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...

I'm after the residuals as well, if anyone knows!

That was fast, thank you! And an interesting read. Out of curiousity, do you think it's worth subscribing to the CILIP magazine? My background is in information management, so I'm not just interested in it from the data manager perspective, but information science in general, however at £90 a year it's worth thinking about before going for it.

Hi everyone, I've heard that in one of the recent CILIP magazines there was an article about the life of a data manager. Does anyone here subscribe who could send me a copy? (Or even confirm that it's true!) Me and the data director of our trust are keen to have a read. Thanks!

In both of the schools I work in the "running track" seems to be fairly popular with kids and staff. You put laminated pictures of the kids' faces on top of running stick figures as a race to the finish line (i.e. their target grade). Especially good with competitive boys, I think! Another one was having photo cards of the Year 11s under each heading of what they are and are not achieving (e.g. 5EM, 5E but not M). Tbh, most of the methods use seem to use the kids photos the most, so that staff can recognise those kids and they don't get lost. In one school, these photos are on display in the staff room to try and reach as many teachers as possible. I think that would probably be your best bet - if there was a special "data room" our teachers would not use it, I think. The information needs to be out there, not making teachers put in the extra effort to go find it. But then, I'm not actually sure how effective the running track and photos are! These methods have been used by the more data-conscious teachers. But definitely the more visual the better, as I'm sure we all know, teachers like pictures, graphs and colours.

@CarpeDiem Hahaha, it's not so bad - one school is tiny, so combined we're probably about the same number of pupils as you! Anyway, it gets me out of the office (to a different office) twice a week and it's by the sea, so I can't complain! Plus, both schools have completely different timetable cycles, so it can be really interesting to try and solve any problems that arise. No lulls or quiet time now. I used to, but the longer I've been here and the more work I've taken on it's just constant. There is always something that needs doing urgently - usually timetable changes... Everyone who had any connection with my job has left now, so my nickname for myself is 'last idiot left standing'.

I had a data assistant, it was great! Once trained up she helped me out with the half termly data collections, reports, setting up marksheets/templates/individual reports, processing set changes, posting letters home, emailing teachers, etc. Then she left. Probably because all those repetitive tasks were a bit boring. "No worries" thought I. I'd made sure that everything was all set up for this year, to minimise my workload. Then SLT decided they wanted to change the format and formula colours of the data collection marksheets and reports. Then I acquired another school to data manage at the same time. Good luck getting your data assistant!

Ah, LightSpeed. Getting down and dirty with data...

After I got IT to let your website through the firewall (it was categorised as "adult"?!), this was very useful - thanks!

Ugh, that stupid add-back policy. It's like they're trying to make the A-Level tables as rigorous as the GCSE ones without actually putting any clear information for schools about what rules decide a student should count or not. I tried "reverse engineering" last years results, and even then it was a nightmare.

This year we've moved to a timetable consisting of 30 minute double periods, so this takes up more space on the timetable meaning it doesn't fit on one page and looks a little silly: We've had a recent IT overhaul and most staff are now on widescreen monitors. So I wanted to be able to switch the default display mode to "Periods" not days. Looking like so: Is this possible? Sorry, I've tried searching through the forum and documentation, but couldn't find anything.