Ecclesbury

To add the period 2 info just clone the lesson marks sub report you've already set up (highlight it and click the blue curly arrow to the right) and then amend the ID filter to include the period 2 time. If you are seeing pupils who don't fulfil the filter condition you probably have 'Include Records with no such Lessonmark' ticked in the sub report in question. Just make sure this is unticked for the one sub report this applies to (AM reg, or period 1 whichever you use)

There is probably a neater way of doing this, but what worked for me in the past was to filter on the 'ID' field (in CES Third Party Fields) of the lesson mark subreport. This ID includes the start time of the period as defined in the timetable cycle. So in the following screenshot I have filtered to only show period 1 on the given date (our period 1 starts at 8:45AM). When you say they want to see all the pupils with no mark, or absent do you mean for lesson 1 or the AM session mark? The latter would be more standard and would mean that you would have to use the Attendance Marks sub report. So you would have 3 sub reports: Attendance Marks - Showing the mark field and filtered for the current date and statistical meaning = No Mark, Unauthorised Absence, Authorised Absence with 'Display records with no such results UNticked Lesson Marks - Showing the mark field and filtered for the current date and 'ID' contains the time for period 1 Lesson Marks - Showing the class, teacher and room fields and filtered for the current date and #'ID' contains the start time for period 2. If you're completely stuck I'd be happy to knock together a report definition file and get it to you somehow (can I upload these to Edugeek?)

Might they be thinking of the warning that pops up if you leave some marks blank on a register? This just warns that students left blank will be populated with Ns but gives you the option to not proceed (although the options are Yes, No with no Cancel option.

A bit clunky perhaps but you could change a mark yourself, check the History of Changes (Which will now show the original mark recorder) and then change the mark back? You could also create a report (Student Focus) and include the 'Lesson Marks' sub report which has a 'recorded by' field which I assume will give you what you want.

Assuming that the achievement points were added in bulk (through the register) try the following: Focus>Behaviour Management>Maintain Achievement You can then filter by class to find the relevant commendation and delete it.

Thanks edmokeski, Funnily enough I heard through my spies that the school that I'm applying to might be thinking of switching from SIMS to iSAMS. If I'm lucky it might be opportunity for me to develop my own SQL skills (which are patchy at best since I have no opportunity to use them in my current job.) Thankfully the job advert made no mention of SQL querying skills so fingers crossed that won't be an issue! I see that Capita advertise 'SIMS Independent' as if it is a separate thing. Am I right in thinking it is exactly the same product as the state sector? I assume they just push a different combination of modules as @vikpaw describes?

Big thanks both, really useful stuff.

I'd agree with @CAM I'm not aware of any general data manger role type training. The most useful training that I would recommend is specific technical stuff like SQL quering and VBA. Although since we can't (shouldn't) really do any direct SQL querying of the SIMS database I've never actually done any significant SQL learning since I don't have a regular practical application...which pains me. Without a doubt the training that I've applied the most in my role is an Introduction to Excel VBA course. Just knowing the basics opens up a Pandora's box of possibilities for creating custom excel templates for SIMS reports. I've been able to then learn a lot through practical examples.

I did complete this award in the end and found it a worthwhile experience for its own ends. It's a very self reflective course, so if nothing else it is an excuse to scrutinise the work that you do and even present suggestions for improvement to senior leaders. I did the self-study version so there was not much new information to learn (depending on how au fait you are with the DPA/FOIA) although there was some interesting systems analaysis stuff that was quite fresh to me at the time (systems development life cycle etc) In terms of this award being "recognised" I think this a red herring really since the job is so niche (perhaps that is changing these days?) I wouldn't have thought a situation would be likely to arise where this award would make the difference between one candidate and another. Of course it is concrete evidence of a commitment to CPD which employers are often looking for. I think what I'm saying is that I would doubt that any school/MAT would dismiss the award as irrelevant. To sum up, I would recommend doing the award for it's own sake but not as a means to an end.

I've got a job interview coming up as SIMS manager at an all-through independent school. I've worked as a data/SIMS manager at a state secondary for the last 8 years so am pretty solid with the SIMS side of things but wondered whether there are any significant differences for data managers in the independent sector that I should be aware of. Is there anyone out there who works in the independent sector, or better still anyone that has worked in both that could give some advice?

Do the DfE still make a SWC XML converter publicly available? We have very much the same issue that you describe a few years ago and I got hold of the XML converter and sent it to our HR provider. These days our HR provider sends us a copy of this XML converter with all of the HR data added. I then have to manually merge in the curriculum, vacancies and casual staff info. The time it takes to do this is FAR less than the double entry required to keep SIMS and the HR database up to date. However, I just tried to find the XML converter and I only seem to be able to find the 2014 one. Are these only provided on request?

The thing that has always struck me about data managers is that no 2 DMs have exactly the same role. In fact usually the differences are massive. I think this is because the role often becomes a magnet for work which is difficult to pigeon hole. It also depends on the particular make up of the school. If you have some aptitude for technical stuff and problem solving it's usually very easy to get involved in lots of interesting stuff (if you want to!) Equally it's easy to get completely overwhelmed in work. So to answer your question (what is it like to be a data manager) it depends on which data manager!

Hi petern, In simple terms the correct method is to calculate any student who has missed 10% or more of their own total possible sessions. So if a student is only on roll for 10 days, and missed 2 days, they will count as PA. I'm sticking with that at the moment, although I haven't found any clarification on my queries above so I might have the detail slightly wron. For practical purposes it is best to use the definition above. That way you will know your worst possible outcome.

