Ecclesbury

Are you having the same problem cola? In the 2+ years since this happened I can't for the life of me remember how it was resolved. It sounds like it might have been related to a proxy problem. You have to put the IPs of the SIMS and Monitor server as proxy exceptions on the machine you are working on (IE-Internet Options-Connections Tab-LAN Settings-Advanced.) I also had some issues with PX which were resolved by changing the local locale settings on the SIMS server to be English rather than American!

Indeed, if you have exactly the same Grades, with different values, you can just use an EQUALS formula to copy the grades across and the values

I must have dreamt that....I do have some odd dreams. Double plonker.

Excellent, thanks both. I'll be honest, I did try and have a google and didn't come up with anything, although I probably didn't try searching the DfE site directly. What a plonker. Is it just me that find it painfully difficult to find stuff that the DfE release?

Hi all, As usual apologies for any ignorance that I betray but I hoped I might be able to gain some knowledge from you lovely people. Our sixth form have been trying to set up an online applications process and the potential developer has asked if I can show him what format an import file would need to look like if we wanted to export data from the application software and then re-import into SIMS. My question, is there some kind of 'schema' available that I can send him for CTF and/or ATF files? Or would the only option be to send him an actual CTF which I have stripped of any real information? Are there any drawbacks in doing this? I've got to say I'm not happy at all with the idea that a sole developer is being considered who doesn't seem to have any idea about how SIMS data transfer works. However, I've made those opinions clear and am still being chased to send this information through.

One way would be to use a VALUE formula to get the value of the A*-G grade and then use a MARKS TO GRADES formula to convert this value to the new grade, assuming that they both had the same values. If they didn't have the same values you might still be able to manipulate the values to get what you want. The other alternative is to create a Lookup grid which can convert them directly, but these are a bit fiddlier to set up initially if you have never used them before (use 24 month steps and age range between 10/00 and 20/00 and apply the same grade lookup for each age) Third option - export the marksheet to excel and use excel to convert the grades and then re-import the sheet with the new grades included. There are probably other options that I may have missed which might be quicker.

I did read that bit of the job spec but I didn't think it implied that the job included any actual timetable scheduling, more just timetable implementation once the assistant head had done the fun stuff! Still, these jobs have a tendency to develop pretty rapidly, so just being in close proximity to the timetable is probably good enough. It's a funny situation that if I was seriously considering the job the pay would be a MASSIVE step up, but the responsibilities would potentially be a step down. I wonder how many other career paths have situations like that?

Like others have said, this is sorely tempting! How long do you think it would take to commute from Bristol to Newquay every day?!?! Does the role include any timetabling out of interest? Hopefully this will mean more roles at this kind of salary scale will start popping up! Who else is going to print off that job spec and accidentally leave it in the SLT meeting room? :-)

If you haven't seen it already you can also get the latest technical desicription of how Attainment8/Progress8 will be calculated here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/progress-8-school-performance-measure

Hi Gary, There was some good discussion about this over on the MIS form: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/130498-progress-8-measure.html This was mainly a discussion about how to set up a SIMS template to do this for you and someone actually posts an example template that you could import to see how it might be done.

Final thought - for the current Year 7 if you use Key to Success the DfE have actually already calculated the KS2 APS for us so there is no need to worry about how the English score is being incorporated.

Sorry, should clarify. I definitely don't expect any of that before the results are published but if a ready reckoner was available after the 2014 results they could be used as a rough estimate for future years. I do this currently with Best8 VA in the knowledge that the eventual score will most likely be different - although I was pretty damn close this year!

Has anyone read anything that might suggest that they will be publishing the methodology for how they will calculate the Progress8 in 2014? The technical guide says that all school will be given their Progress8 score based on 2014 results, but it would be lovely if we also got a ready reckoner type sheet so that we have something to at least start estimating our working Progress8.

@matt40k how on earth did I not know about your tool? My finger is clearly off the pulse. That is amazing!

