SICTS Autumn User Group 14th November 2013 Kay Vickers Mark Blackwood Telephone/Helpdesk: 0845 6436802 Email: helpdesk@schoolicts.co.uk www.schoolicts.co.uk

Autumn Release Release Date: Friday 29th November Scope Document ID: Beta Date: Friday 4th October – showing this today

2014 Releases Provisional Dates for 2014 Spring Release: End of March Summer Release: End of June Autumn Release: Early November

Technical Update – Operating systems

Headlines Windows XP retires in Autumn Windows Server 2003 retires in Autumn You will need to upgrade to SQL2012 by Autumn 2014 This will be completed for our SLA schools as part of our normal service offering (no hidden fee!)

Technical Update - Desktop

Headlines Office 2003 has retired (only affects me!) Office 2007 will retire in Spring 2014 Office 2010 ok for at least a year Office 2012 supported fully from Autumn release

Autumn 2013 Release The SIMS 2013 Autumn Release contains enhancements to Admissions, Agora, Assessment, Attendance, Course Manager, Cover, Discover, Homepage, InTouch, Nova-T6, Options, Partnership Xchange, Personnel, SIMS FFT, and the SQL Migration Tool

Autumn 2013 Release Assessment Discover Button added a for the Assessment Group Filter on Individual Reports Discover ‘Copy to Clipboard’ button added to the front of the graphs Quick Search function added to the drop down menus Ability for users to share their filtered graphs across their school.

Autumn 2013 Release Discover The following graphs have been added to SIMS Discover: Half Termly Attendance graph Half Termly Behaviour Points graph Half Termly Behaviour Incidents graph Half Termly Achievement Points graph Pupil Mobility graph

Autumn 2013 Release SIMS Homepage/Student Teacher View Attendance and intervention widgets now show figures correct to 2 decimal places, and separate present and authorised absence Student teacher view timeline amended to see only one box per class, regardless of how many teachers are attached to the group Conduct widgets configured to count either points or number of incidents on the Student Teacher View Absence, covered lessons, and room changes can be shown on timeline if desired

Autumn 2013 Release Homepage Performance Refresh times can be altered globally / by user groups for individual widgets so that server impact is reduced. Configure time line for groups. Configure widget refresh rates for groups. Add permissions for groups to be able to configure what appears on timeline. Add permissions for groups to be able to configure refresh times. Review and amend underlying code to improve performance.

Autumn 2013 Release InTouch Attached documents converted to PDF when Office 2007 or later is used. This will reduce the size of the attachments and give options for logos and images to be included. Cumulative Achievement alerts can be set up to automatically notify users when a pupil reaches a defined points score. The message editing function has been enhanced, enabling schools to produce fully formatted messages. Scheduled messages.

Autumn 2013 Release Personnel DBS Check (Disclosure and Barring Service) and associated clearance levels have been added to the checks area of the employment details tab. The DBS check replaces the CRB check, although the CRB check and its associated Clearance Levels have been retained in the database to maintain historical records. The CRB check is now inactive.

Autumn 2013 Release Statutory Returns School Census Spring 2014 (England) Catholic Education Service (CES) Census 2014 (Catholic England and Wales) CTF 13 (England and Wales) and CTF NI 13 (Northern Ireland) PLASC 2014 (Wales) Introduction of support for Middle Schools Exclusion codes amended to match those in England Exclusion information for academic year 2012/13 is now mandatory

Autumn 2013 Release Statutory Returns Bulk update routine for Speaks Welsh at home Removal of Post 16 menu route Independent School Council (ISC) Census 2014 (Independent) Boarding type information now maps to categories used by the ISC. (This is applicable to all Independent schools, therefore both ISC and SLASC census). Boarder status codes are Day, Full, Weekly and Flexi. School Level Annual School Census (SLASC) 2014 (Independent)

Attendance F code has been disabled!

Pupil Premium There is now an import routine to utilise the csv files available from K2S Note that there is already a Pupil Premium field (yes/no) available to report on