jmc

Oh- and by the way.................. When a timetable is rolled forward, it seems to lose the connection between events and virtual groups which makes later maintenance and certain printouts (such as Master Class) a nightmare. When you look at a typical matrix, after rolling forward, all of the events are 'piled on top of each other' in an unassigned column at the right of the matrix! I seem to recall problems with the naming of teaching groups as well.

Here in Birmingham, we did start with the idea of starting the new dataset early. This would be the neatest solution as it actually reflects the reality of what was happening in a school. If, indeed, it is possible, this would be good news all round. However, we dismissed this solution because of complications with stats in general and Census in particular. I can't remember all of the details but I'm sure that there were problems with attendance and exclusions. In particular, as I understand it, the Autumn census reports on all exclusions from the Summer term and an early end to the dataset might affect this number. There maybe other subtle issues. For instance, if there's a sixth form, I'm not sure how QAMS will be affected.

I'm afraid that things are rather more complex than you all imagine. You cannot successfuly integrate a timetable into a different dataset. Rolling timetables forward from one dataset to another is a nightmare and not to be recommended. You do use 'weeks' to allow the new timetable to be started in the current dataset but effectively, the new timetable has to be entered twice. Once in the current dataset and again in the new dataset. Timetabling a different timetable in a dataset that already has a timetable is difficult as both sets of events will often 'pop up' in the screens that are usually empty. You also have to cope with an entirely new set of teaching groups for the new start but you can't get rid of the old ones for a number of reasons. Several schools in Birmingham have done this in the last couple of years. One did it 'manually' two years ago and found it quite difficult. Since then the schools that have needed this have done it with the support of Link2ICT. They did their new timetable in the new dataset as per normal and then Link2ICT SQLed the new timetable back into the current dataset for the weeks at the end of the year. This keeps the timetabling process as simple as possible and allows a relatively stress free switch over. (Oh by the way, I should mention that I work for Link2ICT for part of the week)