chrisateen

Also be interested in knowing. Perfer to go direct as we can log cases online as the support we have seems much slower than going direct

Hi All I'm currently a data manager but one of the things I will love to do is understand how the SIMS SQL database work and possibly learn how to write basic scripts using commandreporter and maybe one day be able to write small scripts that enables me to do things I'm unable to do. Plus it would help me career wise as high paying Data Manager roles are asking for experience with SQL and I may end up changing careers and become a programmer. I just wanted to ask: * is there documentation/ what programming language do I need to write scripts in commandreporter * do you think the SIMS Technical courses on Installing and Configuring the SQL database useful for me to attend with me only having data management knowledge * What advice or stuff or training could I do if I'm interested in doing the more technical stuff with SIMS or looking to possibly become a programmer in the future Thanks for your advice

Hi All I need a bit of advice. I have noticed that someone is deleting things on SIMS that I'm doing. Now there may be a tiny wenny chance that something is wrong with the database/with SIMS but I need to make sure for my own protection that someone is not trying to get me into trouble. I went into Focus - System Manager - User Acess Log to see if I can find anything but all it tell me is that someone logged into SIMS but not details of what they have done in SIMS. Could anyone help me and advice me on the best way of getting to the bottom of this as this is a new job as well and I'm afraid that if this continues it is not only going to create extra work but also I will get into trouble. Thanks

TBH in terms of salary I just want a salary/job in which I can live a comfortable lifestyle but also enjoy what i do at the same time. Problem with me working in Big Corporate companies is that I got a 2.2 degree and most big companies ask for a 2.1 degree.

Analysing data to determine how to shape public policy is exactly the sort of things that people who did my course go into (e.g many people who did my course got a place on the civil service graduate scheme).

My degree is in Social Policy (long story behind how I end up studying this course) and policy is not something that I want to go into. As I have no IT qualifications (except for an A Level in Computing) I'm thinking I may need to do a masters to give me relevant qualifications that would help me get a job in software engineering in the future

Hi All After only a year since uni of being a Data Person in a school it made me start to think of what sort of people make the best data mangers so I have a question for you all; 1) Are Statisticians/Mathematicians or IT/Programming the best sort of people to be school Data Managers 2) Can someone with little IT/Excel skills still become good data managers 3) Do you need good IT/Programming Skills to be able to manage and develop an MIS System (assuming an IT person is the one who does installations, upgrades e.t.C) 4) Is it hard to recruit and find good data managers or its a job in which with a few years experience its easy to get jobs in other schools as there is very few data managers out there 5) After a couple of years of experience can School Data Mangers become almost indispensable Partially why I am asking is because I've only being doing this sort of job for less than a year now. What surprised me though was how quickly it took me to get another job when we are in an economy in which it takes most people at least 6 months - 1 year to find a job even with years of experience. Also I'm thinking about my future and whether or not I want to continue being a Data Manager for the rest of my career or do a masters conversion course or go into software engineering but whether I stay as a data manger depends on whether or not in 5 - 6 years time I can move on to an even higher paying job

Thanks Guys. That is what I thought. Its very easy for people to say that you can do stuff but when you ask them what they have done they fail to say how it's been done. Plus I'm sure no one in my school will be willing to manually update the behaviour points.

Hi all I need help again Someone told me that there is a way that SIMS will automatically give points to any student who is on time and deduct points for any student who is marked late on the register. (obviously people are good at telling you that SIMS can do stuff but can't tell you how it is done) I have looked everywhere in SIMS to see if there is way to do this and couldn't find it. So does anyone on here know who to do it Thanks

Thanks again. The most important thing is that I can print Statement of Results and do analysis with them Via the Marksheets and SIMS Examiner

If you add grades this way on results day would it automatically pull through into SIMS and also would it appear on the candidate's statement of results. The reason I asked is that I tested it for a candidate and I cannot see the grade when I go into the student's examinations section in SIMS nor does it show on the student's statement of results

Thanks very much for that. This is exactly what I needed. I initially tried to enter Exam Results by going into Tools - External Results- Manual entry but I could not assign points to a Grade. Do you know if we need to do the SIMS Upgrade before results day or after results day? Our school has not yet done the Summer Upgrade (we are still using the Spring Release).

