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Hi I'm just wondering if anyone has any good ideas they would like to share about assessment tracking like what mark sheets and individual reports they think is really beneficial and helpful to school.

Hello, Our head of maths has presented an Excel spreadsheet he wants KS3 teachers to use to enter termly test percentage scores. Then Excel using various formulas, including standard deviation formulas will calculate and average for the test for each year group. This will be used to split the group into 4 quintiles and be compared with their KS2 to highlight which students are below, on or above target. This is to get away form using GCSE predicted grades in KS3 in SIMS Marksheets. I think it might work a little like this school's KS3 system: https://www.philipshigh.co.uk/target-settings/ except the Working Towards/Working At/Working Above/Exceptional grade boundaries will be calculated from the year groups' percentage test scores at the point of data collection on a subject by subject basis. My worry is managing this prcess and importing the needed data into SIMS for the parent reports and termly analysis. I don't think it is possible for a column in a SIMS Marksheet to calculate the standard deviation for a given test and then use this to calculate which students are on, below or above. I'm thinking I will need to learn Excel VBA to streamline this wherever possible. SLT want teachers to just enter the data directly into year group Excel files, and then I will have to import into SIMS for the reports. Can anyone please give their thoughts on this and any advice would be much appreciated? Thanks Mark

We have a rather major issue with SIMS.net Assessment Manager when used with Terminal Services on Windows Server 2003, and Citrix XenApp 5. The issue we have is that when a report is run from AM which would pull in data for a pupil to output via a Word template (ie. this is a pupil report sheet, which contains grades for all their subjects), it outputs the report but doesn't include any data. When running the report on a Windows XP machine, it works fine. If we can't solve this issue, we are going to have to scrap our use of thin clients in our admin team... So any suggestions would be useful.

Some of our tutor groups have 2 different tutors who share the group. We have marksheets set up for target setting, where tutors add comments after meeting with the students. Does anybody know if it is possible for both tutors to access and edit the same marksheet? I can only see how to assign it to 1 tutor. Both are listed on SIMS as joint tutor. I don't want to set them up as supervisor via course manager as they only need to see their own group, not all of them.

PLEASE HELP! This is driving me crazy! I'm trying to create data entry columns in SIMS Assessment Manager templates, and I really need them to change colour depending on the data I type into them. For example, I have created a column which has a grade set A, B, C and I would like the cell to change blue when I type A, red when B, etc. FYI, I understand how to use NESTED IF THEN ELSE formulas. In the past I have created a data entry column and then I have made another data entry column with a NESTED IF THEN ELSE formula. The second column looks for data in the first column and then changes colour depending on the data entered in the first column. However, for my current project, I need 1 column which can do both - a column in which data can be entered AND it changes it's colour depending on the data I have entered into it. It just seems impossible! I hope this makes sense! If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it! Thanks

If you prefer to watch me do this then check out my SIMS School video here. 1, Check your gradesets. For Att8 GCSEs and AS Levels have new points values. Note that they are different in 2016 and 2017. Remember that if you change the gradeset of your current aspects then formulae based on the old values may malfunction. 2, Set up your template. Add KS2 Average Fine Level (for calculating Progress 8) and the predicted grade aspects for all your KS4 courses. 3, Edit the column headings of all EBacc subjects by putting 'Eb' as a prefix. Put 'Op' in front of all subjects that qualify in the 'Open Basket' (except English/English Literature). This will make putting in the formulae below much easier. All Formulae are 'Data Review using formula' unless otherwise stated. 4, English Basket. The highest grade out of English and English Literature counts here and if both are sat it counts double. Add a column 'En Max' using the Max formula with 1 in the box to find the highest of En and En Lit. Add a column 'En lit test' using the IF formula. Test: IF En Lit = En Lit (this tests if a lit grade is present). Value if true 'En Max' value if false '0'. Finally add a column '#En Basket' using the SUM formula to add 'En Max' and 'En Lit Test'. 5. Maths Basket. V easy if no one does AS Maths. Add a column '#Ma Basket' using the MULTIPLICATION formula to times the Maths GCSE result by two. If you do have AS Entries then the AS grade counts regardless of whether it is lower than the GCSE. If this is the case add a column 'Ma A Val' using the VALUE formula looking at the AS Prediction. Add 'Ma G Val' looking at the GCSE prediction. Add 'Ma AS Test' using the NESTED IF THEN ELSE formula. First test: IF Ma AS Prediction = Ma AS Prediction THEN Ma A Val. Second Test: IF Ma GCSE Prediction = Ma GCSE Prediction THEN Ma G Val. The column #Ma Basket should times this column (Ma AS Test) by 2. 6. EBacc Basket. Add a column #EB1 using the MAX formula, looking at all the Eb columns with 1 in the box. #EB2 same but with 2 in the box. #EB3 same with 3. 7. Open Basket. EBacc subjects can count in the open basket if they haven't already been counted. Therefore the 4th, 5th etc EB grades can count. Add 'Op EB4' using the MAX formula to look at the Eb columns returning the 4th biggest. Add 'Op EB5,6 etc to the maximum number of EBacc entries a student can have. Remember that Computer Science now counts towards EBacc along with Science GCSEs, History, Geography and Languages. The English grade not counted in the English Basket can also count in the Open Basket. Add 'Op En2' using the MAX formula to grab the second biggest of En Pred and En Lit Pred. Finally add '#Op1' using the MAX formula to find the biggest grade in the columns which begin 'Op'. '#OP2' for the second biggest. #OP3. Attainment 8: Create an Aspect for Attainment with type marks decimal (AS grades and some GCSE grades in 2017 have non-integer points values). Min 0 Max 110. Add a formula for data entry populating Attainment 8. Formula SUM and add together the 8 columns prefixed with #. AS Levels: If you do AS Levels in subjects other than Maths follow the maths steps to create ' AS Test'. Remember to include that column (and not the GCSE or AS Columns) in subsequent formulae. Any queries send me an email: [email protected]

