bobsmith

An actual export of all data? From a relational* database several gigs in size? In human readable format? *as relational as SIMS may or may not be. I agree that any data put in to a MIS should be extractable, which with the way the report library sometimes lags behind is an issue, but an "extract all" button just ain't gonna work.

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/sims-bulk-import/99098-sims-bulk-import.html

When an IEB gets put in place it is because the secretary of state has decided to convert that school. It may coincide with a perceived failure of governance or leadership and management. Don't imagine that has changed post Gove...

The backbenchers aren't the same as the cabinet. Some of them have a few scruples left.

It's not specific to controlling schools, it's politics and their unswerving belief that the private sector are better at everything than the public sector. and in response to an earlier post by eilsegee40 "1) Permanent exclusions happen in LA schools and academies. Academies don't take the blame here - some little darlings do things that make a continuing relationship with their current education provider impossible. The school or academy doing the permanent exclusion doesn't care what happens next, but somebody has to take responsibility for ensuring an excluded child remains in education. That is currently the LA's education dept." When the LA doesn't have any schools because they are all academies, and none of them want the student, what then? It's not that anyone is blaming one specific individual academy here, it's the entire program that has the problem.

Nice summary of the entire Academies Program there.

if you've got that far you should see a list of things you can export. Pick templates...

The one thing you certainly can't avoid when working in schools is the kids themselves, if you aren't comfortable around 1000+ hooligans (students?) then don't work in the schools sector. The holidays are nice though

So a number of problems here, and I feel for your frustration, but.... Steam and other download services only exist because they knew that the average connection speed was fast enough to make it viable. Unfortunately you seem to be served by a internet connection far slower than the service is expected to be used with. Download speeds are approaching 200Mbit in many areas, and with those speeds when I boot Steam and it want's to do a major update to a game I want to play right now (don't forget you can simply pause all the others) I'll go make a cup of tea and then it's good to go. Consoles are going the same way - it's all about your internet speed in this modern age. And provided you have an average connection it's much less faffing than going to the shop to buy a CD with it on.

Has anyone started work on spreadsheets or other methods of generating all the updated performance measures for post 16 qualifications for this summer? SISRA are waiting on the DfE to stop faffing around and finalise the details, has anyone got anything started?

You could PM PhilNeal with that question, but if you hold your breath waiting for data entry validation rules to be implemented you may turn a funny shade of blue before it happens.

write a report to pull out the email addresses, then chuck it in excel and do some simple formulae to identify those with dodgy characters. you can do the same trick with the mobile numbers, you can have the formula check the length of the phone number and flag those up too short or too long. Back in my Facility CMIS days I was allowed to play with the SQL, so I actually had a script that would format all the phone numbers for me to have the spaces in the places i wanted them...

I've got about 10 years experience with Facility CMIS and just over a year and a half with SIMS. You'll find some fairly major differences between the two, they took some adjusting to. Facility does some very clever stuff with reporting - it's mostly using a bespoke WYSIWYG interface rather than faffing around with Word. There's a whole syntax to learn but there's a lot of experienced people posting common tricks and solutions on their forums. It doesn't use aspects the same way as SIMS, results are stored against subjects rather than against standalone aspects, there are pros and cons to both methods, but you can knock out their equivalent of marksheets a lot lot faster, and reports can be faster to build, but with a little less customisability sometimes. With the amount of SIMS experience you have you'll have no real issues, and learning a 2nd MIS really helps you understand what it is you're doing I've found. You become less focussed on the product and more on the methodology. From a timetabling point of view I still find that Facility trumps Nova, but there are a lot less people around to ask for help. You can do very clever things with Facility timetables, not least the fact that you can make changes from within the main program itself for those niggling mid year changes. If you ever do have questions I'll be happy to answer them (I still miss a lot of the things I could do in Facility)

Delete them, you don't lose anything and you'd most likely need to make new ones when the time comes to use them again. If you get any proper exams marksheets cluttering the place up they are generated from Exams Organiser - you need to go in there to get rid of them.

Get some decent anti malware installed on those stations that are going to run the reports and then relax the macro running GPO on them?

Are they cheaper than the enhanced support contracts with Capita?

Personally I don't have a big downer on Microsoft, Excel is the best spreadsheet program I've seen, Powerpoint is pretty useful, Word is capable (though not the best I've seen). Their OSes have been improving of late and I actually find MS SQL very competent. However students don't need to be qualified MS users, there are loads of jobs where they will find that other skills are far far more useful. I just feel that the MS is industry standard isn't the most compelling argument. And if there is a move away from MS maybe their education pricing will get more favourable.

Our first home PC (windoze at any rate) was from Mesh. The RAM upgrade from 2Mb to 4Mb would have brought you a small car today!

Just wait, G4S will be taking over the running of the police service if they carry on. Why did anyone ever think this was a good idea?

This was some time ago Phil, so I can't provide details I'm afraid (like a few years at least)

I'd always heard from the sales guys that SIMS 8 would be a new product, not an upgrade (i.e. chargeable)

All the stuff I've read says they count. There's a brief mention here: AQA | Performance tables | Key Stage 4 changes to performance tables | Attainment 8

The unreformed GCSE point score fudge perhaps? http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/167757-iferror-lookups.html @Banjo posted the point score table in that thread.

I think he means not every subject will be going over at the same time. So if you've changed your gradeset to 9-1 then it will affect ALL subjects now.

yeah, and the boundaries have to be equally spaced too.