tombry

I haven't been doing this long, so I may be telling you a long winded way of doing it - but I would create a new template, include all the aspects that hold the grades across the top, and be done. If I wanted it in Excel, I'd export it out and change the XML sheet to XLSX. If you are wanting to print it to paper, I think I'd go with an individual report that calls out for each aspect.

So I've settled into my job here after six months, but now am being asked to create something to measure teacher performance by the classes they teach, and the results that come out of them. I've thought of using marksheets to do it, but it seems that it will be a rather large project, and take a decent amount of time to set up - and then will have to be compiled down in Excel. So, prior to doing all of that, I thought I'd come ask you fine folks if any of you do this, and how you get around the clunkiness of assessment manager to do so? Basically, for years 9 and 10 I have measure their TA from the fall against their Estimated GCSE in the summer (and then subtract 5.2/2.6 points from it) to get an idea if the student learned more, less, or just what they should have over the course of the year. 11, 12, 13 is a bit easier, as there are exam results to measure against, which I presume I'll get from Exam Manager (I've only been in this role for 6 months). Any guidance would be appreciated, as I feel like I'm being thrown into the deep end.

Yeah I was asked to do it and told the weights didn't matter for what I was doing - I think it was a reduced list of students though. I'll have to work on the proper one eventually, but I have a whole ton of stuff to focus on first.

I haven't messed with the individual student one yet - only the whole school one.

Are you trying to do this for yourself? I was asked to do this based off of my school's targets/estimated grades, so I exported the year 11 marksheet (which held the data) to Excel - I gave point values to A*, A, B, etc. (using find/replace - for A* that's "A~*") I then made the targeted columns a named range, and the estimated columns a named range. Inserted a column at the end of the sheet, and put in a formula that was like: =AVERAGE(LARGE(Estimated 2:2, {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8})) - replacing "Estimated" with "Target" for the target column, and changing the amounts for students that aren't taking 8, after running it, I used the Ready Reckoners sheet that was passed to me via an email and checked our estimated VA against last years actual VA, and they were pretty close, so I feel like this is what was requested of me (may not be what you are trying to do though)

I had this, I don't know what the solution ended up being as our county helpdesk cleared it up on the server. someone from here gave me the idea to add the user to the server admins in order to get it working, I suggested that, but wasn't involved after. now I need to know why the groups that are set up initially delete themselves when upgraded. the configuration utility on it isn't very robust either.

ah, yes, that merge is one of my personal goals in the next year or so. as I said, academy status came in October, and the two other schools that are part of it still handle things on their own. I've met with the heads of both of them (for about a minute), and neither one has a "me" there, so I think in time I will be able to convince them to do it. as it is, I'm not sure if they had a census to do today, and if it went off as smooth as mine did. I was shown how to populate the attendance marks quickly, and thankfully it was only the last two weeks in december that I needed to do it for. got my un/pw first thing this morning by calling, and my census was submitted and approved by 2. felt good that something I had very little knowledge on was done so easily, and as much as I was being praised for accomplishing it, I was much more impressed with the overall quality of data going into SIMS. I was even able to start designing my spreadsheets today, which I was not expecting.

well I'm pretty sure the feeder school for our school sends over it's records for all our new entrants every year (I'll find out in a few weeks I believe) - so perhaps I will get a taste of the nasty

I hope I don't have to do that, that would really annoy me. they just became an academy in October or so, so the School info wasn't even set as academy yet.

Is the census a national thing then? I was thinking it was, but wasn't positive. I'm really looking forward to getting involved in some of the local groups that deal with this stuff, as much as the internet, if not more, as I always have enjoyed dealing with the annoyances of a job with other people in the same area. the weekend is but 2 days away, 1 really if you think about it, although tomorrow will probably be pretty annoying.

