CAM

I swung by the forum to check a (unrelated) PM and find my old haunt with a mudslinging sticky at the top of it. Can people take their corporate wars and personal vendettas somewhere private as it hardly looks professional and is well against the spirit of the MIS forum. We should be working together to share information on using MIS effectively schools, not trying to tear each other apart.

I assume you mean the one in January and not the one on now? Spring Census uses Free School Meals data for funding purposes. Ensure you have your Free School Meal eligibility dates recorded and that anyone who has had FSM in the last six years has that eligibility recorded. Pupil numbers also get recorded for funding so check they are right. Make sure UPN numbers are correct and chase any old UPNs from old schools if it is a temporary UPN (ends in a letter) or is generated by your school (the first 7 numbers will match your DFE and Establishment code). Also this census is used to determine your Performance Tables cohort, so absolutely double, triple, quadruple check the Year 11-13 numbers are correct so you don't get a nasty surprise in Tables Checking later in the year! Anyone with an enrolment date that covers the census day will be recorded as on-roll, so make sure anyone you want is on roll by that date and anyone you don't want is off roll. Otherwise it's a fairly easy census compared to October's Post-16 return. Just keep your data up-to-date as your new admissions come in and you should be good.

F is students who are in Foundation. H is for students who are in Higher. You add them to one or the other. (I'm assuming from the screenshot you are trying to add them to both in the Internal Exams columns?) If you want to be sure that a student is removed, enter N for No Entry to explicitly tell SIMS to remove them.

We are still looking so drop those CVs off!

Having used Arbor for the first time for about a year, I found it already performs better than SIMS in most areas. SIMS is still stronger in timetable for example as Arbor doesn't quite get that bit right when it comes to changing classes, presenting enrolment information clearly, etc. But there are many areas like changing student details or adding events and interventions that show it to be miles ahead of it's ESS counterpart. However, as an all-through school I have seen the gap between Primary and Secondary first-hand. Primary it is fantastic and much of the system is designed around that. Secondary it still needs lots of maturing. Assessments for Secondary can get very complex with the additional needs SLT impose on KS3 and KS4, with effort and predicted grades etc instead of just one grade per class through the year. Secondary is also much more volatile and sometimes assessments and carefully laid plans need changing part-way through the year which isn't always possible without deleting the assessment and it's data and starting again. The workflow for GroupMIS also needs work as it is rather unintuitive. Exams however it is very good. If you have ever tried to set up domestic basedata in SIMS you will love the In-House exams module that beats Exams Organiser hands down. Actually you don't have to play with basedata for the real thing either as Arbor handle that for you. Just remember whatever system you use, you will need to make some alterations to how you approach working with it with different methods, menu routines etc to your former one. That tends to cause the most grind when adopting a new system.

Look up Alternative Curriiculum. You can pull the student from their regular lessons and into the alternative groups. They appear in bright yellow in one of the menu routes (I have been SIMS free for a year and a half now so I can't rember routes off the top of my head any more!)

It will be a relaxing Christmas at least. No work!

Hello! Long time no see. I am moving on from school level to a SEN Trust that wants to grow a bit and they are using Bromcom at the moment. I wanted to know what it's like for tying multiple schools in a MAT together as I have never touched Bromcom before and I'm completely new to it! My recent school used Arbor and I was able to do some good stuff with GroupMIS for centralising stuff and I'd like to do something similar to move away from spreadsheets and into a proper centralised system. I don't get my feet under the new desk until after Christmas so I have time to sit down and catch up on what Bromcom can do before starting (and update my signature again).

I am departing for pastures new and the school is looking for a Data Manager and Exams Officer to replace me. I know you lot can find someone good. https://www.tes.com/jobs/vacancy/exams-and-data-manager-crawley-1740624 The school MIS is Arbor and the wage posted in the thread title is after pro-rata reduction. Located in the Manor Royal business district of Crawley in Sussex, the school is an all-through from Reception up to Year 11 and is part of Aurora Academies Trust, hosting 7 schools across the county of Sussex and linked together with GroupMIS. Knowledge of 4Matrix and FFT Aspire will be a great advantage. Contact [email protected] for further information and discussion.

The critical part is each termly update provides support for the census. If you miss a termly update, you also miss the census module update including the filesets that have a habit of breaking! That means you cannot complete the census. And no, you cannot obtain patches or filesets whilst out of support contracts by asking around on the forum. Just putting that in there before someone asks.

