SouthCoastSaint

If you right click on a result you can sometimes see the template associated when the result was input. However, as Phil says, if it is a data review column, those columns don't save, the results can't be used elsewhere in Sims, they are a more temporary option.

To be fair the original request was for any recommendations but we can only comment on ones we have used...

Does Schoolcomms now allow for emailing students their passcode instead of texting? That is a big consideration for us as we don't hold student mobile numbers.

We were going with H M L as our numerical fine grades. Forgot about asking 4Matrix though! - might have to consider changing. Sticking with GCSE grades for a few months with a very rough conversion to the fine 1-9 grades on marksheets and school reports so parents start to get a feel for it. (We use on track for grades for all years which are GCSE grades so will have to switch fairly soon).

Apologies if I have misunderstood your question. Once you have made the first one exactly how you want it to look, you can now clone templates, allowing you to swap aspects eg Art to Dance, and also over type the column descriptions, so you get asked the question about which text to replace. It's saved me lots of time since they introduced it and as long as you triple check your first template before you clone, it does eliminate errors compared to when you have 50 to make one by one. Once the template is made, that's the point you add the marksheets for the relevant classes.

Would anyone be able to check something for me? This year (as previous two years) we have released our new year timetables to students but this year an error message shows for any that are not on roll until 1/9 - years 7s and other year new students too. Lots of VERY unhappy parents who had an email saying they could see them. Tasc say nothing has changed, but I know previously they worked for future students, so I wondered if it's something we are doing differently in Sims since last year. We have admitted out new students now, so they are not pre-admissions by the way. Doesn't work either for Year 7 students who are siblings of an older student whose parent is not new. Insight logins work, but it's just the TT page. It's a PR disaster, frustrated demanding parents have taken to the local FB group to have a moan, let alone my inbox full of email complaints. Would be really useful if I could hear they are working for another school with a similar set up. Thanks for any info.

I quite agree.

You were thinking along the same lines as me Cache, as long as assessment manager looks at the formula columns in order. Each year has a marksheet with about 8 assessment strands on them - I will avoid using three columns if the HOD is happy to widen the colour bands. If I add a second column converting the marks to a 1-9 grade, this would be easier to analyse than colour anyway, so she might be happy with that solution. Pcstru - I was not clear in my original post - the cells are in a Sims marksheet, not excel or an individual report.

The HOD wants all aspects in question to be entered as marks out of 40 (which may then later be converted to the new 1-9 grades). I can set up the colours ok, just not enough of them as she needs 9 different colours. I don't think it's possible, I have emailed her asking if she can live with wider colour bands!

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What is the best way please to add colour to my cells... where the HOD for English would like 9 different colours? She has given me the marks parameters (eg 16-22 marks is bright orange) but she has also referrred to those particular marks as Grade 3. She doesn't need this conversion showing on the marksheet but could I somehow utilise the grade conversions (even if in a hidden column)? I can't see how I can get 9 colours using NITE, hopefulyl I am missing something obvious!

We are in Southampton. There are two sides to the admin of Profiles imo. Get your session set up correctly first - as long as you have all your courses for that year group in the comment bank and linked correctly to the course, all will be fine. Set your to and from dates and the correct students will display to teachers. The second part of the admin is the get your output looking just as you wish it to. This can be done alongside the teachers writing the reports. I tweak my template then generate some profiles to view the finished product. Actually I generate often and that way can pick up any issues (for example wrong font pasted in, wrong section being picked up by my template). You can generate them as many times as you wish and each time, the linked doc gets updated. (The only issue this causes us is that Insight doesn't allow you to pick specific linked docs for publishing to the parent site and once we released unfinished reports). Lastly, for reviewing, we let tutors review the profile and make any changes/bounce back to class teachers, then at that point write their pastoral report having read all the subject reports. Profiles seems to get bad press but I think that's a bit unfair!

We have used profiles for the last few years. I really like it now. As long as you are confident that Course Manager is showing the right classes/courses it's quite easy to implement. We don't on the whole use comment banks for the report, just a handful of subject choose to, however we also have a targets area and most subjects use comment banks for here. You have plenty of opportunity to edit the reports, both when in review mode and at the point of printing.

