davidpott

I was using Bromcom MAT Vision with a group of schools last month and was impressed. I willhave to investigate Bromcom's ability to host Power BI reports without need the pro license. Is it a Power BI Embedded thing @Damon?

Hi Daniel, You will need a Power BI Pro license everyone you want to share the reports with. RootsSchImp is correct with the alternatives, but given the low cost of the Power BI Pro licenses, I would recommend that any school buys a Power BI pro license for each member of the senior leadership team. Schools only pay £1.70 per user per month for these liceses, so even if there are 10 people in your SLT, it's still less per month than my mobile phone contract. And the benefits far outweigh the price!

A bit late to this thread but... Why not create a Sims Assessment marksheet and avoid the need to write anything back to SIMS? The overall grade column on the marksheet can even be linked to the overall grade in the programme of study marksheets.

Hi Databird The advice about SISRA and 4Matrix is good, but try to design your SIMS marksheets to encourage teachers to analyse their own data as much as possible. Make data entry and data analysis part of the same process. You can show teachers many of the built-in analysis within marksheets, plus you can design marksheets to calculate many of the pupil-level measures (A8, A*-C, Levels of Progress), then use the summary button and grade distribution. Many schools just use SIMS as a data entry tool, then export everything to a third party program. This can effectively de-skill the teachers. I'm a firm believer that teachers should go to senior managers having already done a basic analysis of their own data, not wait for analysis to be handed down 'from on high'. Plus it makes your job easier! David.

The lookup table looks okay to me. Maybe your formula needs checking? Make sure you choose the right aspect when using the lookup formula. You'll need to choose the GCSE aspect. If you choose an aspect that doesn't contain the grades returned by the formula you'll not get any error messages, just no results.

Good advice about the new 1-8 values for the grades A*-G - I've not really taken the implications on board yet...

@tomby I think you've done it! I've just had a play with MAX formulas as you suggest and (with a minor alteration) - it works. I've included the updated advice about doubling the highest score of Eng Lan or Eng Lit, then using the second higher of the two with the Ebacc 'pool' (see https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269438/update_progress_8_measure_secondary_school_accountability_framework_reforms.pdf) The first column is just the math grade - 'as is' Next, a couple of MAX formulae identify the highest and second highest eng lang or lit grade, then doubles the highest. A second set of MAX Ebacc 1 to MAX Ebacc 6 formulas look across the remaining EBacc subjects (but not english or math) A third set of MAX Other 1 to MAX Other 3 formulas look across the second highest english column, the MAX 4, 5 and 6 Ebacc subjects and all the other non EBacc subjects The Progress 6 Column uses a SUM formula to add together MAX EBacc 1 + 2 + 3 and MAX Other 1 + 2+ 3 Finally the Progress 8 column uses a SUM formula to add together Progress 6 + DOUBLE English + Maths Grade I need to go and lie down. What do you think? Forgot to double weight maths - but you get the idea.

The aspect it is asking for is the aspect that will contain the final, converted, grade. For example if you have set up an aspect to hold the highest grade out of a range of grades, then that's the grade you should enter here. It will then ask you to identify the column that contains the marks that need converting. Point it at the column that holds the MAX formula and it should work! Marks to grade formulas take a bit of getting used to but they do save a lot of time and effort in Excel. David.

Remember that if you use a MAX formula against a set of grade columns, the formula will return the points score value of the grade, not the grade itself (eg if the highest grade is a C you'll get 40). You'll then need to use a 'marks to grade' formula to convert the points score back into its grade.