Anyone had Arbor just outright delete the last two hours of work in the Assessment Policy? I had some assessments set up with the wrong dates. OK. Delete them (annoying I can't just change the dates) and set them up again with the right dates. I add them all to the policy, click on a marksheet and the column is greyed out saying "Assessment is not set up." Fine I will delete them one by one and set them up again. Check the marksheet, it works, white column and data can be entered. Annoying, maybe I was adding them too fast? I go for a comfort break. Come back, where was I? Click on a subject and the column is greyed out "An assessment is not set up." Hang on, I did this subject earlier??? No, all the columns I set up Arbor has just greyed them out saying they aren't set up. All the ones I confirmed were set up correctly are gone. Not in Summative Assessment, gone. Even though they are added to the policy. It's driving me round the bend and I don't understand what is going on! If there is one thing SIMS had going for it, the marksheet system was easy to set up. Kind of. This is just confusing.

Update on this, it was resolved by contacting Groupcall who applied a fix to take into account that Arbor doesn't export this column.

I have moved from a SIMS school to an Arbor school and already the Exams process is light-years ahead of SIMS. No fiddling with basedata in a basic Windows 3.11 era interface for example. The census was far better as well. Already I think back to SIMS and how dated and awful the workflows and interface is on that MIS. Actually looking forwards to Internal exams to see how easier that is. Internal basedata on SIMS is a prime example of a broken, messy and complex system that leaves many EOs giving up and using Excel.

I knew this was going to be something weird!!!!! Trust me to dig up strange cases on my first day on the new job! A whole year group column that is hidden from the user called att_StandardYearGroupCode is wrong. Does anyone familiar with Arbor or Groupcall know what this column is?

Just finished uploading mine. Always some third party services that ask for it instead of a connector, you know how education sector goes!

@howartp Thanks - - - Updated - - - @howartp Thanks

OK folks, I'm back in schools again and that means I am back in the MIS forum with the weird technical problems once more! No SIMS this time, I'm using Arbor! Also we need a topic tag for it... I am trying to get it to play nicely with FFT which keeps dumping students in the wrong year group. They have traced the problem to the NC Year in Groupcall Xporter not being the same as the Year group in Arbor. I've run a report in Arbor with Year Group and NC Year as columns but they both match. Has anyone come across this before and knows the cause? I'm completely new to Arbor! Nothing looks out of place but I am not 100% sure how to check and want to make sure it isn't our end before I ring Groupcall again.

Does anyone know how to take a class register in Office 365? I want to dump the whole lot into an Excel file to play with and thought I could use Forms but I have no idea how.

Joined

Latest news. Capita in talks with private equity firm Montagu. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-capita-divestment/uks-capita-in-exclusive-talks-with-pe-firm-montagu-for-ess-sale-idUKKBN2870SA Their portfolio is here. https://www.montagu.com/portfolio/ Includes names like Maplin. Hmmmm. Also what name will they give it the company? Can't keep Capita in the name and probably not a good idea to call it Montagu ESS....

I have been asked to set up panels for attendance, behaviour and achievement on the home pages of staff. I have added myself to the registration tutor group and I am the supervisor for a reg group but it is showing data for the whole school. I also cannot add multiple attendance/behaviour panels and they cannot be configured to look at specific time periods. Is this expected behaviour?

Hard pass. Not worth the risk of cramming into a hall full of people from across the country to nab a few freebies. And we wouldn't be able to go to the pub after.

Down to them if they recycle, ultimately not your business so just move on and let them do what they do.

It's a good idea to avoid moving about during lesson changeover anyway as you end up shepherding a tidal wave of kids! Our school is minimising the changeover though by keeping kids in the same room primary school style except for science labs to do practicals, etc.

Just because staff are legally exempt, it doesn't mean there isn't a company policy to wear one. I also see rail platform and gate staff wearing masks every time I go in the station. Police officers always have masks. I know bus drivers who wear one and find it very irritating when passengers argue about it when they come on without a mask. It's really not that hard to wear a mask! You can enforce the wearing of one in school, if someone is exempt then it's down to your SLT to let people know. Every kid that comes into my exam hall gets their uniform quietly checked by me and told "tuck your shirt in, put your tie on, and please do your belt buckle up as your trousers are sagging and the belt is hitting students in the face as you walk past their desk." (yes that happened!). It isn't hard to enforce uniform rules. Bullying can happen from any vector for any reason. It's a schools job to crack down on it. As for the political divisiveness that is a result of lack of education in what masks do and why they are worn. Guess what the job of a school is? And the designs thing is just silly. If a mask is that scary it probably fails the public decency check and can be told to get a different one. I'm sure schools will have some spare disposable masks at hand for those situations. But you seem pretty dead set against wearing them so....have fun arguing with the boss next week I guess?