School IT Systems Support Newsletter - Autumn 2015

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1 School IT Systems Support Newsletter - Autumn 2015 Herts for Learning Ltd SITSS Retirement - Maralyn Pomeroy Maralyn has worked for the Schools MIS support team for over 24 years. Some of you may remember her delivering your first computer and pupil database back in Since then she has continuously developed her knowledge of schools MIS systems and has given terrific support to Hertfordshire schools helping them develop their understanding and knowledge of the SIMS suite to help get the most value from them. More recently Maralyn has helped a few schools move back to SIMS, putting together training and implementation plans to help smooth the transition for all concerned. She has also helped a large number of schools migrate to the Microsoft Office 365 system. There has been no escaping Maralyn s enthusiasm for Management Information Systems and how they help school leadership have a better understanding of what is happening in their school. We shall all miss her and hope you will join me in wishing her a wonderful and long retirement. If you have a message you would like to send her please it to sitss.admin@lea.herts.sch.uk Important information for Headteachers and Senior Leaders are marked with: Contents: 1. SITSS Retirement 6. Behaviour Analysis 2. SIMS Backup 7. Assessment Resources 3. ECJ Safe Harbour 8. Inclusion Register 4. KS4 Analysis Resources 9. HICS Update 5. Viruses 10. SITSS Courses School IT Systems Support Accredited by the Learning and Performance Institute as a Technical Support Centre Approved RM Premier Service Partner Fully Accredited by Capita SIMS for Proven Quality of SIMS Support SITSS Herts for Learning Ltd Six Hills Way, Stevenage, Herts, SG1 2FQ Tel:

2 Page 2 Loss of vital information can cause hours of work! Following on from our front page article in our summer newsletter, about ensuring you have a backup that is restorable, it has come to our attention that the issue of having a reliable backup of your system/data is still a cause for concern. SITSS Remote Backup Service Where schools purchase our remote backup service we make daily checks on the status of all remote backups and inform schools if a failure has occurred and remedial action is taken. It has come to our attention that some third party technical support companies are installing new SIMS servers in schools. Where a school has purchased a new database server from third party provider and would like to continue with the SITSS backup service the school should contact SITSS and request a transfer of the backup software onto the new server. SITSS will charge 100 for the transfer and will continue to monitor the backups as per our normal service. Sometimes we find out by checking a backup that has failed that the school has had a new SIMS server installed and the backup software has not been transferred to the new server. An alternative backup system may have been installed. In this scenario we are not able to give refunds for cancellation of the SITSS backup service in the current contract year as we have had to pay the 3rd party provider for the full year to 31st March Please note that as we hold the licence for your backup, we are responsible for checking and maintaining it. We cannot give out the encryption key and password to 3rd party providers due to licensing agreements. Please inform SITSS if you are planning on getting a new SIMS server. SITSS can supply these too and we would be happy to supply a quotation for the purchase of one, including the transfer of your remote backup software. SITSS are a SIMS accredited support team and as such take the loss of data very seriously please ensure that you do too! If you would like SITSS to provide a quote for a new server or transfer the remote backup application to a new server please call the SITSS service desk on option 1 then option 3 or sitss.technical@lea.herts.sch.uk

3 Page 3 ECJ Safe Harbour ruling and school use of US-brand internet services On the 6th October 2015 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that an EU agreement with the US called Safe Harbour is invalid with immediate effect. That agreement relates to EU data protection law and the transfer of personal data from EU member states to the US. Many schools currently use Office 365 for and that is not affected by this ruling because Microsoft only store EU customer data in their European data centres located in Dublin and Amsterdam. However several thousand US companies (for example Dropbox and SurveyMonkey) may well be affected and the most prominent is Google because they do rely on Safe Harbour for providing services such as Google Search, Gmail and Google for Education to EU organisations and citizens. There are many detailed reports about this ECJ ruling in the online media, however in the UK the most significant opinion belongs to the Information Commissioner s Office (ICO) because they are responsible for enforcing the UK Data Protection Act. The ICO have made a brief statement about the ECJ ruling here: They have promised new guidance, to be developed shortly in conjunction with the EU authorities, explicitly recognised that it will take businesses some time to adjust and highlighted some well advanced negotiations on a replacement for Safe Harbour. We will have to wait for that new guidance from the ICO, but in the mean-time they are clearly not expecting UK organisations to abruptly stop using any US Internet services that are affected by the ECJ ruling. The risk that you will be exposed to enforcement action by doing so is small. We obviously can t be certain at this early stage, but the most probable outcome is that that the replacement for Safe Harbour will now be hurried along. US companies will then adjust their services and small-print in order to retain their EU customers and provided you re satisfied with those changes, you can continue to use their service. Hertfordshire County Council have made the following statement - It is important that from now no-one should buy into a service provided by an American company for any purpose which Involves personal data of either staff or service users. This might be some form of database or survey provider, or where customer data are held. It would be a breach of the Data Protection Act to allow Hertfordshire Citizens data to be processed outside of the European Economic Area.