Hi All I desperatly need some help. I'm trying to import BTEC basedata into SIMS so that I can manually enter the results via the Marksheet. I have tried to get the Examinations Officer to sort this out but is not being very helpful. I want to do this myself but do not have access to the Edexcel website to download the file I need to import the data. Can someone please post the basedata file so that I can do this myself. The file name is S7B13_15.X01 Thanks

Hi All I'm here again asking for advice. Just a background knowledge about myself. I left uni last summer and started my role in the current school that I am. We were using a terrible system and so me and my former manager decided to set up SIMS Assessment Manager. Therefore since xmas I have single handedly set up all the marksheets and analysis by myself. Recently though I got a job in a school closer to home which gives me line management responsibilities and paid a huge amount more that my current job but I will still be doing the data stuff in my new job as well. As I only have a few weeks left till I leave (a lot of set up work still needs to be done in SIMS) one of the things I am going to do is set up the Exam Analysis for GCSE results. So i have a couple of questions 1) How do you do exam results analysis? My current school use to do them on a spreadsheet in which they calculated the No of A* - C, the residuals and if they meet their target grade (and this was done for each class in year 11). My plan this year was to create a marksheet in which all the exam aspects are in there and it calculates the residuals and the % of A* - C's. Then each teacher will have their own marksheet for their year 11 class. I also plan to use the group and aspect analysis in SIMS to show me the number of A*, A, B,C,D's e.t.c. Do people do exam analysis in the marksheets or do they do it another way? 2) For the post 16 grade sets do you guys also use QCF points instead of UCAS Points as I know average points score are based on QCF points and also how do you do Post 16 exam analysis as well 2) Do people use SISRA in their current role? My new job currently uses SISRA but I'm always the fan of using SIMS to do as much as possible and then once everything is exhausted then they can use other packages afterwards. I'm hoping to set things up in the SIMS marksheets in my new job so I wanted to ask is there certain things that SISRA can do that neither SIMS and Discover cannot do? 4) Also do you have multiple aspects for the BTEC. So For Example in a BTEC Level 2 Sports Studies Marksheet you will have a certificate column, extended certificate column, diploma column and then the extended diploma column. Also with the performance Table reforms I'm still confused about who many GCSE grades BTEC's are equivalent to. So say for example a kid did the Full BTEC Extended Diploma in Health & Social Care will it still count as 4 GCSE's in the 2013 performance tables? Thanks for your help

Thanks for the advice. I decided to go with SIMS intouch in the end just because of how well it integrates with SIMS in particular the behaviour module of SIMS. Plus I am the kind of person who prefers using one system for everything

Maybe freeing up some memory in your computer my help as well as a teacher had a similar error message. They had to free up some memory in their computer hard drive and it worked

I know about the role in SIMS but couldn't find a way to create my own role in SIMS. Like you said I may have to purchase a third party software. I'm currently trying to decide between Schoolcomms and Sims InTouch

We are in the process of setting SIMS behavior in our school. What we want to do is when teachers send a behavior message, rather than staff searching for staff members to send the message to is to create a group of staff members in SIMS so teachers can send messages to that group of staff members. Is it possible to do that in SIMS or do we need to purchase another software such as Schoolcomms or SIMS InTouch?

I finally managed to do it myself. I totally forgot that you can add a filter in the data field section. Thanks for your help though

I managed to do Report in a web page format which is better than nothing but for some reason when I select Word Format it give me an error message

Hi All As usual I need help again. I would like to generate a report in SIMS that has all the student comments in one table onto a word document so that subject leaders can quickly and easily check the reports comments (we use the marksheets to do the reports and NOT comments bank). I know we can export marksheets into excel but reading comments in excel is not that easy. If there are report I can run on SIMS that can do this that will only take me 30 seconds to do instead of me having to do some other stuff in excel and word Thanks

Ooops didn't realise

Deleting the marksheet then readding them on seems to have done the trick thanks

Hi I need help again For some reason a head of department cannot see all her year 9 classes Marksheets for Some Reason. Some of them Show up but others don't. When I then look at her overall Marksheet all the kids including the classes that she cannot see comes up as well. I checked course manager and everything so far seems ok. I know we have a new senior teaching staff doing the timetable and since the person has done some timetable changes there has been a few problems and I think this problem may be due to a Timetable issue Thanks for your help

The person from Capita who showed me how to do marksheets got us to set comments within the Marksheets. The reason I asked is that one teacher asked me why don't we use Comments Banks to do the reports instead. From what you said I might as well stick to marksheets as they are flexible on a marksheet