tombry

I use both a chromecast and a pi running kodi - both use my nexus 7 as a remote, and that lives in the t.v. room anyways, so I'm sorted. I'd use the chromecast alone, but it doesn't always like the things I try to stream through it, so I use the pi for my...."backups"

I just use the Herts grid sheets - have yet to let me down, got my whole intake set up with their points already

I set this up for us last summer - it's fairly straightfoward, and our SLT/Middle Leaders all love it. Pros - filling in an observation is essentially a series of ticks - all attendance information/SEN/PP is included at the top, taken directly from the register. Staff are able to review/accept the observation, and have the facility to attach evidence against their targets, as well as manage their own CPD entries (in that they can attach certificates and the like for courses they take). It's uniform, in that everyone has the same options to them, so you don't get a slew of different observation form types. Cons - Unless your headteacher is a very hands-on admin type, you will have to designate someone other than them as the top of the chain, or attach someone as an appraiser to every employee in your school - for me, that was the head's PA (who is also our personnel manager). If you make a typo on any of the setups, and someone uses that option, you can't fix it later, but otherwise I haven't had many negative comments about it. Some tips: 1. Sit with SLT and get them to identify both school wide goals (should come from your SDP), as well as teacher goals 2. Make sure you have your org structure all in line before you sit down to set it up, as while it is easy, it is time consuming, and you don't really want to do it twice 3. Make sure SLT/Staff are aware that staff have access to attach evidence, and are in charge of making sure that it is done (you certainly don't want to do it!) 4. Make sure you assign the proper rights in user management prior to setting everyone up! Should take you about half a day to fully set up, if you have everything in order.

Thanks I talked to our NM last night, and apparently he did the setup, and has handed over the responsibility to the lower schools' NM, which makes sense, as our NM leaves at the end of the year. We are three entities with ICO (I looked at our ICO records last year to make sure we were reporting everything we used), I'll suggest to our NM today that maybe we can use the rules you mention above for the time being to limit who sees what in the address book, and then when we move to a central system, review it then.

It's all office365 - one domain, three seperate schools - we all still have our own networks, databases, etc - we're looking at linking all three sites together, but the current plan is to hire one top network guy, one top data guy, and then work from there getting the three sites actually linked - and two guys managing the emails - one for the lower two schools, one for the upper To be honest, I don't personally see an issue with it, but I was asked by someone, and figured I'd ask you all here, as you'd be more likely to know the answer. Personally, the only issue I'll have with it is all the similar names we have across the three schools, and knowing I'm emailing the right person (staff or students to be honest)

So we've recently starting moving all of the staff/student accounts across the academy to a new email domain - all three schools using the same domain, and sharing one big massive address book. I'm curious, from a DPA standpoint, if this is ok? I know none of my vendors (I'm data manager) will allow me access to the lower school's data, citing DPA (something we're looking at fixing by assigning an academy level data manager - hopefully me). but is there any issue with email addys?

We implemented sixth form tutor groups this year, which are mandatory, regardless of a lesson being in the morning/afternoon, it allows us a much more accurate picture of our sixth form attendance

It's in a very logical place... Tools - Performance - Assessment - Mapping Tool

I was just shown it yesterday by my Capita rep - seems fairly seemless, although I would be concerned at peak periods that it would be dead slow. I'd also be worried about some of the larger reports I run, which I remote to the server to do, as my local machine can't handle it.

Attainment 8: Calculating the New Measure - SIMS Assessment Manager Blog David Pott has documented a very basic set up of it for AM7 - I uploaded a template in the original topic I started on here about it, but my template is very different now - and isn't something I'm willing to share, as it's a mess!

A couple years ago I admitted all our incoming Year 9s (we're part of a three-tier system), with their start date as September 1st. It broke a bunch of reports that the LA had sent me, but it worked perfectly fine within the school, and we never had any issue with it - you just need to be a little bit clever in running your reports (setting effective date to the next school year and such). You'll also have to make sure to remove any that don't come through - but this also wasn't a huge problem. I haven't done it since though

Welcome Scoobymoo, I was in a similar spot as you 3 years ago (forever!). I've found using the conversion sheets that the guy at Herts grid sets up to be fantastic for generating fine points scores (which is what I use to generate LoP numbers). Index of /learning/assessment/data/documents If you look down the listing you'll see the conversion sheets from 2008 on. I also got used to pulling down the raw excel files from FFT (not sure if these are available in Aspire, but your school should still have access to their FFTLive data). As there are "KS2 Validated" Assessments in SIMS, that you can't populate with that result set attached, I've also created aspects for all my sublevel categories, as well as my fine points scores. I use those for my chance analysis (as I can populate the students that don't have any with an "N" and not affect anything real), as well as put them on all my marksheets - we don't always get KS2 data from other schools in the CTF transfers, so finding them myself has become a regular thing. I don't tend to use the Ready Reckoners (although I am using the Progress 8 one), as we set our targets and expected levels of progress using FFT's Expected Progress/Better than Expected Progress targets across the school.

