GeeHubb

Are you really suggesting that you would trust this (or any) government to build a school's MIS? When you say 'the government' precisely who in the government are you expecting to be tasked with the proposal? This would be the same government that are proposing to share aircraft carriers with other countries and not build any airplanes to put on them would it? Personally I think 'the government' has far too much involvement with school data than is healthy at the moment. How many of you know exactly how much of your personal data is harvested for the School Workfarce Census? (Sorry can't work out how to put another quote in!) RE: Primary Schools. I am a Primary School Office Manager. I think you would be surprised how much we rely on our MIS. We (I) certainly use a lot more than 10% of it. I would say we are up to about 75% and rising and I would class us as an Average Primary School of a larger size (nor 320). We use SIMS and I don't mind saying that I wouldn't change. What you suggest about choosing only components that we will use is exactly what we get with SIMS. We 'buy into' Dinner Money as an 'add on'. Also use FMS and Personnel. We have added on SchoolComms (okay I know that's not SIMS but it is a SIMS partner). We don't have a licence for timetabling; profiles; or exams. Why do you all keep trying to re-invent the wheel? The biggest problem with school MIS is the woeful lack of understanding (in the Primary sector at least) of most Headteachers and SMT's who seem to think that their admin staff don't need any training or qualifications to do the job and offer 'peanuts' in salary terms! This lack of training is self-evident in many of the posts that you will see both on Edugeek and Supportnet. Hope I haven't gone 'off topic' too far. In case you wonder about my 'credentials' for the abov POV, come February I will have been using SIMS for 20 years.

In general, in this neck of the woods anyway, Infants is Reception to Year 2 (5-7); Juniors covers Year 3 to Year 6 (8-11); and Primary covers Reception to Year 6 and Secondary from Year 7 onwards. You do still get some Middle Schools with children up to Year 8 I think, but it's not 'the norm' here.

Ah well there's the thing. I think Carnation is Evaporated (forever referred to as 'Libby's' in our house). Which is different to Condensed - but don't ask me how! My Dad used to pour 'Libby's' over just about anything - used to drive my Mum mad as he used to insist on having the tin on the table at Sunday lunchtime and that just wasn't done!

Oh and I thought it was just me - specially given that there was a health warning beforehand about some scenes being upsetting! Excruciating I thought and a dreadful anti-climax. Who's going to be left for the next series for goodness sake?

It's not so much the bread and the pasta that's the problem, it's what you put with them that does the damage. Change the bread to anything wholegrain and 'seedy' and use wholemeal pasta. Change the spread to one of the low fat varieties and use it sparingly on the bread, and use tomato based pasta sauces, preferably home made (or low fat bought varieties if you must). There's some really good advice in this thread, but basically it's a change in lifestyle to a more healthy 'diet' plus exercise that is needed, rather than a 'crash' or 'fad' diet. Trouble is that knowing this, and carrying it through, are two different things!

They have now. Just heard my ex was supposed to be flying to Singapore in one courtesy of Singapore Airlines today and they have been put off with no new date/time as yet.

Normal one definitely. We had a pre-lit one and the lights were a nightmare. Ended up throwing the thing out and buying a normal one and a string of lights - which are now as cheap as chips anyway.

Vik, I soooo like this idea! I have done an AM training course, but it's something I would really like to look into (at the moment my school doesn't use Assessment Manager other than for End of Key Stage recording). The problem I have is finding the time to do it! Life in a Primary School is never dull; the phone never stops ringing, there's always someone at the front door and someone else being sick! We've had a couple allergic to the sun as well, I also used to have a child allergic to Christmas trees which I thought was quite a good one.

Hmmm, I'm not convinced!

'Cupboardy'?.. Please demonstrate the use of this word in a sentence so that we can decide whether or not it should be a word!

Thanks guys - I don't have any classteachers on the system (lucky me did you say?) so I wasn't certain on that one. As GREED says you can enter allergies into the 'dietary needs' tick box which is customisable and held in Panel 7 - Medical, but the confidentiality issues still apply. Gill

Hi Dan, I don't think you will be able to do this due to a) user permissions, not sure whether class teacher permissions have access to medical details, and b) confidentiality and the risk of someone inadvertantly displaying the info on IWB whilst taking the register! You can still print the info out in paper form for each tutor group though. Gill

SKY Broadband was absolute rubbish (kept dropping out) where I am in Suffolk and the telephone support worse than useless. Now back with BT for both Broadband and telephone and very happy thank you!