Hi I wonder if anyone can help? Is it possible to change the version date on an aspect like you can on a gradeset ? I want to be able to insert a new gradeset on an an existing aspect without changing the original gradeset? Thanks

Hi I've been playing around with Sims Discover for a while and have created quite a few graphs of various things, particular looking at assessment KPI measures for KS3 and KS4. But wondered if any has any examples of graphs they've created that they can describe or screenshot so I can see how far people have taken it? I can find plenty of how-to booklets online but no examples of what people have done I'm willing to share back, obviously

I have inherited a nightmare of a database which, if there is no solution, is going to take months to sort out. The problem is compounded by other issues which I will lay out here: Firstly: Last year we became a new school. Unfortunately we could not get our database up and running early so historic Aspects/Templates together with the attached Grade Sets were imported from the old school database into the new. The Head at the time was happy with what we had so it caused us no major issues. From September this year we will have a new Head, with new ideas all of which she would like implemented by the end of the month. The biggest headache we have in all the subject grade sets are not 'our own' but are our old schools and it the grade set for each and every subject she would like us to add to. I know how do this the long winded way by making new gradesets/aspects adding them to our templates and transferring the results over but with 50+ subjects and hundreds of tmeplates this is going to take a while. Does anyone know if there anyway that this could be sorted painlessly? Before anyone answers the compounding problem is that any grade sets/aspects, well anything really, we make are never our own but are always marked CES Installation. However once we have made them and they are marked incorrectly we can still change them. I have brought this up 3 time with different members of Capita and they all say 'that's strange' but never do anything about it! A little bit about me. I am pretty good with what I know, when it comes to computers, but if it is too technical I would probably need it spelt out. Thanks for reading and if you can help doubly thank you. Tan

Hi all, Does anyone know of a way to get special characters from an Aspect into an Individual Report? The Lower School report will be going into SIMS for the first time and their old one had stars for certain things, not numbers (ie 5 stars, 4 stars etc). They also used the Square Root symbol as a 'tick' (Ugh!). Wingdings has what I'm after but no matter what I try I can't get the Wingdings font to be used. I tried copying from Character Map and pasting into the Grade Descriptions. No go: on the report it either gives that character in Ariel (or whatever) and if I change the font of the whole tag to Wingdings (and get a bunch of weird characters in the template) it fails to recognise the tag when generated. I've even tried doing an If Then Else in AM to add the stars to a comment field, but it just replaces the text with questions marks. I thought I'd have a poke in the macros to see if I could change the font after it had switched tag for data, but they're all password protected. Anyone got any idea before I resort to either Asterisks or telling the Lower School that it can't be done? Many thanks!

Dear all, I know it's not natively possible to incorporate Arabic script into Assessment / Profiles reports, but does anyone have any advice as to how to work around this limitation? The only thing I can think of is to have the Arabic team enter it into the final exported Word docs, but this is far from ideal. :-( Vik: how do you cope? I know Capita are looking into this, but have been for over 2 years with no end in sight. Many thanks!

Hi Is it possible to change the default order of a marksheet in Assessment Manager? I've been asked by our SLT whether its possible to make all of the FSM pupils apear at the top of all teachers marksheets by default? I know individually we can sort a marksheet to make the FSM pupils at the top, however when i close the marksheet and reopen it the order reverts back to alphabetical. In addition they have asked if it is possible to colour the rows with FSM pupils in to make them stand out even more - as far as I can see its not possible to colour a row at all ( I know columns can be coloured) Any ideas - or confirmation that these things aren't possible? Thanks