Yeah, not keen on the changes to the points values - but that's only until new GCSEs come in - I imagine 2016 is going to be a mess, but slowly will improve. As for your low ability students, most of mine are looking fantastic, as it almost seems they don't expect them to sit both English and Lit, and for current year 10, the GCSE they'll sit next year will count double regardless. It seems my mid and high attainers are the ones that are going to bring the school down, my internal figures (prior to using the RR) have us estimated at a -.10, after using the RR....well, I'm just not going to share that number, but it's bad news!

@LosOjos - when you say previously published figures for 2013, do you mean the shadow data they provided last year? I have been working with my SLT to use those figures to see how we need to rethink how we do options, in order to maximize every kids points. I'm using the Pupil RR to get their expected A8, as currently I use their FFT targets (EP/BEP) to generate it, and figure the RR will give a more accurate picture - hope I'm not spinning my wheels needlessly...

guess I got lucky then! I'd upload the RRs, but I can't seem to attach them in this area like you can in the forums

@LosOjos - I plan on trying to tear apart the P8 one later, only had 109 students to populate into it... I'm just using it to get a better figure for our Y10s, but it's making them look awful! I know the idea is that they'll actually be compared against what their cohort achieves, and not last year's cohort, but it can't end up changing that much can it?

it's not in the tables checking section - if you scroll down prior to logging in, you'll see where you can log into the opt-in site

@mark80, you have to click on the opt-in section - it won't actually opt you in. I really would like to kick the ass of whoever designs the ready reckoners - just a bit less design, and they'd be really useable, hate that I have to enter in ks2 data then go to another page to see what the expected A8 should be, just crap design really. give me a table where I can pop in all my students data, and the last column generates all of them at once - grrr!

I set up the school report when it was first introduced, but I don't remember it giving me VA scores type info, just general threshold type info. I'll have another look at it - and I have an excel spreadsheet that I use for estimating VA, is this basically the same thing?

So every year I get an email from Insight to RAISE trying to sell me their fancy RAISE spreadsheet. I've always dismissed it, as my former line manager bought it one year, and after having a play decided it wasn't worth it - turns out he didn't know how to use it though (he's admitted as much). Another data guy I know uses it extensively and swears by it, but he's currently not working on the Data side of things, so doesn't have this year's version. My head supports buying it, as he likes the idea that it kicks out RAISE style reports, but I know they're using 2014 formulas, and I wonder how useful that will be for the new reporting next year with A8/P8 stuff - so is anyone using it this year? If so, do you find it provides relevant information? thanks in advance

When I first started here we had the same problem, but since I've taken over the updating, it hasn't happened again. I never did find out what the NM was doing differently to me on install, but it happened every time SIMS updated, and he had to manually update discover. At a guess, considering how he likes to work, I imagine he was removing the old one, and installing the new

Thanks for the answers - I talked to my Capita rep today, and apparently I can drop the AM7 suite, and just get the Exams suite, which would solve my concern there. The detentions will be a hangup, as we quite like our detention system, but my eventual goal would be to have teaching staff not log in to SIMS daily, and instead us G4S - I'll just have to see if there is something I can do to ease that issue. My fear would be staff would use G4S, and never use the BM part of SIMS, which would ruin our rewards/sanctions work.

sorry to resurrect this a second time - but we're looking at moving to this, mainly for the reporting/assessment parts, but are contemplating moving quite a bit of our teacher's work to it to limit their need to launch SIMS. I do have a couple questions though - and @Seb1780, you seem like someone who might have some straight answers for me. If you're using G4S as your full-time assessment tool, did you drop AM7 from SIMS? If so, how do you handle Exams? I know it handles behaviour, but I didn't see a detention management system - if you use G4S for behaviour, did you drop the BM part of SIMS? if so, how are you handling your detentions? thanks.

I use discover to tip me off when a student hits either 50/100/150... points (both good and bad). I then generate a reward sheet which they turn in for a candy bar, or out of school pass (go to the shop/home at lunch), or a front of queue pass (jump the lunch line). 100 points just leads to a bigger candy bar

Michael, you can easily create a report template for behaviour incidents - design your report template based on student, and then use the Student Conduct Information area to get the bits of the BI you want to share to parents. Put a date filter on it so that you don't get repeats, and then just make sure your teachers record their comments appropriately, and you're done