Thanks Emma, that's really helpful. I was briefly part of the SSAT forum, until my school pulled the plug without warning! I'll give the SISRA facebook forum a look.

Apologies if a similar thread has already been started, but my quick search came up with nothing. I've finally got on the twitter bandwagon (at the insistence of my Headteacher would you believe!) Does anyone have any good suggestions of people to follow from the education/data world? Equally if you want to share your username it would be good to follow some other data managers. I'm @JonnySBristol although I'm yet to twit my first tweet.

So am I right in saying that these can be crow barred in to the performance tables data at checking time? Presumably you just have to have a copy of the certificate as 'evidence?'

I'm happy to add a change request. It would be good to catch all issues in one. Are there any other common actions that don't have a keyboard shortcut? Is there a definitive list anywhere of all of the shortcut commands? That main template page seems to be crying out for shortcuts for New, Open and the move up and down buttons. Are any of these available?

In my limited experience it seems that very few data managers are the same either in what they do or how they came to do it. There do seem to be 2 broad routes to job though...either from an IT background or from a teaching background. In the grand scheme of things it is a relatively new role. I'm guessing there wouldn't have been (many) data managers as such 20 years ago so the role has gradually spilled out from the SLT/CTL trough.

On top of all the good advice already given I would add two things that are worth looking at: 1. If you do plan to use Assessment Manager a lot, invest some time in using the 'Categories' for templates and aspects. Look in Tools>Performance>Assessment to create new categories and the system utilities can are very handy for quickly tidying things up. If you have good categories that are consistently applied it makes bulk changes much faster. 2. This is slightly more contentious but look into creating custom excel report templates using VBA. If you want to get SLT/Middle leaders running their own reports it will halve the battle if you can have SIMS export exactly what they are after rather than just raw data.

I'm busy wading through various DfE releases and RAISE methodology guides to try and answer some questions about absence statitics, but just in case anyone has already done this and come up with the answers I thought I'd ask here. I understand that the methodology for calculating the new 90% PA threshold is changing so that a student does not have to hit a pre-defined number of sessions, they just have to miss more than 10% of their own possible sessions. Does anyone know if this relates to each enrolment for that student, or for the students as a whole. In other words, if a students missed 15% of their possible sessions at one school, moved to a second school and missed 15% of those possible sessions, would they count as PA at both schools, or just at the second school? Equally if a student missed 15% at the first school but only 5% at the second school would they count as PA for the second school...or just the first (same question really) Another query I have is whether there is going to be a minimum threshold of sessions. If a student joined the school 2 days before the end of term, and missed one of those days would they be classes as PA? Page 7 of this document suggest that the answer is that there is no minimum number of sessions but it's not explicit. Final question, a lot of what I have read relates to the DfE statistical releases. Does anyone know if the same methodology is likely to apply to RAISE reports?

OK, I think I've cracked it. Thought I'd share for anyone searching the same problem. The important thing is the sort order of the report. I defined the global sort order explicitly as surname then forename of the contact and this seems to have fixed the problem. I did also define the sort order of the sub report as year group, but I doubt this made a different.

Does anyone out there do much with RTF report templates from SIMS? In the past I have used them to set up a data collection sheet which has a 'contacts' table. In the template I only need 1 row of the table, put in the required contact fields and the output will add a row to this table for each contact within the single student data collection sheet. I have tried a similar thing with a letter I am creating in the Contacts data area which I'm hoping will include a table which lists all the linked students for a given contact. However, if I try and set it up in the same way the report exports a separate letter for each student. Does anyone have any advice on where I might be going wrong? Or is this functionality only available in certain data areas, or with certain sub tables?

I think the rationale behind getting into Form groups is for ease of crowd control. Every student should know exactly where they need to get to during a fire drill. If that location changed every time there was a drill based on which class they were in I can imagine some chaos. It also means that supply teachers, or very new teachers who might not know (or have forgotten!) where they need to go in a fire drill can at least be told by the students. Although I do appreciate the point about the class teacher having a much better common sense grasp of who might be missing. Is anyone else having the same kind of fun with lock down policies and drills? The approach I like with lockdowns is to harness the power of common sense. Accurate roll calls are so problematic that I'm advocating for only the reporting of anything that is unusual. So a class teacher reports where a student has left and not returned, or where they have taken in a student (or staff) that would not normally be with them. This way you quickly get to the useful info without having to wade through lists of people who are where they should be. This way the drill becomes much more focused on the physical locking down of the building, rather than on producing a roll call. I know they are not the same thing but I think the same kind of thinking could be applied to fire drills.

Would it work to manually remove them from the course that is associated with the class? You would have to turn off auto update class membership, which might cause other problems down the line. If you then added the relevant course membership filter to the template the student wouldn't show on the class marksheet? The update course memberships would be my biggest concern as it would cause the data manager potential hassle with the only benefit being the marksheet is slightly neater for the teacher.

I don't think you'd need a separate Grade Tally column for each aspect. You can just have 1 column and include all the possible types of grade in the Grade box and select all aspects. I don't use a zero column myself...is the purpose of this to make sure it flags up red if there is nothing entered at all? Another option here is to set up big summary marksheets. So I have a marksheet for all subject grades and targets for a whole year group. If you open this and use the summary button you can get a quick glance of where the gaps are. Even with comments you can use this just to have a quick visual scan of where the gaps are. The benefit of this is that you can identify the subjects where everything is complete. Once you know which subjects have gaps you can go to the individual markbooks (very quick if you have you category associations set up well) and then scan through the marksheets to see which teacher is missing grades. I find that this approach means that I can identify which teachers have missing data in well under an hour (probably under half an hour_ even though it is effectively manual checking.