tombry

I'd love to share a tool my head of science made, but he has banned me from doing so - so instead, I'll describe it. it's a 4 page excel file with lookup tables and such, and the first page we can paste in data from AssMan - our first columns are always the same on every marksheet - name, G, SEN, GT, PP, Mobile, KS2APS. Teachers paste their data, all his formulas do their stuff, and on the second page you get a wonderful little table breaking down the performance of your class group broken down by the above factors, checked against targets. I tried showing teaching staff how easy it is to do the same in SIMS marksheets (it is to me), but nothing will beat his tool, which is basically, copy/paste/review. here's a pic of the results page (not populated - and it's 5 tabs as you can see)

I have the desktop version 9.0s (the latest beta for testing the online reporting), been a while since I used the groups tab on the web version, but I'd imagine they are there too - maybe it's part of my import?

@vikpaw - pulls in class and course groups.

I thought about it - but for me, the transport costs to London would eat up any raise in pay, and have longer commute/hours.

As we use schoolcomms, I'm trying to get SLT to approve importing the student's email addy's in, and then I'd send them to the students through there - if you have their addys in already, have a look at schoolcomms for doing this. (and if you have schoolcomms already, you're all set)

This is how I always did it, now I use chance analysis, as only the head and I look at it, and it's helpful to see the names.

yeah my former line manager will be happy that he'll be able to step through it now instead of just having a locked template good thing he did this this morning, as he's pointed out I'm not doubling maths - which for some reason I just ignored. he is also contending that I have to divide by 10, not 8, as Maths and English are doubled - which confuses me, what's the point of doubling them then?

it's funny, when I applied for the job I currently have, they titled the position "Data Manager", but I don't think they really knew what they were looking for - it took them over 4 months to find someone - and I only applied because I wasn't sure what the job was going to be either. Hell, I wasn't even supposed to interview, the agency that the school placed the ad through called me up because the guy they were going to have interview canceled the night before. My former Line Manager left last easter to be a deputy head at another school, and has only just found himself a data manager, after trying to poach me for the last 6 months or so (I'd have happily gone, but the pay was the same as I make now, but the commute would be an hour each way instead of the 3 mins each way I have now). I'd suggest you put it down as an entry level database admin like position, and see what that brings in for interviews.

yeah I just exported the template, looks like you're right. and you'll all be able to see where I work now too...P8WIP.7z the template is called "Test for Tom 1", I 7-zipped it, and the xml file is called P8WIP enjoy?

as @vikpaw has told me how, I'll export them out later, or tomorrow even. I'll give you the aspects and the template - should be enough, as the template only has the aspects and the formula review columns. bonus for me, y'all can give me feedback on tweaks. keep in mind, I don't have to figure out the English on this, as it's year 9, and they haven't been slotted yet. sometime in June I'll be doing that one up.

I put A, D, and our internal targets in, as well as our estimates. I think in the first instance it's going to make the head question how some students have the targets they do - when they are 5 grades over internal targets, but 5 grades below FFTA targets, there is probably something wrong with their internal targets. I'm just happy I have it set up now really - I'll worry about finalizing it after the full spec comes out, and I'm guessing after the releasing potential event I attend next week.

I don't have them built as aspects yet, just formula reviews - needed to proof of concept it before taking it to the full on ends. is there a way to export it nicely?

edited to remove potentially slanderous comment we have 3 different reasons why BIs go disappearing, only one of which acceptable in my mind - the teacher who gave the points gave too many - and those are typically replaced with a lower level incident.

I'd love this as well, as I have my suspicions as to who is removing BIs for students, but I can't actually prove it because there is no log file.

Really rough for sure, but will at least give me something to go to with for showing the head how it's changing.

well I know what I'm putting together tomorrow

Haven't used it really - but the way it looks is like it covers the whole morning session - which for us is periods 1-3, so I assumed that's how it worked - I'll check with my Attendance Officer though. It wasn't working right when we had it set up for all of sixth form, but I haven't heard any complaints about it from my head of sixth since we moved it to just doing it for the students that have earned it (those above target in all subjects, with excellent lesson attendance).

Looking at it, if your morning range covers lesson 2 or 3, and you tick "Change Session Unexplained Absences to Late when...", and then choose U as your late code you want, it should work. I know ours change to L's currently (which is what we have set in that field). You could try ticking the box above as well - where it copies lesson marks to session, but I'm not sure what that would actually do. I know for our sixth form students we have earliest marks on for those that have earned it, and they don't have to go to registration - if their first lesson is Period 4, and they are marked in there, it writes back to morning registration as well.

If you open the discover group up in SIMS, you should be able to change their group dates - but that'd be more work than if you just made UDGs

we use UDGs for this - I have discover groups set up as well, but my attendance officer prefers the UDGs

well for the first year it won't matter - as the English Exam they take carries some Literature study in it - at least that's what the fact sheet from the gov says, and I'm just trying to give our Head something to look at to prepare him for how different it looks compared to our current methods.

@davidpott Exactly what I did, although as I only have y9s not separated to eng and eng+lit yet, didn't get that set up, so props to you on that, I'll make sure to take that in when we split them off in a couple months. Edited to add: Set yourself up a new gradeset using the p8 points, aspects to hold them, and a mark sheet to copypasta the grades from one to another, take about an hour or so, but you'll need it soon enough

@PhilNeal Either I've way oversimplified this, or I'm confused by what your experts consider to be a convoluted mess! I've got Max 1-6 columns set up pulling in my top 6 Ebacc scores, I then have other 1-3 Max columns pulling from EBacc Max 4-6, as well as my other subjects. I've doubled English, throw it all together and get my scores. Seems far less convoluted than the 60 step process I was sent on how to set up tracking the EBacc as the nested if statements treat a blank space as greater than a number (which still isn't 100% accurate, but by now I know who my 4 or so false positives are)

@Seb1780, you put me onto the right way of doing it - I just need to include the Max 1, 2, and 3 columns in my 4, 5, and 6 checked columns. @PhilNeal, I appreciate that we won't have to report on it until next year, but I have Y9s that are choosing their options, and will start those options in May/June when the Y11s leave for study break, and would like to see what they look like. I also know that it's not been completely defined yet, but it has basically been frameworked, so it's easy enough to get a start on it. As for the edge bits that would need hardcoding, I'm not sure what those would be - it seems to be a very simple measurement, and outside of the issue I was having above, I think I'll be able to get it set up today. Can you explain what you mean?

I don't get any bounces, but one of the first things I did when I took over Schoolcomms was clean up all of the data errors. I'd suggest that if you turned off the option to have reply messages go to you (under manage users, then your user), the bounce would instead show up in the Inbox of Schoolcomms, which would tell you who the parent was. Would force you to go through the inbox, but that's something I do anyways just to make sure anything that comes in gets to the people it needs to.