Linfit

We have had a large delivery of fabric masks, full face visors and gloves this morning, which was only ordered last week, so there does not seem to be a problem with supply as has been seen in the past.

We have gone ahead and built a normal timetable assuming normal working. There are a number of reasons for still doing this even if you are not sure if it will be required for the start of term. You need to know that your proposed curriulum model will staff and schedule when normal working is resumed. Staff need to know what groups they are going to be responsible for even if they are not seeing them full time. You have to resolve issues with options choices and related stuff. You need to know what "normal" in your school will look like when things do eventually get back on track, so you have something to work towards. I would rather do it now than have to start the whole process in the Autumn when there will no doubt be multiple other pressures to deal with. We may have to look at doing a "Covd" reduced capacity timetable as well, but we have decided to look at that afterwards in the light of developments in the next month or so and we still may use the full timetable as a starting point anyway.

Depends what exactly is happening - is it not on the Focus Menu ? Or failing silently when you try and run it ? Does it work on another workstation or when run from the server ? If so, its likely a faulty sims on that workstation and best to re-run the install for that workstation from SOLUS. If it tries to load but fails, and you are getting an error, the fix will depend on the error - for exampler if it throws an exception, which sometimes needs a specific patch to be applied to fix it.

The exams module is not a local install, it runs from the server. Anyone who has Exams Operator or Exams Officer permissions in SIMS should be able to run it from the Focus menu. If it is there but giving an error, it may be permissions on the relevant folders on the server not set correctly.

Its easy enough to apply the filesets yourself - get a MyAccount login and the latest fileset is usually linked from the hot topics on the main page.

You should get a myaccount login regardless - that gives you access to sometimes useful information and news, although its one of the worst sites you will ever have to use. The fileset is actually an xml file which is imported into SIMS using the Tools>Setups>Import Fileset routine. It contains the rules which are used to check that the data in the census return is complete and consistent when the return is validated. Its actually produced by the DFE not by Capita, so there are often delays in releases and sometimes inconsistencies which require updated versions to be imported. If you have a "Capita Chap" who is updating the software then it sounds like you are getting your support direct from Capita. We are lucky that we have a very good local support unit so we use them - but many schools use Capita directly. Its odd though that they would come on site - updates these days are usually automated.

The updates which come out Spring Summer Autumn contain any changes to the database required for the following census - so the summer update will contain any changes required for the Autumn Census. Other than that there are no real patches to apply unless you find an error in your data which needs clearing up, and if that needs a patch you will be inolving your support unit. You likely will have to update the fileset required to validate each census though - there are often multiple version of these released up to and sometimes after the census date itself. Your support unit should provide these or you can get them from the Capita website - there is usually a support topic related to the next two upcoming census periods which will carry links to the download and instructions: they are very straightforward to import. Of course all moot at the moment as the Spring Census, which I have just realised as I type this, was due tomorrow, has been cancelled.

Whatever you decide, make sure you spec something with sufficient overhead for expansion - what you think you need now will be different to what you actually need in 18 months time, and its better, if you have the budget and backing from management, to get hardware now that will cope with future expansion even it that means its running at a fraction of its capacity to start with. You might get something that is easily expandable but if you get the minimum needed to get the job done now and then have to go back in a years time for more funding for storage/blades extra servers etc the response is going to be "But I thought we just did that last year.." So overspec by a sensible amount now even if you know the capacity is not immediately needed. As to what you get, I have always thought that for most secondaries SAN's are overkill and introduce unnecessary levels of abstraction. Keep it simple.Something that works out of the box with Windows server, no intermediate stuff, no hardware specific tweaking.

Just finished "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George McDonald Fraser. (The guy who wrote the "Flashman" books). A (not very PC) memoir of his time as Lance Corporal with the14th Army in Burma. Fairly short and very good. Most books of this type are written by officers, but he wasn't one at the time. Was mentioned as worth reading on the "We Have Ways of Making you Talk" podcast which I highly recommend for any WW2 history geeks who have not come across it yet.

I went to school with the current poet laureate. I also got knocked over by Bob Geldof and his entourage as they left a press conference at Bett, back when it was at Olympia, (he is a very tall bloke) and, also at Bett, accidentally interrupted a TV interview with Micheal Gove back when he was Education Secretary.

