ProjectO

Some days its seems as if I am doing nothing other than looking for random SIMS questions.... When I looked at student lists (reports --> student list --> class lists), I thought that adding a column from the data area (curriculum, classes) would broadly replicate a really complex report we use to produce a grid overview of all subject classes for a year group. (I know that I can also do this one by one using subject classes BUT) does anyone know how SIMS generates the numbering i.e. class 1, class 2 etc I'm somewhat baffled!

We have set up aspects for each subject (e.g. English mark, Science mark) and result sets for each reporting session (monthly for all students and weekly for some). I am trying to design, in advance, a series of reports to allow us to present results (for internal review) along the lines of: 1. September test results in [subject] for year group, alphabetical and in rank order 2. September test results in [subject] by class, alphabetical and in rank order 3. September test results in all subjects for year group, alphabetical and in rank order I am spending a bit of time trying to filter the report and it looks like I will have to create multiple variations of it - select result set at run time / select subject at run time / select year group at run time etc. It is also running quite slowly due to the number of queries in it. This is proving difficult to explain internally because the legacy system (Access - based and set up 10+ years ago) had a "simple" query that printed all of these reports. This appears to compare rather favourably to some staff when the first weekly report print (200 students) took over an hour to process / print. Is there a more straightforward way to do this?

I have been asked 'how soon' teachers can use SIMS as their "roll book" i.e. attendance register but also comments on HW, equipment etc BUT not visible to other staff (and yes, I know that somewhat misses the entire point of SIMS...) It strikes me that lesson monitor could be used easily but this allows "others" to see the data so I wondered about a "generic" marksheet that will not be used for reporting (and I know that the data will still technically be accessible to others - but relatively behind the scense). Something like gradeset for HW, uniform, equipment and a couple of comment fields? Am I reinventing the wheel??

I now know that I am missing something obvious! Please tell me how to design a report that lists students with exam results so that I can vary it to present by subject, by year, in ranked order etc...

We have a setup where certain classes attend alternative lessons for 3 week blocks e.g. instead of Maths, go to Film Studies for 3 weeks "in your Maths" lessons. There are eight of these alternative modules running throughout the year on a rotating basis. They do not currently feature in SIMS / NovaT6 but we are interested in the possibilities... Our support company suggested 'alternative curriculum' but surely this involves allocating students on an indivdual period by period basis? This would be enormous effort on an ongoing basis. I am tempted by the rotate timetabled staff / room option - I think we could add the additional alternative modules in the relevant blocks in Nova T6, effectively populate with no students and then set up a year's worth of rotations in advance (or at least a term). I am not sure what would happen to marksheets, attendance etc. I would like to think that the 3 week turnaround is not an issue in itself but wonder if there are cleverer ways to address this.... I know it is possible but wonder about the relative effort - views, suggestions and any comparable experience much appreciated!

Thanks vikpaw I have removed the relevant people as Heads of Yr. Issue resolved without unwanted side effects as far as I can tell. And yes, the structures here are a little unusual in places but they do appear to work. I am hoping to have SIMS replicate the functionality of the legacy system initially and then slowly and carefully release additional functionality. As mentioned earlier, there is great sensitivity about sharing student data at the moment but I hope to calm this to allow the staff to utilise SIMS and "open up" to the level I've experienced in every other school I've dealt with.

Thank you vikpaw This is beginning to become clearer. Allow me to provide some more context - our "registration tutors" act as most schools would expect from heads of year. They register the entire year group and there is no "individual" tutor group or the more common interpretation of reg tutor (to 20 -30 students). Due to their role, they are also identified as heads of yr on the pastoral structure, although there is (almost) no-one else with a "pastoral" remit. I am beginning to suspect that their double role of reg tutor and Head of Yr is causing our difficulty. Presumably reg tutor is sufficient to register (c. 200) students. My original comment referred to the widespread wariness about sharing data (which I don't really understand in a school but...)

No, they are in class teacher, attendance operator and reg tutor groups.

We are (relatively happily) one week into the new school year using SIMS for the first time. As we approach a reporting session for one year group, a registration tutor has notcied that she can see the marksheets for all teachers of her class rather than just the marksheets for her own classes. The comprehensive nature of SIMS leaves some staff wary (perhaps unnecessarily so) of colleagues "seeing" their assessment data. Permissions are set to allow reg tutors to view only their own marksheet data. I would expect that this would prevent the above happening. Am I missing something? (or, more accurately, what am I missing?) I would like to address this before reporting sessions for other year groups...