How awful for your sister. Not bad enough to be involved in an accident but now this as well. As was said above - I don't think your sister's insurers will be too impressed. The other driver was probably uninsured otherwise they would have given their insurance details in the first place - be interesting to hear if you do get them. I suspect that your sister will have to make a claim against the garage that did the work, rather than the other driver. One things for certain, don't let that garage have the car again. Don't think I'd trust them pumping up the tyres on my bicycle!

Paper registers here too (Primary - 320 children). Actually they're old OMR register sheets but I pensioned off the reader some years ago when I realised I had much more control over the marks if I entered them manually. Twelve classes takes about 10 minutes to input twice a day. We find it much more accurate. SIMS not available for teachers in classroom (or anywhere else) anyway and I'd have an uphill battle on my hands to get the teaching staff to do it (not to mention that they'd never get it right)! SLT in our school see SIMS as very much an admin tool.

My support comes from the Chelmsford helpdesk, though I did get a call back from the second line in Manchester in the week. I've no complaints. I've been around long enough to remember when they were called MISE and had the biggest biscuits in the world on training days! Sivadam you've misspelt mischievous, which may (or might) earn you a red square.

Thanks Vik.

Sooooo, let's see if I've got this right then.... All the CR's I've ever posted on Supportnet that never see the light of day (even the one that I had about two years ago that says it's accepted but has never appeared as far as I'm aware), could have been picked up immediately by Phil on Edugeek and actioned. Hmmmmm. Perhaps we could petition Edugeek to set up a SIMS Change Requests Forum and start posting them on here instead. Makes a bit of a mockery of Supportnet though doesn't it? (and if I could work out how to insert a smiley wink, I'd put it here so please use your imagination) ;o)

Hello All, Been 'lurking' for some time and just put on my sixth post so I thought I should introduce myself. My name's Gill and I work in a large Primary School in Essex where I'm the Office Manager and responsible for SIMS amongst other things. Been doing this for twenty years so have picked up a little knowledge on the way.

My daughter's car was 'torched' outside her house in Reading some 8 or 9 years ago at 3:00 in the morning! I've never seen so little left of a car! Fire Brigade were lovely with her as I lived too far away to get there and she was on her own. (You can imagine the phone call at three in the morning "Mum, Mum my car's on fire...) What upset her most was the loss of all the teddies and things that girls carry around in their cars (and if anyone says pink furry dice...). Funniest thing (!) though was when the insurance people phoned her a fortnight later and very apologetically told her that they'd had to write the car off..... It was a Fiat Panda that had belonged to her Grandparents. Thinking about it, it was a Fiat so I suppose it is conceivable that it did spontaneously combust....

I'd agree with what Phil says. It definitely isn't a good idea if you use a register print out for fire register purposes. The 'N' code would be taken to mean that the pupil is definitely not on site whereas the missing mark is not quite as definite. Here it would mean that a child was 'not present' at registration, but could be in the medical room / at the toilet / in the cloakroom etc. I always investigate missing marks as they happen until I am certain whether a child is in school or not. Easy for me to do as I'm only dealing with 320 children though.

Whereas I won my school's '200 Club' this month!!!!! A whole £15. Not a bad return really, I've only been paying £1 a month for TWENTY YEARS! As for the lottery, I think there should be a consolation prize for consistently getting none of the numbers.

In Attendance you can save a register with missing marks in it but it will still appear as a missing register. You can change the '-' to N's by highlighting the column, protecting the existing marks and clicking 'N', but I don't think that you can set it to change automatically to 'N' on saving a register.

Oh for the luxury of an IT guy (or even an IT gal!). Here, if I can't fix it myself (and I do have a girl's toolkit in my desk drawer - hammer, screwdrivers, pliers etc) I'm at the mercy of the Capita helpdesk - for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration. I have no technical expertise whatsoever, but still manage to do upgrades, patches and general troubleshooting and training for my colleagues myself. No one 'fiddles' with our system but Capita themselves. It doesn't break (unless I do something silly) and I have never had to send my data anywhere! Luckily, over the twenty (!) years that I have been using SIMS, I have managed to pick up a wealth of knowledge on many of the modules and it rarely beats me! I should also say hello to all as this is only my second post though I have lurked for a while now.

Yep, I saw four in the space of half an hour before it clouded over. That was from the bedroom window. I'm in Suffolk, where it is now tipping it down with rain! Doubt we'll see any tonight.