RootsSchImp

I haven't had this issue personally but my hunch is that the problem is Chrome blocking the data rather than SIMS not sending it. Try adjusting the Privacy settings in Chrome| Settings. I'm not sure exactly how SIMS puts the data in - Java maybe? Let us know if you sort it! Ed

Hi Everyone, I'm preparing a series of videos to help schools considering switching MIS. Do any of you have experience of this? If you have it would be really helpful if you could post a couple of lines about who you switched to and from, what the transition was like and the pros and cons of the new system vs the old. For the first series I'm focussing on secondary and thinking about covering SIMS (obvs), Progresso and Bromcom. If there are other systems you think I should cover please let me know that too! Thanks Ed

HI Databird, I was a Data Manager before becoming a Consultant so I know exactly the frustration of an endless stream of 'Can print me a list of/it'll only take 5 minutes/The head wants these figures right away' type requests. My three top tips are: 1/ Try to influence the type of requests you get by encouraging SLT to give Heads of Dept more training on what they want analysed. My school went crazy for 'data' long before it got specific about what type of data was important and what it wanted staff to do with it. Agreeing with the bosses what teachers should be looking at and pointing out that it's much more efficient for staff to get that from preexisting SIMS marksheets rather than requesting spreadsheets from you can save you a lot of time. 2/ Learn to type Assessment Manager. N is a shortcut for Next, Enter opens pop up windows (usually), F or sometimes alt-F shuts the new column window. If you're adding a column with a particular resultset (like a new type of target) to lots of templates edit the resultset name to put a ! at the start so it comes at the top of the list then N-Enter-Tab-Space-Enter-N allows you to select it almost instantly. Learning to use the keys not the mouse when making templates has made me 3 or 4 times faster. 3/ Request time to develop your skills. I was lucky in that I worked year round so I had days just to play with SIMS to learn what it can do. Tell your manager you want a little time to do that and that it's worth delaying whatever's going on for an hour a week because in the long run it will make your work much more efficient. Good luck - I hope SLT play ball

Hi Databird, I agree getting all this information onto 1 marksheet is impractical. I would recommend a marksheet per year (behaviour and motivation are aspects right, not counts of beh incidents?) Assuming they're marks in AM and that you use 1 set of aspects with result sets for year and term. E.g. Aspect: English Motivation Result Set: Autumn Year 8. Then the fastest way to set this up is to create a new column add columns for data entry and select all three resultsets for one year, e.g. Year 7 Autumn, Year 7 Spring, Year 7 Summer. Select all the Grades, Behaviour and Motivation aspects (if you add categories to aspects this can be sped up). Once you have the Year 7 template done, clone it, then use the 'Replace' button to switch the Year 7 resultsets to the Year 8 ones. And so on up to Year 11. Good Luck.

I agree it's annoying to have to do a workaround, but rather than rely on form tutors to notice, then action, absent students with detention I would get the office to run a report to pull up a list, move the detention of any affected student, then print the updated detention list.

Have you got any lessons on the timetable without room or staff (e.g. PE sessions taken by external agencies or unroomed classes taken by unrecognised staff)? If any sessions exist like that SIMS spits the dummy and won't accept any more timetable exports from T6. If it's that you sort it in SIMS, I can't remember the exact path but it's something like Focus| School| Academic Management| Lesson register. You search for the sessions, delete them there, then the timetable goes through. Good luck getting it sorted, as a timetabler I feel your pain.

First thing to check - are all the registers complete? When you run the report did you check that the dates you ran it for were all school days? For example, if there was a training day at the start of term when kids didn't attend. Missing marks could account for the discrepancy. You might check also for students on roll but not assigned to Reg groups as these would count towards the figures but not appear on registers. Another thing to look for is unusual codes on registers. Good luck finding the answer.

Maybe post a screen shot of how the report looks for you along with an explanation of what you don't understand about it.

Hi Sadiq, I'm an independent consultant working mainly with SIMS, what is it you need help with?

That is really strange. Is it a big table? It might be to do with page breaks-are the cells allowed to flow across 2 pages?