4 New KS4 Analysis Resources for SIMS Autumn 2015 Release Page 4 For the SIMS Autumn 2015 release, Capita is introducing some new resources for the analysis of Key Stage 4 assessment data. These will help secondary schools analyse their assessment data with the introduction of the new GCSE curriculum, the shift from A* to G grades to 9 to 1 and will reflect the DfE Performance Measures, including Progress 8. The resources will include Assessment Manager templates, pre-defined Discover graphs and SIMS.net reports that output to excel. The suite of reports will assist with analysis of your school data and will take into account the DfE changes to assessment at Key Stage 4, reporting on different Performance Indicators for 2016 and 2017 as the new GCSE subject curriculum is phased in. The measures in the reports are broken down by pre-defined key groups including gender, prior attainment at Key Stage 2, Pupil Premium, SEN and ethnicity. The report data will also include a second sheet that can be filtered to view the measures as calculated for each individual pupil, if required.

5 New KS4 Analysis Resources for SIMS cont... Page 5 Capita anticipate that most schools will continue to record assessment data in their own Assessment Manager aspects and will use the SIMS Assessment Mapping Tool to transfer their results into the Capita supplied resources for the report output to generate. To support school Data Managers with the process of implementing these new resources, SITSS will be holding several sessions in early 2016 at our Stevenage training centre. Details of the sessions and booking can be made via the Training Courses link on the SITSS website at Viruses in fake attachments One of the most common ways in which PCs and Laptops become infected with viruses is by end users opening fake attachments. Spam will be sent out, normally spoofing it s from address to look like the e -mail has been sent from a reputable vendor, with an attachment that looks like an invoice or some other important information. The is relying on your curiosity to infect your station, if you are not expecting to receive a document and you do not recognise the sender, then DO NOT open the attachment. The majority of Herts schools subscribe to McAfee antivirus administered by SITSS, if your station is kept up to date with virus definitions then all known threats will be detected and stopped should you open an infected attachment. Were you fooled on Tuesday 3rd November? Looking at our McAfee log files, it would appear one such spam fooled a number of schools on 3rd November. 42 separate schools opened an attachment named Advance Shipping Notification Doc, this fake attachment contained the W97M/Downloader.aha virus however McAfee was able to successfully detect and quarantine this file. If you opened this attachment and are NOT running the latest McAfee antivirus software, then please contact your support provider to ensure that your station has not been infected.

6 Heads of Department Behaviour Analysis Dashboard SITSS have developed two easy to use reports for HoD s or HoF s to analyse the behaviour incidents logged for their subjects, one for positive and one for negative. Like the switch on weeks to months SIMS Page 6 Very, Very Useful Key focus areas include staff, class, ethnicity, pupil premium, SEN and gender. The report for negative behaviour identifies the main students causing concern & the incident types mostly used. It also shows the breakdown of the number of incidents recorded per week and per month. It can be filtered at the click of a button and printed to a single page easily. The second report enables similar analysis of the achievement data.. Excellent that the pie charts adjust by each year group selection The SIMS Behaviour Dashboard costs 145, to purchase the report please contact the SITSS service desk on: sitss.mis@lea.herts.sch.uk or call (option 1, then option 1). Capita SIMS Update - demise of Office 2007 Please note: Capita are providing support for Office 2007 with SIMS up to and including the Autumn 2015 release (due out to schools late November 2015). Office 2010 and Office 2013 continue to be supported for use with SIMS. For a detailed overview of any software and hardware infrastructure schools might need to run the SIMS Product suite please see the sims_technical_roadmap_sept_2015.pdf at: What does Not supported by Capita SIMS mean? Not supported by Capita means that they are either no longer testing our software on the stated platform or they have not finished testing their software on the stated platform. This does not necessarily mean that their software will not work on the stated platform but it does mean that they will be unable to support any issue raised by customers. For the most robust SIMS experience, we advise all customers to keep to a supported platform.