There may be more, but I can think of 2 options for calculating whole levels progress from full levels in a marksheet template. 1. Create a second aspect called 'XXX Whole Level' with the lower bound of the level as the points and then use VALUE and MARKS TO GRADES to convert any sub leveled columns to whole levels and then work from there. This is messy as it creates multiple aspects and results but may have other benefits if you want to use the whole levels elsewhere. 2. Use 'Lookup Tables' to create a sub-level to whole level converter. Set it up as follows: Type: Grade From (yy/mm): 10/00 To (yy/mm): 20/00 Step (in months): 24 Grade Set - pick whatever KS3 sub level grade set you are using. Click apply and you will see a grid with all of you sub levels as rows and the age brackets as columns. All you need to do is put in the whole level values into the relevant cells for all age brackets. So the 5C, 5B and 5A row would all be filled with 30. A little hint here is to click copy and paste this table into Excel which obviouslly makes it much quicker to fill in the table. Then copy the whole table in excel and click paste on the lookup window which will transfer all of this in. Once you have this lookup table set up you can use the LOOKUP function in a template to do whole level calculations on sub level columns. I might be over complicating (I often do!) so I'd be interested to hear if there is a more elegant way of doing that!

The Attainment 8 score is really an indication of an "average" grade across this suite of subjects. The idea is to actually express this as a grade (so B+, C- etc) rather than as a point score so it is more accessible/understandable for parents. It's quite nice to set this up as a grade set and teachers also seem to like it. Similarly Progress8 will be expressed as the average number of grades above or below the predicted Attainment8 As others state the reason for doubling English and Maths is so that this average grade is weighted towards English & Maths to retain their status as crucial subjects while avoiding the hit or miss nature of the C+ measure. Dividing by 10 in this sense makes sense, since you are looking for an average grade across these 10. Dividing by 8 would just inflate everything.

Ah of course, I forgot that you could clone imported stuff and then muck about with it. That would definitely make things easier!

Blimey! I notice that you're in London so that will presumably bump thing up a bit, but I am starting to notice that along with the JDs varying wildly from DM to DM, the level of pay is also pretty erratic! To put things in perspective when I first started this job (advertised as 'Data Manager') I was in the £15k-£18k a year bracket! That was 5 a half years ago. Very interesting about the level of pay turning people away! There must be a science to setting the right pay level.

The other answer to this question is to offer £40,000 a year.

You'd have to be quite lucky to find an experienced data manager given there aren't that many of them around (relatively speaking) and the chances of one of them currently looking for a new job, in your area, would be pretty slim. Saying that, the cynical method would be to try and poach from another school in your area! A lot of adverts for this kind of role I have seen often ask for a very specific level of knowledge relating to the data manager role and I think this is the wrong way to go about it as it can turn away perfrectly good candidates. Given what I've said above I think the better thing to do is try to find someone without the specific knowledge or experience, but who is a fast learner and already has some general transferable technical skills. How to advertise and interview for THAT is another question entirely!

That's not to say you couldn't open the raw XML and tinker with the GUIDs of course! But I believe the imported template itself would still not be editable.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that if you export the template on it's own, when another user imports this template it will create any associated aspects, grade sets and result sets that don't already exist in their database. In other words you don't have to also export the aspects and such, the template export will do all that for you. However, it does mean that a user importing your template will end up with a load of extra aspects in their database. Not only this, those imported aspects will not be editable so you can't be sneaky and just rename all the aspects that you have created. Final thing, even if you had aspects with identical names, when importing they will not match up. SIMS will do the usual thing of creating a new aspect called ASPECT NAME~1 and GRADE SET~1 etc. This is because, like timetable elements, all assessment manager elements have associated GUIDs. To cut a long story short, if people plan to take someone else's template and use it in their own database it is going to be much easier to import the template to have a look at how it all works, then delete it and re-create your own version.

Does anyone else find that adding multiple sub reports (particular assessment results) increases the time the reports takes to run exponentially? Or is this just our environment? For this reason I tend to avoid having to run aspect reports like this, unless I only want 1 or 2 results.

Ah yes, that's true. A lot of this will depend on each schools particular curriculum offer as doing a Double English course, or one with some literature, as you say, will still count double. Of course they could change all manner of other things anway, but I'd hope that large scale changes won't be

These marksheet templates look good. One thing to bear in mind is the English is only double weighted if both English & English Literature have been studied (with, as you say, the higher grade counting.) Easily achieved in a template, but you may need to tweak what you describe above (off the top of my head I'm thinking an extra GRADE TALLY COLUMNS counting the 2 English columns and then multiply the English MAX points by this value.)