(With thanks to those who responded to previous queries) We began the new school year on Monday with first 'full' use of SIMS core plus lesson monitor... most staff are quite impressed... those of us centrally involved feeling relatively pleased with 'successful' solutions to various teething niggles with timetable... Then, with several senior staff working on class changes, SIMS crashes regularly!! Looking at the server, the disk is partitioned to 40Gb C: and hundreds of Gb E: intended for data. SIMS is installed on C: but also backs up to c: so we are left with approx 3Gb free. Is this a likely cause of our difficulties? and, more importantly, how can we change the drive SIMS uses for backup? And on an issue only vaguely related, why on earth do teachers not see the actual class searched for, when they use 'class list'? It prints fine and previews OK but the first screen shows a fairly random class list - perhaps the last one looked at!!

Thanks Matt40K - one of my challenges is that I probably know SIMS better than my (third party) support team. Does anyone have views on using the address housekeeping and merge functionality to improve the match? I am reluctant to use relatively "advanced" functionality while the widespread use of SIMS is in its infancy across the school. One of my key objectives here is to build confidence... (so I could live, as a once off, with trying a manual tidy up)

(In our first year running SIMS) we have had someone input contact addresses etc. We have realised that these are not always linked (by SIMS) to the students' address although they look the same. Is there any way to improve this without changing all addresses? and if this is needed, is there good practice to avoid this happening in the future? We are not in the UK so do not used postcodes.

Thanks! We had not set up am & pm reg periods. We have now done so and solved the problem. One follow on question - we actually use pm reg only for statutory attendance (not in the UK) but Lesson Monitor seesm to insist on am and pm. Is is possible for us to address this to prevent a (not genuine) am reg appearing for those staff affected?

We have installed Lesson Monitor for the first time. Today, as staff return, it appears that the registration group 'overrides' other classes on the 'my classes' bar. How can I give registration tutors access to their normal teaching classes here? Thanks in advance!

Thank you botj. For the record, the external timetabler did indeed allocate rooms from the classes screen. We have removed them there (no impact on block build / schedule) and updated / allocated from the timetable / new / classeswithout rooms which solved our immediate issue. We have also resolved not to allocate rooms in the curriculum plan in future!! Similar tidy-up activity has led us to set class labels for some classes where the systematic labels were somewhat confusing - how do we print these when in SIMS? We can switch between subject and class code on screen but only short codes actually print!

Our somewhat unusual timetable has been built in NovaT6 by our external support company with some input from Capita. End result seesm fine but a significant minority of room allocations have changed in the interim. How can I update rooming without risking unbuilding blocks? Ta!

Thank you! I think this is the exact point she has overlooked. I am frequently reminded that it takes time for colleagues (relatively new to SIMS) to appreciate the significant number of choices available...

In a (belated) follow up to this..... I have created new logically named courses using the new logically named subjects from an early import of the timetable. A colleague is finding it difficult to update marksheets etc with the new courses (old subjects still the only choices available and changing the date or academic year does not appear to help - could we improve on this by "applying" the timetable? Surely she does not need to re-create the templates from scratch? {With apologies for the lack of detail - I have been at some distance from this area for some time}

