zzyzxuk

We're now also putting together a plan for if the school has to close... Over the weekend I saw a very helpful 'checklist' for schools considering impromptu distance learning, but I didn't keep the link and can't find it now. Does anyone have any useful tips/ideas/things to be aware of when putting together a plan to suddenly start teaching online?

WAAAAY past my current skillset...

I'm hoping I could dump into such a system a .csv containing all student names, and then it would just redact all of those names that it found. Understand what you're saying about what happens if you miss one, but that's already a possibility with our current procedure which is hiring support staff to process the SAR, who go thousands of sheets of paper with a redacting pen, and are bound to miss one or two. Our solicitors are suggesting that if we are taking reasonable steps to ensure that we are not breaching data rules, that's OK. It doesn't have to perfect - just 99.99% perfect.

Hi all, Our school is looking for software to help us automatically redact documents that we are preparing in response to a Subject Access Request We frequently receive Subject Access Requests for all documents our school holds containing a particular individual’s name. However, before we can send these documents out, we need to first remove the names of other students and staff, including their emails and phones, without removing the name of the individual requesting the document, and we typically need to review several thousands of documents per request. So we are interesting in finding a software solution that will do the following: -Redact the names of all students except the requestor’s name from all documents. Because we have 1,700 students, we would like the software to be scanning for all of these names without our having to do this one-by-one. -Redact out email addresses and phone numbers (in UK format) from documents. -Be able to scan documents in MS Office formats, as well as documents downloaded from Google Documents including Google Sheets and Google Docs. -Be able to scan .pst files for email messages located in them. Does anyone know of any software packages that might be able to do the above?

9 months on, we actually now have everything working correctly as well. Capita had a period where there support offer for PX was a little short-handed, and the manuals for PX aren't detailed enough IMHO, but we've worked through the issues, and have a better understanding of how everything fits/works together. The key is making sure that everyone in the group is using the same 'GUID' codes for their classes, but there's also a few other things that need to be lined up that the manuals don't always explain clearly. I'd be happy to help you diagnose some of the issues if you want to PM me...

A couple of timetable questions please: I've been asked to sort out an exceptional timetable for the school for the second week of July, which I'm thinking of doing using T6 and making it a 'proper' SIMS timetable. I have a few questions though about this: Q1: If I submit this alternative timetable, which will have different curriculum blocks/classes, etc., and restrict the validity of this timetable for just this week, will SIMS remember that for the following week, that we then go back to the previous timetable, and if so, will it remember the curriculum assignments for students? I don't want to have to redo all of the curriculum assignments for the 3rd week of July if it's going to be overwritten/erased by inserting this other timetable into the second week...? Q2: Now that our Y11 and Y13 students have gone away for the rest of the term, I am tempted to remove those blocks/classes entirely from the timetable, so that I can use those teachers elsewhere on the timetable, but I also recall having done that once in the past and regretting it. It caused some unexpected knock-on effect that wasn't good, but I can't remember what that was... Do you know what the problem with this might be?

Yes, but it's pricey. I'm looking for something that will do this that isn't Capita if possible.

Apparently we have to export the detention letter from SIMS into something like a .pdf, and then manually pull up each parent separately in Schoolcomms, attach the .pdf individually and then send it out. We're hoping for something that would do this in batches rather than having to pull up each student record separately as there are a LOT of detentions...

Hi all, My admin team are curious what software packages out there are capable of notifying parents of a SIMS-set detention automatically, including the 'reason for detention' field, without the need for paper letters being sent out. We currently use Schoolcomms, but have been told that this isn't capable of doing this automatically. What competing products do you use?

I'm working in a partnership of schools that have had a long-standing bad experience with SIMS PX, and we are trying to find out: -Are there any schools out there that have successfully got this working, and... -Are there any competitor products out there that would allow schools to share assessment results / attendance information between each other?

Our school has some small projects in the pipeline which require some skills beyond what we have in house. We are looking for someone with experience in ActiveDirectory/Group Policy, Office365 and network management skills to help us deliver these. Good communications skills and the ability to keep to deadlines essential. For more information, please PM me...

Yes, was referring to the 'filtering for skin tones for certain reasons' - I'm after solutions for that as while I agree that it may be rare (and possibly unneeded), it's our SLT that I need to convince, and they want to be very caution on this front...

Our school currently uses LGFL's webmail for staff and students, but as we are migrating to Office 365 we're also considering shifting our email to Office 365 as well. However, we're reluctant to lose the scanning of attachments for "inappropriate images" that LGFL provide. Can anyone recommend an (inexpensive) solution for having our emails scanned that works alongside Office 365 (we're assuming that Office 365 -doesn't- do this on it's own...)?