jenny_urey

give us a bell on the support desk and we can point you in the right direction. Cheers Jenny - PARS Training Officer

Following on from previous threads... PARS (TASC Software) and FROG do work together - please give the PARS support desk a ring to discuss. Cant go into too much detail about our partnership on a forum however please feel free to speak to the office so we can explain further. Cant identify you and obviously speak to many people in your area. .... I am the training officer for PARS if you dont recognise my name. Cheers!

Okey dokey.... I have noticed that people seem to get advice for software they use on here. Surprised how slow some suppliers are at reacting! (no names mentioned of course) rather shocking Regards Jenny

Just to finish off... (sorry) Many schools are sticking with an am registration with their form tutor and dropping the pm register period of usually 5 mins. The pm session register is taken during the first lesson after lunch. Schools can be large and it can take students 5 mins to walk one end of the school to the other so a 5 min afternoon reg is not practical. It also stops students walking around the school, gives extra learning time. I have also had a couple of schools who had issues with truancy and now have their pm form register at the end of the day. This has stopped students skipping classes in afternoons and going home early. It has also helped prevent students missing buses after schools as lesson teachers have not held then back. Attendance policies and best practise can differ and no two schools are the same. What works in one school may not necessarily work in another.

The following is based on my experience with schools using our PARS electronic attendance however should apply to you also: ) Am period mapped to period 1 assembly as you could a lesson. 2) PDA is usually the route however once again depends on your electronic attendance. If out of wireless area, PDAs can be sync'd. If PDA not feasilble then either use a nearby / office PC to register or use a paper register at the begining of the lesson and get a student to the run the register to the office for your attendance officer to enter. 3) No point in using an am register for a fire. What happens if a student arrives late for school yet not in the fire assembly yard? Your electronic attendance should have a section for fire so you can see up to date registration data. You should be able to have this data available on a removable device(s) ie laptop, pda, tablet and if anyone missing in the assembly area then you can straight away see a list of students who have been absent all day. 4) My advice is always to do a year at a time- yr7 is always nice to start. No point choosing teachers to pilot as other teachers will complain. As soon as all teachers n that year are happy and confident then you should hear a buzz in the staffroom and other teachers are more willing to have a go. You will alwas be faced with negativity when introducing a new system into a school however I'm sure you are aware of that. If anybody else has any pitfalls that I haven't thought of that would be useful if you could mention those also.... You will always find a couple of teachers who will be reluctant in taking their registers and these need to be picked out early and trained further. My motto is attendance data is only as good as its worst marker! If your system allows, run a missing registers report daily and keep on top of it. My suggestion here is make sure the curriculum leaders are fully trained on the system, make sure they train their team. if there are missing registers let them deal with it... if a teacher is not taking registers properly it means the subject attendance results will be incorrect (missing marks are classed as unauthorised absence) - this will also mean the curiculum leader will be questionned why his/her subject attendance is low and could also compromise their postion as a senior team leader. Plus when you have the DCFS knocking on your dor asking about your subject attendance you need to be prepared wth good results. Attendance officers can sometimes have a mare chasing missing registers and trying to get teachers to do them ontime which can stop them doing other jobs. They need the help of senior management for this as they can feel like they are banging their head against a brick wall. I do despair when I visit schools and they say 'I cant get my teachers to take their registers'.... I see it from all points of view, positives and negatives to taking registers however the ultimate question is; who is managing your school? This is about educating and improving our students in a safe and managed environment. ....... As you can probably tell i'm passionate about what I do and schools I work with getting good results and with comments like this its rather annoying! I'm working from home and cant see if its our software you have... we do have a St Bedes although i'm not sure you are from the same school?!? If you are, please send me an email and I can send you step by step tutor guides and attendance handbooks... Jenny Urey PARS Training Officer TASC Software

oops........ blush... yes sorry

oops........ blush... yes sorry

Pete; I am working from home today although havent got much done as I've ended up reading though this site! Back in the office tomorrow and I will put this to my technical guys to see what they suggest if thats ok. Always interested in things like this as I may be asked whilst onsite at another school. Will keep you posted