Have you tested to see if that's the case? As I said the tag and the macro are not the same thing so by deleting and replacing you're not necessarily putting the same thing on the template. Ed

What you see on the report table is a tag not the macro itself. Sometimes macros get corrupted but the tag doesn't reflect this. Its like having a box with 'working TV' written on the outside and inside the Telly's all smashed up. Simplest fix is to delete the entire contents of the affected cells and put the results in again.

@vikpaw is right, I've just tried that and it doesn't work. My photos were coming out a reasonable size though, which makes me think if you find a program to resize the photo files themselves (stored on the same drive as SIMS). I have a funny feeling they're in a Nova T folder but the gods of network access aren't smiling so I can't check. I'd keep a copy of the originals though in case something goes wrong. Good luck, Ed

In rft reports I seem to remember you can resize photos by adding a % to the tag itself. I'm not sure if the same works on Ind Repts or exactly what the syntax is, but you could try Editting the photo tags to Ed

Hi @HPPMBOL, Have you looked at Bromcom? www.Bromcom.com For disclosure I am currently in talks with Bromcom about consulting for them but I'm not on commission so have no financial stake in whether you choose them. Here are the pros and cons of SIMS v Bromcom as I see them: Top Level: Bromcom is hosted remotely and teachers access registers and marksheets via web browser. This means working from home is already sorted and you don't have to install/update individual machines in school as is the case with SIMS. The userinterface for the teachers' section is pretty intuitive so I don't think much staff training would be required but then it's fairly good in SIMS too. The back end of Bromcom isn't as nice to use but it's OK and as SIMS has its quirks too I'd call that a draw. Unfair though it may be SIMS does have an advantage by virtue of it's huge market share. It's easier to recruit staff who are already familiar with it and if DFE make changes that require MIS upgrades (think school census or sixth form funding) if SIMS are late reacting then it's DFE's problem, on the other hand if Bromcom lag behind you're more exposed. I would ask Bromcom about their procedures and track record in this regard. Assessment: SIMS has what I call a user bias - it assumes that those interested in Assessment Data will get it directly from SIMS. So let's say at each Assessment Collection heads of faculty need to monitor overall grade percentages and progress and compare them with PP Pupils, EAL etc. It's easy to set up a marksheet that they can filter and look up those figures BUT if your school requires you the Data Manager to compile those figures and email them round that is a pain in the MIS. You would either have to set up lots of different Aspect Analyses and run them all separately or build a pretty complicated spreadsheet to calc everything for you (with all the risk of corruption/inaccuracy that entails). Also Assessment analysis in SIMS is pure assessment, you can add %attendance and #unauthorised absences to a marksheet but you can't really integrate Attendance and Behaviour with Assessment outside of SIMS Discover. Discover is very nice to look at but the extent to which you can customise is limited so it may frustrate you. Bromcom isn't miles ahead of SIMS in regards to these two issues, but it is better. Its eAnalysis tool fully integrates Assessment with Behaviour and Attendance and allows you to provide SLT/Heads of Dept with a better place to do their analysis then SIMS (IMO). Important caveat: I've so far only played with a demo of Bromcom so if you're interested, as a first step I would recommend skipping the sales pitch and asking them to put you in touch with a Data Manager who's using the system for real. They're the best placed to tell you if it's the right choice. Cheers Ed

Here it is - hope it helps Ed

There's an option 'also colour column' at the bottom of heated if then else. So you can keep the colour coding column hidden and just show the coloured grades column.

I'm a consultant working mainly with SIMS but I've timetabled with Facility Scheduler as well. Re: Behaviour SIMS might not be flexible enough to migrate your system seamlessly. Achievements (positive behaviour actions) are logged separately from Behaviour (negative actions). I'm not sure if you can assign negative values to incidents to run one single (positive and negative) behaviour tally. Actual SIMS data managers might be able to answer this one. RE: Assessment (including Progress 8). SIMS Assessment Manager is really flexible and that's its greatest strength and weakness. It will be able to do what you want, but you'll have to invest time and training to set everything up. It's also designed more as an interface for SLT and Heads of Faculty that as an engine to produce reports/spreadsheets - so that again might give you pause as you'll need to train lots of people as SIMS users. Re Timetabling I love Nova T6 (Point taken about multiple timetables but that's pretty niche) and I think it's better than scheduler which I've always found a bit shoddy. That said the autoscheduling in Nova isn't as good as Facility so you might find the timetable takes longer. Timetable in a day sounds pretty unrealistic to me. Exams Organiser works OK but I second the other posters who've pointed out it's really old and not very intuitive. Hope this helps - good luck if you decide to take the plunge! Ed

Add a columnas subtracting effort avg from 5, then rank from that columnas?

