Management Information Sheet
SIMS Roadshows Update
It was great to see over 500 school colleagues at the Children's Services' SIMS Roadshows over the last three weeks. We hope you found the event informative in explaining the project and for some of you to see SIMS for the first time.
As Keith Bostrom said our aim was to set minds at ease and explain the training programme and data migration that will take place, to ensure you are up and running in the use of SIMS immediately following your training.
The following link provides a reminder of the demonstration Ruth Walker showed you of SIMS.
But key messages that people found to be important about SIMS are:
We are grateful to colleagues from schools who took time out to present at some of the sessions on their experiences with SIMS - Rosie Simmonds, Head Teacher at Leverington Primary, Val Cameron, Head Teacher at Park Lane Primary and Kate Atkins, Assistant Head and James Wright, Chair of Governors at St. Nicholas Priory Junior School.
What happens next?
Pilot schools Migrating in January
Planning is in the final stages to implement the first pilot schools to SIMS early in January 2011. The table below details the courses starting in January and February together with the number of schools on these courses.
Over 120 schools have volunteered to be Early Adopters, twenty of these schools will be allocated places on the two Early Adopter courses, whilst the remainder will be allocated places on the early phases of the main roll out.
Specific dates for Secondary School courses have not yet been allocated. Roll out will be discussed further with these schools at the Secondary Roadshows.
The Project Team are currently sourcing venues and will then allocate schools to courses. Names of those schools on the Pilot and Early Adopter courses will be issued shortly with the remainder being issued in January. Full details will be posted on the ICT Solutions website when available.
ICT Solutions are also completing the support arrangements, as well as setting up User Groups for the Spring Term, for those schools that will have moved to SIMS.
Signing up to SIMS
In previous MI sheets the best value benefits of the new contract have been stated and therefore it would be assumed schools would be moving to SIMS unless they notified the Project Manager that they wished to be excluded. Now that you have had the chance to see the product and can make a more informed decision about your choice of Management Information System, Headteachers are asked to confirm to ictsolsprojectsupport@norfolk.gov.uk by 17th December 2010 your decision to be part of the project rollout to Capita SIMS.
Data Cleansing
There are some data cleansing checks that need to be carried out before moving from e1 to SIMS. A document is being produced which gives detailed advice on procedures and links to additional help on the ICT Solutions website. The documentation will be sent directly to the pilot schools initially. The guidance may change once we know more about how e1 data will migrate to a SIMS datafile.
As Keith Bostrom said our aim was to set minds at ease and explain the training programme and data migration that will take place, to ensure you are up and running in the use of SIMS immediately following your training.
The following link provides a reminder of the demonstration Ruth Walker showed you of SIMS.
But key messages that people found to be important about SIMS are:
| Allows you to customise your home page to give you the information you need at your fingertips | |
| The separate views for looking at a pupil record either as a summary or a more traditional view for data input. | |
| Allows you to change attendance years easily to look at attendance patterns across more than one academic year, the same functionality exists in Assessment | |
| The flexibility of reports using word templates and a library of over 200 standard reports. | |
| Uses Quick letter for those letters that need to be sent to Parents quickly usually at the end of the school day | |
| The ease with which Dinner Money is automatically populated from the attendance record | |
| The Norfolk Tracker and One 2 One Marksheets are being built into SIMS Assessment for you to use from day one | |
| Tracking Grids based on the National Strategies ISP Project | |
| Assessment using the Raise on line filters and allowing you to create different filters that are relevant and important to your school | |
| IEP writer embedded within the SIMS Software again making access to IEP across the school simpler |
We are grateful to colleagues from schools who took time out to present at some of the sessions on their experiences with SIMS - Rosie Simmonds, Head Teacher at Leverington Primary, Val Cameron, Head Teacher at Park Lane Primary and Kate Atkins, Assistant Head and James Wright, Chair of Governors at St. Nicholas Priory Junior School.
What happens next?
Pilot schools Migrating in January
Planning is in the final stages to implement the first pilot schools to SIMS early in January 2011. The table below details the courses starting in January and February together with the number of schools on these courses.
| Course Name | Month training starts | Number of Schools |
| Technical Pilot 1 | Jan | 2 |
| Technical Pilot 2 | Jan | 8 |
| Early Adopter 1 | Feb | 10 |
| Early Adopter 2 | Feb | 10 |
| Special School Pilot | Feb | 2 |
| PRU Pilot | Feb | 2 |
| Phase 1-35 | March onwards | 10 schools per phase |
Over 120 schools have volunteered to be Early Adopters, twenty of these schools will be allocated places on the two Early Adopter courses, whilst the remainder will be allocated places on the early phases of the main roll out.
Specific dates for Secondary School courses have not yet been allocated. Roll out will be discussed further with these schools at the Secondary Roadshows.
The Project Team are currently sourcing venues and will then allocate schools to courses. Names of those schools on the Pilot and Early Adopter courses will be issued shortly with the remainder being issued in January. Full details will be posted on the ICT Solutions website when available.
ICT Solutions are also completing the support arrangements, as well as setting up User Groups for the Spring Term, for those schools that will have moved to SIMS.
Signing up to SIMS
In previous MI sheets the best value benefits of the new contract have been stated and therefore it would be assumed schools would be moving to SIMS unless they notified the Project Manager that they wished to be excluded. Now that you have had the chance to see the product and can make a more informed decision about your choice of Management Information System, Headteachers are asked to confirm to ictsolsprojectsupport@norfolk.gov.uk by 17th December 2010 your decision to be part of the project rollout to Capita SIMS.
Data Cleansing
There are some data cleansing checks that need to be carried out before moving from e1 to SIMS. A document is being produced which gives detailed advice on procedures and links to additional help on the ICT Solutions website. The documentation will be sent directly to the pilot schools initially. The guidance may change once we know more about how e1 data will migrate to a SIMS datafile.