Jenis

Hi all, apologies if you've seen this post already in various locations, but trying to hit as many as possible! I'm moving on from my role next month (outside of education) and my job has just been advertised. The school is ~1200 pupils, 11-19 kids in south Norfolk: Careers/Training - Current opportunities - Inspiration Trust If you or if you know of anyone interested in applying, feel free to message me for an informal chat about the school and what you can expect from the role. I can be contacted here, or my email address is: [email protected]

Have you uploaded the year 7 CTF first? The error that was being generated seems to be sorted now. You need to upload that CTF, then the QLA file from NCA tools.

@CAM I've also found the Data Managers facebook group super helpful, people post there really regularly. It's created and run by SISRA, but it's more of general DM group now. I'm quite lucky, my trust data director is good at making sure we all stay connected as a group (exams officers as well) and help each other out.

I just whacked the courses on with the QAN, and c&p'd summaries from the exam board websites. Took maybe a morning's work? I have a data quality of poor (10%) because they have no Opportunities, but frankly there are more important things to do (census).

Pfft! Informed wrongly! The SSAT data mailing list has been talking about this (and the census) for the last few days - some of the guidance they initially released stated that we wouldn't receive funding unless it was filled in. They then quietly deleted that paragraph a few days later!

Well I've emailed my enrolment off today for the NDMA (non-mentoring option), so hopefully I can report back to this group about whether it's truly worth it, as so many people have asked about it!

Looks like it's open mic night at the comedy club...

Edit: sorry @Sods_Laur, just saw that you use CMIS, well post below for anyone considering Profiles... I made the switch to Profiles, and yes, @CAM and @LosOjos are correct, it can be absurdly complicated, inflexible and fraught with difficulties if you don't get it right first time. However, once you do get your head around it, just like any system in SIMS, you can adapt it to your needs and understand the tricks to get around things. Key point being, if your teachers aren't allowed to edit the report, then you can change the comment banks around almost as much as you like. You can't change the order, so once it's in an active session, any new comment banks get shoved to the end. But, you can edit them for content as much as you like. Once the comment banks are created you can create a session, test them all out and if you're not happy with it, simply delete the session (obviously before teachers have started completing reports!) and go back to the comment banks to edit them. I guess the only really inflexible things can be once the session is active is associating courses with comment banks. Once a course is associated and the session is active, you can't change or add courses. Likewise, if you create a new area because you forgot a subject, you can't associate a course with it. There's also no recognition of positions staff hold in course manager, so subject heads can't see all the reports for all the classes they are responsible for - teachers can only write reports for the classes they are timetabled for. (Or, give Subject Heads the permissions for Profiles Operator). Also, you have to constantly, constantly stress to teachers that if they share a class only the lead teacher can complete the report, otherwise two reports will come out. For the most part it's pretty foolproof on their end, though. That's the only issue I've had with teachers screwing things up (post-non editing of comments...), and then I just got their subject heads to tell them off for being stupid. But really, I feel these things come with experience. I've used Profiles for two years now, and while the first year was a bit bumpy and full of sharp learning curves, it sure as heck was easier than proofreading the free text comments in Individual Reports. And, on a more personal opinion note, I feel like some of the reports are better quality and oddly enough aren't as generic as they can be when teachers write one report for the whole class.

Seb, is it officially confirmed that the English Test level is an average of Reading and Writing? Or is that just more likely?

I don't quite understand why these schools think they can claim they were caught "unawares" by the change in measures. It's been a long time coming, and if state schools can adjust to the changes, why can't they?

I've helped set up SISRA across three schools (with a possible fourth and fifth incoming), and it's being rolled out to almost all of our high schools. So I'm a big fan! SISRA Analytics has improved the service massively. - It is web based, so you'll be able to make admin changes and access information from anywhere with an internet connection. For example, got an email on 27th December about a mistake with the dates of the exams data I had uploaded, while the kids were playing on the Wii I sat on the couch on my tablet, changed the dates, republished the reports and it was sorted within 10 minutes. I know it's probably sad, but it meant that the head of science could get on with her job. And I could go back to the table tennis. - Very user friendly, imo. I know some heads of departments don't use it, but then I think if they don't use SISRA, they're not going to use anything and are generally resistant to the idea of active data analysis (and they would rather someone did it for them and handed them the answers). - SISRA isn't much about the graphs except for grade counts, tbh. There are plenty of transition matrices, but that's pretty much it. No flightpaths or the like. - Doesn't sync with SIMS, the data manager has to extract the data and then upload it. Can be a hassle, but over the last three years having to do it myself has really improved my knowledge about courses, performance measures, discount codes etc. And I can only see that as a good thing. If you're not doing complicated courses and your cohort is fairly immobile, then I should imagine it's a quick job. - Very quick updates, SISRA are definitely on the ball when it comes to changes. It has a Progress 8 calculation in place, obviously it is inaccurate at the moment, but it's headline page gives all the figures SLT could want. - How do you mean user defined aspects? You can upload several custom data sets (e.g. mocks), and you can add custom filters/focus groups. - Excellent online support which has expanded a lot recently, I think (I used to chat to only a few people, now I don't get the same people). Not so much telephone support, but the online support is so good, I haven't needed or wanted to contact them by phone. Seriously, cannot fault their support, it's definitely one of the best aspects, they really know their stuff, and they will log into your school and identify what the problem exactly is. We had a rep in for Go4Schools a while back, and I have to admit, it did look very nice... (if expensive). My boyfriend uses it at his high school (Maths teacher), and he likes it - he can access his class from home and fill in their assessment grades on his marksheet. Would love to work with it one day, but as I said, pricey compared to what we were paying for SISRA. I think Go4Schools does a lot for you - i.e. you enter the QAN codes for the courses being run. Whereas SISRA's policy is to give you the tools, but it's up to you to use them properly.

I've given up, I managed to get to the interactive reports screen, but trying to load anything just makes the website fall over. Might give it a go on Saturday. (I really know how to enjoy my weekends!)

@LosOjos, I'm figuring that your advanced Excel course will be more than introducing "if" formulas.

@mark80 I did my MSc at Loughborough University, unfortunately their Information Science department seems to have fallen victim to budget cuts and is now part of Business/Economics departments, with the MSc courses being a casualty. The only one left being Information Management and Business Technology. CILIP has a list of institutions that run accredited courses if that helps: CILIP accredited qualifications | CILIP The VBA course sounds like an excellent idea, I've attended "advanced" excel training before (I wanted the certificate), but it was painfully obvious that the person running the course was just that - a trainer. He had no practical skills in Excel whatsoever and was following his sheet of paper.

I did an MSc in Information Management - and it's actually really relevant for this job, especially when it comes to managing data collections on SIMS (the hierarchy of aspects, etc.) and manipulating data. I've always been interested in IT and a fast learner of computer programs, so that's helped with picking up the other aspects of the job (Excel, etc.). I think the only thing that would help me CPD-wise are more skills in Maths, I'm pretty rubbish at the statistics part of it, there were a couple of lectures on using SPSS for my MSc but I made the silly decision to skip that day. Whoops. Sometimes I think that this job would make for a great PhD project in Information Science in the right area...