The Systems Team (SIMS support) are attending a SIMS LA Software Update Seminar at the De Vere Whites Hotel (Reebok Stadium) in Horwich today.

Not only is this an important training day but it gives us the opportunity to get together as a team - something that rarely happens during the rest of the year!

For your information, please find below the agenda:

09:45 Assessment / Curriculum

• Assessment Update
• Profiles Checking Screen
• Exams Update
• Extended Services
• Alternative Curriculum

10:15 Technical

• Deployment Update
• Technical Update
• Hosting SIMS
• SIF
• Becta Guidance

11:30 Primary Review

• Dinner Money 7
• Primary Assessment

12:00 Partnership Exchange

• Review
• New Features
• FE and Work Based Learning Access

13:30 Statutory / Resources

• FMS
• Personnel 7
• Statutory Returns - Spring 2009

14:15 Core, Attendance and eLearning

• Homepage/Dashboard
• Alerts
• Attendance

15:00 Road Ahead 2009-2010

We”re keen to disseminate what we learn to schools, so please check back here for related posts over the coming weeks. Alternatively, subscribe to the RSS feed.

The next version of Microsoft Windows, codenamed “Windows 7″, has been officially named Windows 7.

So, there you have it. Please visit the Microsoft Windows Vista Blog for further details.

Thanks to Microsoft’’s Steve Clayton for the information.

Calculating Five A*-C (including Maths and English)

In line with recent changes to Ofsted advice, here’’s how to create a marksheet that counts up the number of A*-C grades, then highlights the pupils with five or more, and also highlights the pupils with five A*-C grades including Maths and English.

This scenario uses a set of grade aspects to record the actual subject grades. The grade aspects are linked to a gradeset that uses the standard points scores got GCSE grades (A*=58, A=52, B=46, C=40 etc). GCSE science is a double award, and a short ICT course counts as half an award. All other courses count as a single GCSE. You might need to change this example slightly to fit the gradesets you use and the exams you offer.

1) Create a formula column to calculate the number of A*-C for single (full) award subjects as follows:

• Add a column for data review using a formula and call it ”Count Full GCSE”
• Use the ”Grade Tally” formula to calculate the number of A*, A, B and C grades (see below)

2) Create a formula column to calculate the number of A*-C grades for double award subjects.

• See above, but just select the double award subjects and call the column ”Count Double GCSE”

3) Create a formula column to calculate the number of A*-C grades for short award subjects.

• See above, but just select the short award subjects and call the column ”Count Short GCSE”

4) Add a column to multiply the number of double award subjects by 2 and call it ”Equivalent Double GCSE”

See example below:

 5) Add a column to divide the number of short award subjects by 2 and call it ”Equivalent Short GCSE”.

See example below:

You might need to add extra columns for DIDA, CIDA etc. 

6) To obtain the total number of A*-C grades:

simply add together these columns using the SUM formula in a new formula review column:

• Equivalent Short GCSE
• Equivalent Double GCSE
• Count Full GCSE

Call the column ”No A*-C”

7) To display a ”Y” if the student has 5 or more A*-C grades

• If you don”t already have one, create a gradeset called Yes/No where Y=1 and N=0
• Create an aspect called ”5+ A* - C” and put it in the Yes/No gradeset
• Add a ”formula for data entry” column as follows:

To calculate 5 A* to C including maths and english

I often get a blank look when I refer to “the blog”, yet people know what I mean when I say “our website”.

I stumbled upon the following video which does a pretty good job of explaining, without resorting to technical jargon, what a blog is. 

Bolton Council is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

I added a statistics plugin* to the blog on the 25th September 2008 and was surprised by some of the results.

Please click on each thumbnail below to view the stats recorded at 15:00 today.

I really need to get out more!

*Bolton Council is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.