thezebralad

Hello everyone. I've been racking my brains on this one for a couple of weeks now! I have just moved to a new academy where they are very up on technology and data. The school has recently bought into Doddle for use at KS3. There is already a banding/grade system in place on SIMS which is similar to other schools - we have Band A (high KS2 score) to Band D (low KS2 score) and four indicators within those bands, 1-4. So for instance a student with high KS2 could be A1, A2, A3 or A4 etc depending on how secure they are or if they have mastered the skill etc. Our SLT want me to convert Doddle steps into this banding system. So for instance, a child has a Doddle Step of 2.4 in Maths which for a Band A student would be an A4. However, if a Band B student got that score it would put them on a B1, so my problem is how to tell SIMS which band a pupil is in and to convert to the appropriate grade. I'm sure a combination of marksheet forumlae could do it but I can't figure it out! One of my other problems is that the Doddle Step moves up 0.2-0.3 per half term, so if a student should be making 2 in HT1, then should make 2.2 in HT2, 2.4 in HT3 etc. I don't want to create 18 grade sets if I can help it.... Rob

Hello all, I've been lurking on this forum for tips and I've found myself in a quandary that I need some help with! For some background, I work at an Academy in the North West as a data/SIMS administrator in a medium-sized school. I have only been doing the job for 6 months after a general admin role in the front office, and I've had to learn pretty much from scratch with no proper SIMS training and just some notes the previous post holder left me. I've had to deconstruct everything the previous post holder made to understand how it all works, and I am now pretty comfortable with building exactly what I need but since the summer, we have a new principal who has essentially declared us in 'special measures' (due to exam results) and so we're 'starting all over again' almost like a brand new school. This has given me a chance to change things around. However, we have recently bought into SISRA Online for our reporting needs - targets, assessments etc. I usually hold all this data in SIMS then just export to Excel and do the usual percentages and whatnot, but the summer was my first exam season and it was pretty full on, having to do exam analysis back and forth through various spreadsheets and SIMS marksheets. To cut a long story short, afterwards I discovered that our SIMS is in a bit of a mess - still holding data and all the marksheets, templates, grade sets, results sets, targets etc. from 2003 onwards and putting a strain on our servers at school. So I went about deleting some things and seeing what I could salvage for use in the future, which it turns out is very little - basically I will be starting from scratch! I'm talking all new Grade Sets, Results Set, new templates/marksheets etc.I've actually been telling my boss that the whole setup will take a while, but now I realised the enormity of the job I think it will take me until at least Xmas for me to get everything ready for putting into SISRA. Problem is the boss expects some sort of system by Monday morning (we're on half-term this week after our first reporting period) and he's not very good at listening to peoples advice, but is there really any point setting up a half-baked system just to 'impress' his bosses with wrong grades and data? Or should I just tell him straight how long it will take, even if he doesn't like the answer? Is Xmas a reliable time-frame (I also have a week off in three weeks time.) Thanks in advance for any replies.