for your new template. Not as quick as running a routine to drop a new aspect in to all selected templates, but set one up right and clone it would be my advice to keep things manageable. Have to say, I love the new clone/replace utility in SIMS - before that was added, I did something similar by exporting the templates and manipulating the XML, but it could cause problems if you weren't extremely careful!

Not that I've ever seen I'm afraid My method involves a large mug of coffee and some fast paced music to keep me awake!

What is it supposed to achieve? It looks as though it just adds a string to the end of an array - is that happening? If you hit F12 in FF/Chrome, you should be able add a 'Watch' to that array (dmdEmbeds), then see if this value is actually getting added to it. If it is, the problem lies elsewhere, if it's not then we can look at that code you posted

@Scotbynature - the thresholds are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/key-stage-2-tests-past-papers When a student takes the Level 6 test, if they meet the L6 threshold then they get a Level 6, if they don't then you fall back to their standard test to work out their level (almost always a 5)

You can do that Phil, but it doesn't remove it from the old column

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