michaelt1979

Thank you, all!

We currently record key achievements using SIMS, including letters sent to parents to congratulate children. It strikes me that it would be easier to add the achievement and the produce a template letter through reports to print the actual letters. Is there a way of incorporating gender-specific pronouns into templates/fields to allow a single report to produce outcomes with the appropriate he/she him/her pronouns? Thanks

This is a perfect solution for us, thanks.

Not sure if anything exists that would achieve this, but if it does, someone will know! We have a small number of pupils for whom illness absence isn't authorised without evidence (i.e. those with high levels of minor ailments). However, at the moment that means the admin team checking absence messages against a post-it note list. Is there any way of flagging pupils on SIMS so that when editing the attendance marks, there is some sort of mark against a pupil's name to prompt admin staff? Even a workaround that adds another column to the edit marks screen that we could use for this purpose? Thanks

Just the official AM/PM sessions. I'll have a play with the home screen options -thanks.

Thanks - but I think that just shows the number on roll. I'm trying to get a report which shows the number of children actually present in school. Is there some way of filtering that data? Thanks

Is there a way to set up a simple headcount report for each class based on the number of pupils actually present in school in the current session? I'm thinking something that would look as simple as: [TABLE=width: 500] [TR] [TD]Class[/TD] [TD]No. Present[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7AB[/TD] [TD]29[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7AR[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]7CH[/TD] [TD]27[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]8AH[/TD] [TD]28[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] etc. Thanks

Thanks

Apologies - I meant to post in the SIMS.Net forum - is there a way of moving the post?

We have a students whose surname contains an ń (i.e. n with an acute accent). On trying to enter this as part of her name listing, it automatically reverts to a standard 'n'. Is this just a result of a limitation of accepted characters for names, and is there any way around it?

Thanks - maybe it'll work once I have the new houses set up.

We trialled a house arrangement this year, and want to alter it for September. I presume it should be easy enough to add new houses, but I cannot see a way of removing a house from next years pastoral structure. Am I missing something, or must it just be left as a sort of 'legacy' house because of its previous use?

Thanks - as a primary school we have relatively few. I'm beginning to think that maybe we'll just have to stick with a separate Word form template for now. Thanks all for your thoughts.

Thanks - sadly we don't have any 'extras', just the main package. I'm hoping there's some instructions somewhere about setting up a template - presumably through reports? - that would allow us to open up a prepared document into which we might just need to add an explanation of the cause or something.

We are recording 'major' behaviour incidents on SIMs now, and would like to be able to print as near an automatic letter as possible to send to parents of children after each incident. Is there an existing option for this in SIMS? And if not, is there guidance somewhere on how to set up such a template?

No, as a primary school we don't use Lesson Monitor. We'd only actually need the report based on the morning really, because the differences in the afternoon are very occasional and minor. I've just discovered the AM/PM report -so thanks

I'm sure this is straightforward, but I can't spot it! Is there a prepared report in SIMS that we can run off each day with a list of children who are listed as absent for any reason (approved or otherwise) - ideally in registration group order?

Ah! Forgive me - you are quite correct. *must read instructions properly*

Hmm... that's what I was expecting. But in fact, when I select 'Members' I see only the names of children whom I have already tried to allocate manually to a house via their Student Details page.

We'd like to allocate students to houses on SIMs, but can't see an obvious way of doing that other than going into individual children's records. Is there a screen where children can just be selected for the relevant House? In the pastoral structure I can only see children who are already members, but not any way of allocating students to those houses. All advice welcome!

Thanks - that was as I suspected. As our attendance data is not yet on there, that shouldn't be an issue.

At the start of this academic year we set up two separate registration groups for our Nursery (AM and PM groups), which is no longer helpful. We're considering moving all the children from one group into the other and then if we can, deleting the "surplus" group. Does this sound like a disastrous move to anyone? Or is there a better way?