MissingDatum

Well, since I'm not sure if we're allowed to provide links to the handbook (Maybe PhilNeal could tell you!), I will settle for suggesting you start by having a look at Scomis' FAQ page and finding the quick reference sheets on there. That's going to cover most of what an attendance officer will have to know about SIMS to get their feet under them.

This is pretty much exactly the advice I didn't want to acknowledge. On the other hand, since the AS is part of the A2 exams, would this affect things for those that remained on the A2 pathway? Seems to me I would be best off setting up AS, A2 and 2-year A-level courses, initially recording everyone as being on the A2s with full teaching hours, adding everyone that remained on the A2 courses at the end of summer onto AS courses with no planned qualification hours, and transferring students from the A2 to 2-year course. Then record the people who drop 2-Year courses as withdrawals for personal reasons, and delete the ones that drop A2 courses. Then scramble like a headless chicken trying to justify the cock-up.

Sadly neither of these will sort me out, because the situation is that this is all historic. The classes were not correctly linked to courses, and no AS courses even existed last summer. The situation is as follows. Last summer: All students initially entered on old-style A2 qualification in Y12, according to Course Manager No students entered for old-style AS qualifications, according to Course Manager Some students then transferred to new-style A Level, no changes made in Course Manager Now: Students who were on old-style A2 in SIMS course actually sat AS exams in Summer Students who were transferred to new A level, outside of sims, did not sit exams Students are dropping old-style A2 courses Students are dropping new A level courses No students have a record of having been enrolled in AS Courses, despite some of them having AS results in their examination history I am looking for advice on resolving this so that our course history correctly reflects the actuality, before census day. Ideally in a way that will correctly define start, end and planned end dates without me having to go and edit them all manually. Hope that clarifies

So, I've inherited a bunch of courses for our post-16s, but the students were all placed on memberships of the old A2 courses at the start Y12. Now, in year 13, having received as AS result, some of them have withdrawn from the A2 courses. What is the most sensible (and fast!) way of reconciling their course memberships such that they were on an AS course, which they successfully completed, and then dropped the A2 for the subject? This is made somewhat more complicated, because some students were 'transferred' to the new 2-year A-Levels, but the HoDs claim they were always planning to offer the new 2-year without the students sitting AS exams (because they thought the students would perform poorly.) Obviously, this is all thanks to census day coming up this week. Thoughts?

One really important point is that these scaled scores are not standardised. 100 represents the 'expectation' value for the test, not the mean outcome for the cohort. The mean outcomes were 103 in reading and maths and 104 in GPS. We have not been given anything statistically useful such as variance or skewness. If anything, I feel this makes them worse than useless, since people will be inclined to treat them as standarised scores (especially teachers that remember the age-standardised scores, or schools that use CATS) and assume the standard 85-115 range.

Well, it will probably have been scrapped in favour of some other metric by 2021. Failing that, I assume the cohort will be banded based on the scaled scores, hopefully by some sort of cluster analysis. Regardless, I would always plan to re-validate KS2 data at the start of Y11, and by that point you'd hopefully know what the intended analysis was for RAISE

As far as I'm aware, there are no fine levels for this cohort, they are superseded by the new scaled scores. I could be wrong, of course

If you're still looking, I would suggest writing a quick report definition on the data area 'Result', pulling in the resultset, the aspect name of the aspect and maybe the external id of the aspect. Filter the results by collection date, selecting the date of results download day from the appropriate year, and by the identity of a student who you know has a result for the aspect you're seeking. This should spit out a list which you could quickly comb for the missing aspect name. A bit long-winded, but it seems the easiest method if you can see the results on a student's examinations record.