On site today as I have to get some laptops imaged for staff who need them to work remotely. Once that is done will be leaving and not coming in unless there is a button to press, everything else can be done remotely. I am a keyholder so if I have to come on site, will do it out of hours, although I suspect our site will not remain open beyond this week, very few kids in today and numbers likley to tail off

Very much agree with this sentiment. I am in the same position and I feel I want to carry on working if it helps out the situation generally and keeps systems going. I won't need to come in every day, but would be willing to do so as required as I feel I am low risk in terms of spreading the disease - I drive to work on my own, and an keeping away from friends I know are higher risk than me with existing conditions. I have got friends who are monitoring me and keeping in touch as much as I am doing with others I know, particulalry elderly ones - I think for those of us that live alone knowing there are people who will be checking on you is important in these times.

15 staff off here, 8 of them teachers out of 60. We are starting to shutdown by year group, starting with Year 9 tommorrow. I suspect in most schools its the lack of staff that will force closures before the Govt enforces it nationally.

I think it looks for the licence file in the default data directory, which is likely SIMS\SNOVA\NT6 on the server on a standard install. It may be the file was originally in there and was moved, or there are multple copies on the server and the one it was referencing has been deleted.

Yes, about half our staff do their registers on Edulink rather than SIMS - they often want to use their PC for lesson related stuff especially at the start. Works well in PE and Drama here.

Parents, staff and students can potentially see anything which is in linked documents - ie anything published to the document server. You can control which type of document they are able to view from the Edulink admin console, so we allow Parents and students to view individual reports. You can also make assessment data visible in a seperate area, so we have a summary table of progress monitoring in there: this updates when the aspect is updated in SIMS. We haven't done it yet, but will eventually allow parents to opt-out of recieving paper reports if they wish.

Yep - countdown timers are explicitly not allowed and have not been for a couple of years. Its in the ICE booklet - Section 11.7 "Countdown and 'count up' clocks are not permissible". There is in fact a broader issue with clocks on laptops because there can be issues if they do not show the same time as the "official" clocks in the exam room and the canddiate relies on that rather than the clock on the wall. We have had that come up a couple of times here in the last few years: not sure what can be done about it though.

No - they have done only minor bug fixes for several years now, and this mostly related to changes in JCQ grade sets etc. Fundamentally, it has not changed for at least 12 years. Of course, they have been working on their next gen exams module for several years now as well, so don't hold your breath for that either.

Afraid there is no way of doing this within Exams. Its one of the ways Exams shows just how old and in need of an update it is.

No changes between 1403 and 1404 for English schools according to the Capita website.

On the census return screen check the census folder path. It should be a UNC path to somewhere where the person running the return has full control. You can set it to be anywhere you like but it needs to be suitably secure as it generates all the sub-report summaries in that folder and many of these contain sensitive information.

Go to Rountines>Student>Bulk Delete Student Data and click on the drop down "Delete data for students who left within or before the academic year" This will show you a list of all the academic years in the system.

Due to @Garacesh having gone and got himself a massive promotion and payrise:)at a school in the neighboring town I am recruiting: 37 hours pw permanent contract term time plus two weeks. Grade 5 scale point 12 to 17 salary range as above. Needed to start as soons as possible, closing date Tues 4th Feb 2020, interviews Tues 11th Feb 2020. Details on our web site: ICT Technician - Siddal Moor Anyone who wants further info please feel free to PM me.

Indeed. SIMS doesn't really understand times in the school day - Everything is based on timetable periods. You can set period times in Nova which pull through to SIMS, and it recognises that there is a break if these are not contiguous, but thats about it. It means if you have things like split lunches, or breaks at different times for different parts of the school, you have to get very creative.

You could do it if the breaks were in Nova as timetable periods - you could then allocate an appropriate Non-class code (NCC) to them. This is not trivial to do, and means a change to the timetable cycle. Its also potentially confusing as it would change the numbering of the periods in the day - so if you currently have 5 a day with two breaks, if the breaks were on the tt your last lesson would be P7 instead of P5. So technically possible, but as a timetabler, I wouldn't want to have to implement it.