Stuart, my last job was at a lawfirm, where part of it was getting attorney's to accept that they didn't need paper. the best way I found to do it was to provide both, and slowly start "forgetting" the paper copy. it's my plan where I just started.

why would the LA have anything to do with the Academy census? that just doesn't make sense from what I understand of the Academy system. isn't the point of the Academy status to get away from the LA's authority?

ah matt, you may have just saved me quite a bit of time, as I know for a fact quite a few of my missing marks were from January. the attendance thing wasn't an error, it was more a warning to say "hey, you're missing some attendance marks, this is going to affect your attendance numbers", without actually saying that. It did give me an option to go to "Deal with Missing Marks", but since I didn't have the rights, I had to give them to myself, and then restart SIMS, so at that point I just went to the focus rather than go back into the census. the census is complete, and error free (I have two queries, but they are both for students that are a year behind where they should be, and from what I gather from the Collect documentation, I can just type that into a note field when I upload the census).

matt, discover is on the back burner, as much as all my stuff to simplify the day-to-day is, but not too far back, as the sooner I get to doing my daily quicker, the sooner I can get to learning more, and then doing more. as for the census, I got it all done besides the attendance, accounting for the sixth formers, SEN statuses, free meal stuff, etc. - and to see focus->register->fix missing marks, I had to give myself attendance operator rights, so I'm pretty sure I can assign myself any rights I need. I'm just seeing if there is a quicker way to go through the attendance marks for that part - I found out today that the lady in charge of keeping that stuff up-to-date has been out for a couple weeks. as for the Collect login, I don't have any of the logins that would give me access to it. I've been there about 3 weeks now, but just realized today that nobody gave me access to that, and that no one there already has the access. I let the phone ring for about a half hour earlier, sent in a support ticket through their webpage, and emailed the people to email to get an account, with no reply, which I understand, as tomorrow shall be a busy day for them, but otherwise my stuff is in order. while having never worked in a school, I have worked with securing budgeting, so I understand the importance of tomorrow.

So I got a reply in my email, but for some reason can't see it here. anyways, to answer the person's questions: 1. Discover is provided by SIMS, which is the MIS we use. It seems to be a nice graphical representation of reports and such, but I need it mainly for tracking achievement points, and when students hit certain levels. 2. The Census tomorrow, is the national one I presume, but the school I'm at uses SIMS, and Collect (as they recently became an Academy - I'm still waiting for a un/pw for Collect. Other bits that were asked for: I'm on windows XP with RM as a front end (I assume that's RM Connect, I don't like it, but it's what's there). SIMS is fully updated, as is Discover, I have some top level admin rights to SIMS (I can assign myself new rights with no problem), and anything I need for my user rights will be easily given to me. I have only been on my job since start of term (January), so anything more I might have to ask about for (specifics of network build, specifics of servers, etc.) but I think that should be enough for a start.

First off, hello. I'm new to all this school stuff, and a bit behind from the start as I'm American, and have never worked in a school (this will identify me if anyone at my school is on here). A bit of background on myself though - I'm a longtime DB Admin, over multiple systems, generally proprietary, and generally have taught myself with all the experience over the years. I've had multiple roles in various forms of IT, handling all sorts, from front-end support to training, as well as managing (both users and employees), I also have a moderate knowledge of many systems, and generally can figure out software given time to play (which I'm quickly learning is in short supply working at a school). anyways. two issues I currently have: 1. Discover will not launch for me - it continually tells me that my username/password are invalid (they aren't), and even SITTS is stumped. Anyone else have this? For some follow up, the only person in the school that used Discover previously also lost his access when the upgrade was performed, anyone have anything I can tell our IT lead to get Discover working again? 2. We have a census due tomorrow, and while I have cleaned up all the data I found, I'm having an issue with attendance marks not being made by a few teachers - is there a way to identify immediately what students were not in at all on a given day that marks are missing and to automatically give them an N for the day? Is there a way to transfer over attendance marks based on whether a student was marked as present in the classes before/after the class? I'm trying to save myself hours of manual looking. Anyways, I hope to have found a nice community that I can share things I've built to make my day easier (while taking things you all have shared), and a place to get ideas for moving forward. I really like this new job I got, and feel that in time I can make things easier to understand for the non-computer people I seem to work with (and if you know me, I do not at all mean that as an insult).