Is that HOD that you looked at showing as a supervisor of some kind in Course Manager for their subject?

That's interesting, I will have to check it out. All my class marksheets have Multiple ticked in the template listing but this is an automatic feature pulling in the HOD. If I look at a teacher who is a HOD's group list (in manage classroom staff) I see all their own classes with teacher next to them and all the other classes with Supervisor. Maybe the missing grades report has improved since I last used it so i will give it another go.

Hi Kate I haven't used the missing results report for a while now as when I tried it when it was first released it gave a duplicate result for the class teacher and the HOD. Has this changed now?

I check all ours manually too - via templates. To check a year group, year 10 for example, I put Tracking Year 10 in the template name, search and then subject by subject go through the whole of Year 10 sheet for that subject (as opposed to the class marksheets). Open, sort by class name, scroll down, make note of any unfinished classes. Exit marksheet, use template list of marksheets to see teachers. It doesn't take that long. When revisiting, using the list you made previously, you can see from the last used date if it's even worth checking again or if nothing has been done since you last looked.

When you made the reporting session did you leave the to and from dates to the whole academic year? You should be able to change the from date to just before you actually opened the session to teachers with no ill effects (I am sure I have done this retrospectively before). This should solve your problem.

I had the Schoolcomms parental reporting demo recently - we currently use Insight and had previously used SLG. Schoolcomms is nice and clear and simple, and as we already use them for communications, we would have considered changing. One thing it didn't do (unless it has since been changed) was allow students to have an account using email addresses - we don't hold student mobile numbers for obvious reasons and would therefore be unable to send a pin out. Students log in to Insight as much as parents to check timetables etc so this was a deciding factor at the time.

Quick answer to some of your questions - you can choose how you distribute log in details to parents each time you push them out. There is a choice of letter, email or SMS. I would work beforehand on trying to move many more of your parents to email communication. We have just 36 prime parents out of 1700 who are not contactable by email, we work very hard to maintain this as our primary method of communication, which means that any news about Insight can be emailed out rather than sending costly paper messages. I always include the link to Insight in any email about it, and a reminder about how parents log in. I also release PDF reports on Insight a couple of days before they are sent home, which encourages parents to log in and see what else the site can offer. We average about 350 logins on weekdays, falling to about 60 on weekends. When you are setting up, all sections have a toggle button for a simple yes or no to displaying/utilising that function, so any parts you don't want to use are just set at No. We have Contact teachers available for parents but not the student role for example. For the year 11s, I am fairly sure you can set a time frame for when they are removed. I set Insight up here really quickly - (we were also using SLG previously). It really IS as simple as it looks in the demo, and I love the fact that you can switch to a parent and see exactly what they see so when setting up you can check every step of the way that it looks as you would expect it to. Hope that helps.

We have previously used the Hertfordshire Grid for Learning for new Year 7s before Key To Success publish(ed) the APS but always had some adjustment to make to align them to the Gov figures once K2S is updated. I know I repeat myself, but if we are judged against a starting point and the DfE KNOW that starting point, it should be shared with schools so that we can all work from the same data. I check back most days to K2S in case the column has returned on the CSV. Was still missing yesterday

Amanda that is how 4Matrix do it, and it always cross matches for us with the downloaded Key To Success numbers. We have had so many new students here mid term this year, Key To Success was a perfect way of getting the APS before I can access the decimal levels on FFT Live which is so slow to update. Do you get your decimal levels from anywhere else?

@LosOjos Agree that a steep learning curve needed when starting out, and complications if you link a course incorrectly and open the session. However, there is definitely no limit to when they are edited. Ours go through the entire checking process within profiles (fully editable there), but when generating, if you edit then just before printing and save, the linked document is updated. I use this to check for any paging issues, flicking through them all at the last minute.

Yep, 15 characters. I never doubted you to be honest!

That's useful to know. I had a brief conversation with Dht this morning and it did seem that he might be happy with using just the grade in the marksheet, but trying to make it more meaningful. Now I can go armed with the information that the grade can be 15 characters. That should give us a little scope. I am hoping I won't need to put the descriptions in the template notes, as they will see list of them if they right click on a cell.