I am working to support a (non-UK) school struggling to fully introduce SIMS for Sept 2012 after failing to resolve various issues in 2011-12. Their technical support company officially supports SIMS but is still building their experience with the product. I have identified two distinct timetabling realities that the company are finding difficult to model in NovaT6. There is a two-week timetable cycle where only Wednesdays differ. 1. "full" and "half" subjects (think similar to short GCSEs) There are periods that contain both full and half courses e.g. French (full), Geography (full), Geography (half), History (half), Biology (half) etc. Over two periods on different days, students may take a full subject (in all 10 periods per fortnight) or they may take a half-subject and any other half-subject (5 periods and 5 periods). e.g. student could take full Geog, or full French, or half Geog AND half Hist, or half Hist AND half Biology. The person building this in NovaT is attempting to do so with one block but this results in curriculum assignment problems as a student can be allocated only to one subject. I would be grateful for any insights or directions to point the Nova timetabler! I thought that two blocks, with full subjects in both, could work but the support person seems to be doing everything to avoid this. I have no major preference at this stage but do need a solution! 2. Carousel "taken from" other subject PSE and a couple of other subjects are timetabled (in reality not in SIMS yet) to coincide with e.g. English i.e. PSE 1 = Eng 1, etc. This means that over 10 days, every group of students has 8 English lessons and 2 PSE. On MonA, Eng 1 & Eng 2 have PSE instead of Eng; on TueA, Eng 3 & Eng 4 have PSE etc. This strikes me as different to issue 1 but, as currently built in NovaT, the same problem arises with curriculum assignment. There are a number of (lesser?) issues as well but these two are having a significant impact on related activities and delaying academic promotion rules etc as class names are still up for grabs. We will also have to manually populate classes that did not exist in last year's timetable i.e numerous from each of the above scenarios. Thank you in advance!

I am working with a (non-UK) school cleaning up / reconfiguring their installation for a new September start with SIMS. Technical support etc remains with their existing contractor who is developing the timetable in NovaT6. My question is really for the purpose of planning remaining onsite work by predicting the scale of any issues. I will need to set up relevant courses again. Currently we have duplicate subjects available in Course Manager - probably relating to multiple imports of changing timetable configurations in the past. The timetable for the new academic year is clear, uses more intuitive 2 character codes etc but is being worked on completely independently of the school SIMS installation. I am pushing for an imminent import to SIMS of a draft timetable in order to quantify remaining clean-up operations. This will probably result in two scenarios:- 1. New (tidy) subject codes replace existing (messy & multiple) subject codes (significant step forward!!) or 2. New subject codes are added to existing multiple subject codes (new codes can be used to create courses but subject list remains of low quaity). Does anyone have experience of this? Which scenario is more likely? and if it is scenario 2, how can I delete unwanted subjects? All of this obviously has an impact on remaining work to finalise marksheets & reports by associating with courses, classes etc. Thanks!

Thanks both! I am beginning to suspect that I will have to accept the local configuration 'as is'. The school does assess and report on 3 different elements of student performance per subject on a monthly basis for all students and on a weekly basis for some. At least the current config of SIMS uses result sets for each of these aspects, which appears to offer some protection for the future... When we review our pilot run later this month, we can review and I might be able to encourage some (non technology-based) reflection on how the school manages assessment and reporting. It certainly is quite different to any UK model in my experience (but it does appear to work for them).

Thanks Ecclesbury Your response supports my initial reaction that the current configuration is needlessly complex. For clarity, the legacy system (Access-based and grown organically over 10+ years but "much-loved") is used for some weekly assessments with 3 'aspects' per subject. The in-school staff have endeavoured to replicate this in SIMS but, perhaps, without a full appreciation of the potential / functionality of SIMS. If I understand your suggestion correctly, we could use 3 aspects per subject (for the entire year or multiple years regardless of how frequent reporting takes place) and associate these only with result sets defined for each reporting period. This would mean that administration / maintenance of the system deals primarily with result sets on an ongoing / regular basis. Is it then possible to design a single set of reports that use result set as a variable for each report run? and how straightforward is this? My concern is that I will be in support role for the immediate future only and, as a non UK school, there is limited other support available. If possible, I would like to enable sustainable (independent) use of the system and separately encourage the school to schedule regular (possibly external) review periods.

Hello... I'm started supporting a secondary school new to SIMS. They issue very frequent reports to parents (monthly, and weekly in some cases). They have set up marksheets with discrete aspects for each reporting period i.e. similar to english comment 1 wk 1, english comment 2 wk 1.... english comment 1 wk 2, english comment 2 wk 2 etc etc. for 12+ subjects multipled by potentially every school week. Current setup associates each of these with a result set. This was on advice from Capita but I do not know how well they understood the school systems. We are not in the UK. This strikes me as very fragmented and does not facilitate analysis of specific issues over time. Question, if we don't use result sets in this way, can I ensure that: (i) reports for a specific date show a blank rather than the data from the previous assessment date - where a teacher has not input latest data, or it is not available (ii) historic reports are available where these are requested - e.g. John's report from March 15? Many thanks