CaterinaAnna

Has anyone experience of this? In particular, anything that would make installation/running difficult?

Thanks Oaktech I'm also trying to get a feel for what systems people actually use. Materials from the RGS are based on Google and ArcGIS but I know the licensing cost of the latter would have beyond the departmental budget in my last place.

Quick question: What GIS software do you use? (KS2-5) Supplementary: What the advantages/limitations of your package? I've not taught geography for a long time, so my experience goes back to Google Earth when it took forever to load on a machine or two at parents' evening and you wouldn't even think about trying to get 30 kids at once to use it. As part of getting back up to speed, I'd like to have a play with something more up to date but would rather do so on a system that is used fairly widely. I'm not school-based at the moment so I've not got a particular system to hand and it's difficult to compare options when I've not got any 'how they work in real life' data. Thanks all

Did the people who did iGCSE English Language do Lit as well? If not, is there something else they might be using as the English grade, saying the Lang sans Lit doesn't count? I had the opposite issue. We had everyone doing a full counts by itself English course, and some did Lit on top of it. Even in September, when I did the checks on the unvalidated data, they were counting the Lit grade if it was better - expect it now, but didn't then.

I've asked my LA Data team if they can produce a mock-up based on last year's results. Not heard back yet, but then I asked within a couple of days of the technical guidance being published, so the chap I spoke to hadn't read it by that point and asked me to send him my spreadsheet! (See other thread about this in this group) Time to nudge, methinks.

Thank you - good to know!

Does the APS on Key to Success NCA tools not include Science as well? If it doesn't then that makes life easy - and an awful lot more reliable. BKGarry, fine grade is just Points/6 (if you're working whole levels you need to remember the +/- 3 (depending which way you're going) to get to mid-level). As for baseline for P8, using our own results from previous years - even several aggregated - has problems not just because of the unrepresentative sample, but because historically absolutely everyone has multiple empty slots which would make the expectations too low. I've therefore fudged it by converting FFT CPS to an APS, translating to new points, plotting against the KS2EnMa mean fine level and using that relationship to get values for 'expected' A8 for each student. That, of course, has the opposite problem because it assumes no-one has empty slots and that points scores don't dip across the country as old BTECs and so on are phased out, but at least the data set is a proper size. Still too many assumptions and get-rounds for me to be really happy with it though, so still open to suggestions of better ways.

Thanks for the link NormalDistribution, and the breakdown BKGarry. I'm in Excel, and have more or less got the same thing set up. I'm using fine grades from FFT, although some amendments are needed at the bottom end (they over-weight the TA when test = B or N) and additions for those who arrive late (I work their fine levels out from the grade boundaries - had to fudge an overall English for current Year 7).

New BTECs also have a Level 1 Pass which shows as an awkward 25 points on the current scoring system (or 50 for whatever they're calling the 'double' these days - First Certificate?).

Good luck!

Just posted this link in the Jobs forum, but thought I'd let the experts know about it too ... Data Manager - Coventry

Full time, all year round, closing date Feb 10th. Details on www.wmjobs.co.uk ref OP/035/14

UDFs are pretty visible too. As ever, it's a question of thinking carefully about access, permissions and distribution.

We use several UDFs but I've not found a way to update them bar going into Student Details for each individual. That's a pain, so we tend to keep it for things which don't change often. Neither, as far as I am aware, is there an audit trail or a way of accessing history. In fact, running a report with effective date changed picks up current values, which suggests changes lead to overwrites rather than updates. So, chrisateen's suggestion seems reasonable.

Steven, our Head would love you ...