I'm having a problem editing my individual report templates in SIMS. When I load an individual report and click on the word template button it open MS word and loads the template which then give me the yellow bar to confirm I want to allow the macros. When I click on this to enable the macros for the document word thinks for a few seconds and then gives an error message and exits. SIMS is doing this on both my desktop and laptop machines (we rebuild the laptop on to a clean image and the problem remains). I have tried setting word to auto accept all macros but this just results in word crashing at start-up when it gets to the point of loading the macros. We have also tried using number of different users to logon to the machines to ensure it is not a profile problem and they have the same issue. We are on SIMS version 7.166 Build 38, windows 7 and office 2013. if anyone has any ideas please let me know. David

This follows on from a previous thread (import historical grade data, can it be done?) but started a new one as its a new topic. In relation to the assessment structure that I have outlined below, can someone please clarify simply the relationship between templates and marksheets and best practice in making them with minimal effort and maximum flexibility? I remember a data manager complaining to me in the past about the hundreds of templates - or was it marksheets? that they had to recreate each year and it seemed to me that they must be misunderstanding the process and there must be a better way. I want to do it that better way! The new assessment structure the deputy wants is as follows; Years 7-11 will all have 6 assessment points (AP_1 to AP_6) in each academic year, in every subject At each Assessment Point, every student will be scored as integer 1-9 in up to 6 Assessment Objectives (AO_01 to AO_6). The actual criteria for scoring differs between subjects but the name/description of each AO is the same between all subjects and years There will be a single baseline score for every student on entry. I am calling this Assessment point zero (AP_0). It won't change but might be allocated in any year, depending upon when they join the school. Following advice given to me in my other thread, I have: made 7 Aspects, one for each of the Assessment Objectives AO_0 to AO-6. I have allowed scores of 0-9 (where 0 will represent nothing has been entered by the staff) made 35 result sets, one for each yeargroup/assessment point; Year_07_AP_00, Year_07_AP_01, Year_07_AP_02 ... Year_11_AP_06 Now I want to make the templates and then the marksheets. As the assessment structure is the same for evey year group it would appear I only need one template for the whole school but the creation process asks me for Group and Course Link, implying I need a different one for every subject and / or year group. And then do I need a separate marksheet for every class - and have to re-create these marksheets every year when the class codes change? Is that what took so long for the data manager? Confused! Any advice on good template & marksheet creation very welcome. Incidentally also following advice I have assigned categories to the aspects but although I tried to assign all subjects to one aspect by ticking the box next to 'Subject' it didn't seem to do it. Surely I don't have to manually tick each subject category?

The school I work with has a new system of 3 assessment points each year, for each year group and each subject. Results from these assessments are attached to result sets that identify an assessment point (AP) and a year group (Y) eg AP_01_Y_07, AP_02_Y_07, AP_03_Y_07, AP_01_Y_08, AP_03_Y_08 etc. They also have the concept of a 'Minimum Expectation' grade for each subject/student which has its own aspect (ME) which is attached to its own result set (AP_Potential). This is bulk imported into sims from calculations done in a spreadsheet. I have now learnt that the 'Minimum Expectation' is only for one academic year, so a student's ME for Y8 will be different to their ME for Y7. I could deal with that by making new results sets, AP_Potential_Y7, AP_Potential_8 etc. and detaching/attaching the existing data to the new result sets. Question It would be far more useful if, when bulk importing the ME grades, I could attach the grade to each of the three existing result sets for one year (eg AP_01_Y_08, AP_02_Y_08, AP_03_Y_08) at the same time. Then I could easily compare a result from any assessment against the corresponding ME by using assessment and ME aspects from the same result set. Can this be easily done without too much manual copying? If so how?

I've been hired by a local school to set up tracker marksheets using AM7. I'm a novice having had just one days training. As far as User Friendliness is concerned, it is by far the worst application I have ever used! I have 2 questions: 1 I am in ther process of creating templates. I've defined result sets for each half term period in each year. eg. Y9 Au1 I have defined Aspects for capturing the grades of each subject. eg. Eng Attainment. Having created a template for English Yr 9, I cloned it with a view of creating similar templates for the other subjects. However, it seems that I can amend each column and change the result set but I cannot amend the Aspect! Therefore each new template takes around a day to re-create. Should I have created oner Aspect and incorporated the subject in the result set eg. Y9 Au1 Eng? By doing so I could then amend each cloned Template in a short time. Or, can I run a SQL script against the database and simply change the name of the Aspect once I've cloned a new Template? If so, does anyone have an example script. A database schematic would also be handy. 2 The school for which I'm working will shortly change its status and in theory become a new school. I've been told that we'll have to export data from the current school's database to the new school's using CTF. Surely it's possible to back up the current school's database, restore it onto the new school's server and simply run a SQL script to change the identity (DCSF) of the records! Any help would be gratefully received.

Hi, we're looking at historical data in SIMS, specifically the different values a field has held over time, along with the date changed and which user changed it. Has anyone else done this, and is there a "standard" way to do this or do I need to use the Business Objects interface or get some kind of third-party SQL solution to do it?