If you're comfortable using MS access then I'd recommend running a report from sims to create an archive of all the old results in case someone wants to look at them (which they probably won't). Then bulk delete them from sims. The extra time you may spend extracting old results you more than make up for by having a cleaner, user friendly system.

Hi, you can't copy and paste numbers into grades but if you add a formula for data entry and use Marks to Grade that should work. The grade values of your number grades will need to be the same as the number (but assuming theyre mee GCSE grades I assume they are)

If you prefer to watch me do this then check out my SIMS School video here. 1, Check your gradesets. For Att8 GCSEs and AS Levels have new points values. Note that they are different in 2016 and 2017. Remember that if you change the gradeset of your current aspects then formulae based on the old values may malfunction. 2, Set up your template. Add KS2 Average Fine Level (for calculating Progress 8) and the predicted grade aspects for all your KS4 courses. 3, Edit the column headings of all EBacc subjects by putting 'Eb' as a prefix. Put 'Op' in front of all subjects that qualify in the 'Open Basket' (except English/English Literature). This will make putting in the formulae below much easier. All Formulae are 'Data Review using formula' unless otherwise stated. 4, English Basket. The highest grade out of English and English Literature counts here and if both are sat it counts double. Add a column 'En Max' using the Max formula with 1 in the box to find the highest of En and En Lit. Add a column 'En lit test' using the IF formula. Test: IF En Lit = En Lit (this tests if a lit grade is present). Value if true 'En Max' value if false '0'. Finally add a column '#En Basket' using the SUM formula to add 'En Max' and 'En Lit Test'. 5. Maths Basket. V easy if no one does AS Maths. Add a column '#Ma Basket' using the MULTIPLICATION formula to times the Maths GCSE result by two. If you do have AS Entries then the AS grade counts regardless of whether it is lower than the GCSE. If this is the case add a column 'Ma A Val' using the VALUE formula looking at the AS Prediction. Add 'Ma G Val' looking at the GCSE prediction. Add 'Ma AS Test' using the NESTED IF THEN ELSE formula. First test: IF Ma AS Prediction = Ma AS Prediction THEN Ma A Val. Second Test: IF Ma GCSE Prediction = Ma GCSE Prediction THEN Ma G Val. The column #Ma Basket should times this column (Ma AS Test) by 2. 6. EBacc Basket. Add a column #EB1 using the MAX formula, looking at all the Eb columns with 1 in the box. #EB2 same but with 2 in the box. #EB3 same with 3. 7. Open Basket. EBacc subjects can count in the open basket if they haven't already been counted. Therefore the 4th, 5th etc EB grades can count. Add 'Op EB4' using the MAX formula to look at the Eb columns returning the 4th biggest. Add 'Op EB5,6 etc to the maximum number of EBacc entries a student can have. Remember that Computer Science now counts towards EBacc along with Science GCSEs, History, Geography and Languages. The English grade not counted in the English Basket can also count in the Open Basket. Add 'Op En2' using the MAX formula to grab the second biggest of En Pred and En Lit Pred. Finally add '#Op1' using the MAX formula to find the biggest grade in the columns which begin 'Op'. '#OP2' for the second biggest. #OP3. Attainment 8: Create an Aspect for Attainment with type marks decimal (AS grades and some GCSE grades in 2017 have non-integer points values). Min 0 Max 110. Add a formula for data entry populating Attainment 8. Formula SUM and add together the 8 columns prefixed with #. AS Levels: If you do AS Levels in subjects other than Maths follow the maths steps to create ' AS Test'. Remember to include that column (and not the GCSE or AS Columns) in subsequent formulae. Any queries send me an email: [email protected]