Easy ...Use PARS for lesson registration! Easy for teachers to use, writes data back to SIMS immediately (no overnight update required), user permissions can be restricted allowing teachers to: take registers for any day or just today option to not change marks when register closed or change marks Change marks for any groups or just their own send alerts to teachers with missing registers report and analysis on subject attendance aswell as session (DCFS reqt), pattern lesson absence, post reg truants, .......100s reports to choose from or design your own. Behavour and grading also from register. Excellent support, excellent training (thats me!) Aswell as being very user friendly (if your teachers can't use it then you are stuck! - results are only as good as your worst marker!) you can easily analyse data enabling schools to improve attendance which inturn improves assessment results. ........It's also VERY cost effective!! I am however very biaised as I am the PARS training officer at TASC Software and if I can't shout out and be proud of what we do then I wouldnt be there. :0) It would be nice if you use PARS if you could give your experiences as our schools learn of our product via word of mouth as to try and explain exactly everything it does in a short space is just not possible. PARS is (as defined by a senior DFES representative) the Rolls Royce of electrionic attendance and that is before you look at the messaging, behaviour referral system, detention registers, assessment reports..... Aaaaghhh .... I cant stop writing..... Jenny Urey Training Officer

Thats a pain! Would be good if your LEA could sort that out with their ISP as it can reduce truancy and help punctuality if you are using it for attendance. Its also very costs efective particulary when you start comparing the cost of a text with the price of a stamp/envelope/paper/ink.... School politics rule 80S

.... dont forget to update the photos! A big scruffy hairy sixth former with attitude is not always best pleased when they still see a picture of themselves in a nice tidy uniform, hairless and smiling happily when they started Yr7!

Hi Nick Are you messages for attendance and/or behaviour messaging... we work alongside a company called http://www.textanywhere.com which some of our schools use. 15% discount for education and there support and account manager has not let us down. Textanywhere is a SMS provider and you dont need our software to use it and if you do use our software then there is a communication link allowing all SMS history to be tracked

will get this checked out. Please can you email me your school name so I can sort it for you. Thanks Jenny

We ae SIMS partners and as well as providing classroom management software, we also write extractors for various partners in education; what data do you want to generate? We may be able to help you. Mail me if you want further information... will help if i can. Jenny Training Officer

As a premier partner of SIMS, I would like to comment on the fact that our helpdesk and support is fanblinckintastic (a technical term obviously). I work at many schools in the UK who obviously have SIMS; negative comments regarding SIMS support is very rare. Jenny Urey - PARS Training Officer (oops name dropped)

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Yes it can be done.....Some of our schools use PARS on a MAC infrastructure successfully entering attendance data which writes back to SIMS within seconds. Grading and behaviour data can also be entered, analysed and reported on as usual. Jenny Urey PARS Training Officer TASC Software

Yes it can be done.....Some of our schools use PARS on a MAC infrastructure successfully entering attendance data which writes back to SIMS within seconds. Grading and behaviour data can also be entered, analysed and reported on as usual. Jenny Urey PARS Training Officer TASC Software

mattpant; not sure which school in Shropshire you are. Do you ever speak to Christine Kerry EWO? I do work with may schools in Shropshire as Training Officer for a particular company. If you want to 'share experiences' please email me and I will put you in touch with schools in the area who we work with you can advise you.

PARS des have a cover section which allows teachers to see what classes they are covering via their timetable on the homepage; if you cant see this option it means you dont have permissions and they will need updating. If you dont have PARS then NOVA-T (SIMS) cover planning is very good and there is no point in buying an extra software package just for this. Jenny Urey Training Officer

Due to new coding in August SIMS update this has had to be updated when logging in. Give the support guys a ring at PARS 01902 824281 they will explain for you. Jenny

.. If you want to see your registers for the day via Pocket PARS you will see an icon on the left hand side of the register marks (small grid icon) and when you click this you can see the registers. ... pocket pars is a data entry device and any further attendance / grading or behaviour reports from PARS should be generated from full PARS on an internal PC. There are limitations using PDAs due to the size of memory. Hope ths helps Jenny Training Officer

.. If you want to see your registers for the day via Pocket PARS you will see an icon on the left hand side of the register marks (small grid icon) and when you click this you can see the registers. ... pocket pars is a data entry device and any further attendance / grading or behaviour reports from PARS should be generated from full PARS on an internal PC. There are limitations using PDAs due to the size of memory. Hope ths helps Jenny Training Officer

Best keeping it switched off via user permissions in system management for security purposes. Is ok if your in a locked technical room or office however not the best option if teachers forget to log off and students can 'attack!'

Hi Not sure if this have been resolved as yet; yes we (PARS) do have the swipe / signing in option for sixth form and I understand your Head of Sixth wants to check heads however you have the added bonus... if you dont swipe you dont get paid. If swipe cards are inconvenient and you find pupils start to loose them then you have the Biometric route; finger, retenal ... Do you use our EMA option also? If not, firstly make sure you have the permissions in System Management. EMA in PARS will allow you to see all attendance and behaviour information allowing you to assess whether you agree to pay. When you are about to enrol a student, contact EMA and they will give you any links required and also check that all is ok on 1st enrollment so you can continue to enter the rest of the students with no issues. Jenny