Willzzz

In my version I don't have this file, I only have a file called ExcelStandardList.xls which doesn't contain any macros at all. Can anyone link a copy of ReportData.xls please?

A VLE is a tool for sharing course content and tests. A learning platform is an extension to a MIS to share data about students.

Forget what I said earlier 1) Export address line then replace ", " with Chr(10) Using the individual address parts is awkward when some of them are blank isn't it?

OK I have a solution, not very elegant but it works! I think there is a better way still.. 1) export address block to word 2) replace ^p with a unique string (eg CRLF) 3) copy paste into excel 4) run this macro Sub ReplaceCRLF() Cells.Replace What:="CRLF", Replacement:=Chr(10), LookAt:=xlPart, _ SearchOrder:=xlByRows End Sub

Yes we have the same problem, it is very strange as it used to work fine. In fact we had a time when it worked on certain computers, but not others. I believe there is a way around it, you need to do a find and replace on the incorrect newline character and replace it with the correct newline character. Someone showed me the other day, but they aren't in today :/

Is this a technical or a legal question?

Here is a file I have produced for our tutors, this is a small part of what my system does, but I think this is the sort of thing you are trying to produce. Hopefully SIMS can produce something similar, it just isn't easy figuring out how. Using Reports student ks3.doc

I have to agree, you can have pretty buttons sure, but swirls, why? The only thing I care about is how easy the interface is to use, maybe if this was a game designed for children swirls would be appropriate. The documentation screen, also very pretty, but is it another triumph of style over substance? What is the difference between a "help sheet" and a "reference sheet"? What is the difference between a "guide" and a "tutorial"? Is it just to make the page look full?

SIMS is ,as any large ongoing project, direly in need of a complete rebuild. I would love to see Capita put some proper resources behind this, or for someone else to produce a really good schools MIS. For the moment I have gone down the web 2.0 route, and have created my own assessment/performance manager/report writer/student portal and an IEP style system that is used for every student in the college. The slight problems arise when trying to communicate with SIMS, but I have scripts that pull data over from SIMS in a way functionally similar to the way NovaT4 (clearly the best part of SIMS) does. Sadly the SLT aren't brilliantly supportive, but the teaching staff are generally very positive. The SLT are worried what will happen when I bugger off to greener pastures, but quite frankly there are far more web programmers out there than SIMS specialists.

Our SENCO doesn't like it, it really does very little, yet still manages to fail from time to time.

OK Several options here: 1) A report with VBA macros, this isn't as daunting as it sounds really. SIMS will output all the data as a list, you just need a macro to loop through each student, and then through each subject. What is useful is that you can run a report directly from the student details page, and it will return data only for that student. 2) An individual report, the drawback is that ironically SIMS doesn't make it easy to run a report for an individual student. It would be awesome if you run an individual report on the fly from the student details page, like you can with STAR reports. 3) The full on database solution. The system I am running here is an SQL database with a web front end. It duplicates a lot of the SIMS functionality only in a logical, user friendly, modular, customisable way. SIMS annoys the hell out of me, and quite frankly the time I have spent creating my own system I have recouped in such a short time span compared to thrashing away at SIMS until it eventually works. Please let me know if you are interested in how this works.

How about a cool snazzy web 2.0 MIS?

If only CAPITA were more open to the idea of people writing their own software that would work alongside SIMS, then no school need ever worry about lack of functionality. I suspect that a lot of this is due to the fact that SIMS is a bit a of a mess under the hood. This is the case with most software that has been gradually evolving over several decades.

In terms of marksheets, I have taught the PE department to use filters. Sometimes they do teach in the groups specified on SIMS, but for outdoor sports they generally teach a population split by gender. So they have 4 pre-defined filters: Population A Boys Population B Boys Population A Girls Population B Girls These filters are used on a marksheet for the whole year group. One thing that does annoy me for the filters is that you cannot actually select "population" or "band" as a filter category. You can get the same effect by selecting the 4/5 PE groups in each population, but it would be nice to be able to select population as a discrete category.

I have used software other than SIMS to create school reports. It would be nice to be able to link these reports to SIMS.