7 Primary Schools - Herts for Learning Assessment Resources Page 7 Schools who have subscribed to the HfL Primary core teaching, learning and assessment resources (now called Primary PA+) will receive an after half term advising them that updated Assessment Manager 7 (AM7) templates and SIMS reports are available to download. This will go to whichever address was given at the time of subscribing. If this is the admin account, please ensure that your head and/or assessment coordinator is aware of the updates. To help interpret the reports, an updated version of the Report Catalogue will also be available to download, and please also be aware that every report has an Info sheet at the end which gives more information on what the report shows, as well as some Frequently Asked Questions. These resources can ONLY be accessed when logged into the subscription area on the HfL website so you must ensure that you have the username and password to login. If you miss seeing the , you can find the SIMS resources at any time by logging into the HfL website, and then clicking on My Groups at the top right of the page. Then click the link for Primary PA+ then click on the link for Assessment (including SIMS) resources all the SIMS downloads will be found at the bottom of this page. The main changes to the templates are: columns for entering assessments for Spoken Language have been added to the English marksheets; new grades that are specific to children who are new to speaking the English language have been added (EAL0 to EAL5). The main changes to the reports are: Spoken Language has been added to the list of available subjects on the reports; amendments to the wording regarding whether children are working at, below or beyond Age Related Expectation (ARE); an extra report is now available when running the *HfL Progress/Targets report. A number of documents to help schools with using the templates and reports have also been updated/added, so we would recommend that you download all of these and pass them to the relevant members of staff. InTouch Web Portal Do you use InTouch? Have you imported your contacts into the InTouch Web Portal? The InTouch Web Portal enables the sending of SMS messages to staff, students and contacts while off-site. This functionality is particularly useful if you do not have access to SIMS on your school system, perhaps because of adverse weather conditions. Please consult the InTouch handbook chapter 10, page 195 for instructions on using the Web Portal. This handbook can be found in the documentation area on the SIMS Homepage.

8 Do you have SEN pupils recorded on non-statutory codes in SIMS e.g. MON? Page 8 The use of MON has never been a statutory code for SEN, however MON was included many years ago as an option in the Hertfordshire Inclusion Register before rigorous monitoring and tracking systems were embedded in whole school practice. The new code of practice is clear that there should only be a single SEN support category (code K) alongside the two codes for pupils who have a Statement or EHC plan (S or E). The SEND code of practice expects that class or subject teachers, supported by the SLT, should make regular assessments of progress for all pupils (for more details please see chapter 6 in the SEN Code of Practice) It is clear that identification of SEN should be built in to the overall approach to monitoring the progress and development of all pupils. The reforms require significant cultural and systemic changes and we are reflecting this in the advice and guidance we give schools. SITSS have produced an instructional document to enable all schools to make the required modifications in SIMS - Do you have pupils on an SEN Status of MON - Monitoring? This is available from The Grid either from Latest Updates or just type W142 into Search and then click GO. New Report - *HfL: Inclusion List *HfL: Inclusion List is suitable for all phase schools and supersedes the HfL Inclusion Register which had been available since Due to the changes in the National Curriculum it is no longer possible to extract assessment data into the *HfL: Inclusion List however the functionality of the *HFL AM7 reports will allow assessment data to be analysed. The report and supporting document is available on The Grid either from Latest Updates or just type W142 into Search and then click GO. SEN Upgrade Enhancements The SIMS Autumn upgrade which schools will start to receive from December 2015 does contain some SEN enhancements. Full details of these enhancements are in What s New? SIMS Release notes which are displayed on screen when users log in after the SIMS Upgrade. If this has been closed inadvertently then it is available from the Documentation Centre on your Home Page.

9 Hertfordshire Internet Connectivity Service (HICS) - beyond September 2017 Page 9 A big thank you to those schools who completed the September survey which asked for your opinion on whether Herts for Learning should, on behalf of schools, seek a contract to deliver Broadband services (HICS) beyond September Results of the September survey are shown below: We received a good level of responses but we were also asked to provide more information to help with completion of the survey. This information will be sent out soon, to head teachers and chair of governors. Do please find the time to complete the survey (if you have not already done so) as your opinion is very important to us. The SITSS Team would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

10 Page 10 SITSS Spring 2015 Courses Course Title Phase Dates (2016) SIMS for New Users A Monday 11 January SIMS Attendance A Wednesday 27 January SIMS Attendance Reporting A Wednesday 27 January SIMS for New Users A Tuesday 23 February SIMS Personnel A Wednesday 10 February SIMS Reporting (advanced) A Tuesday 15 March SIMS Reporting Basic A Wednesday 03 February SIMS Staff Performance Module A Tuesday 02 February SIMS Staff Performance Module A Wednesday 02 March Using SIMS to manage SEN A Tuesday 01 March Using SIMS to manage SEN A Tuesday 29 March AM7 in EYFS P Friday 15 January Assessment Manager 7 Primary P Wednesday 23 March Dinner Money for New Users P Wednesday 13 January Making effective use of AM7 for SENCO P Friday 12 February SIMS AM7 Primary - analysis using school data P Wednesday 23 March SIMS Student List Reporting P Friday 04 March KS4 Assessment Manager S Thursday 14 January AM KS4 Assessment Manager S Thursday 14 January PM KS4 Assessment Manager S Monday 18 January KS4 Assessment Manager S Wednesday 09 March KS4 Assessment Manager S Monday 21 March Nova T6 Prep for Scheduling S Monday 29 February NovaT6 Unit 2 Curriculum Modelling S Friday 29 January NovaT6 Unit 4 Scheduling S Wednesday 09 March For more information and to book online please go to: