Your Scomis News Update

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to have been affected particularly severely by school closures and may need more support due to lost teaching time.

The Department for Education has announced funding for a Covid 'Catch-up Plan' to help schools tackle the impact of time lost in the classroom due to Covid-19.

Although school leaders will have freedom to use funding as best fits their school, the DfE do point to a guide produced by the Education Endowment Fund to assist in decision making.

To help you address these challenges and take full advantage of the funding available, we've written a White Paper to sign post you to the areas in which we are able to provide further advice and support. For a copy of the paper click here.

In the Autumn term, we will be scheduling a series of virtual events to explore each of these areas further – look out for your invitation after the summer holidays. In the meantime, if you need any advice please do get in touch on 01392 385300 or email scomis@devon.gov.uk.

Scomis Covid-19 Attendance Report

If you have signed up to the Scomis bulletin hopefully you will have found our guidance to help you clarify the information that DfE has published about attendance and the returns required.

You can find the post here.

We also went a step further and developed a report for SIMS to help you complete the DfE attendance data which you can access here.

Once the report is set up (by identifying the students in the different categories of Critical Worker, Social Worker and Otherwise Vulnerable) it will give you the figures that the DfE is asking for with a few clicks, saving time and reducing stress levels. There is also supporting detailed documentation that takes you through installing, setting up and running the report. We will, of course, keep this report up to date as and when the guidance from the DfE changes so it's worth checking back occasionally to ensure you are running the latest version. If you are not using the report yet it is worth having a look and may help the last few weeks of term run a little smoother.

Useful Links to Guidance about School Openings in September

In September the government want schools to fully open and have published guidance to this end. This guidance can be found here.

It is up to the school to interpret and implement the guidance for their circumstances. There is much in the guidance that will affect how schools work, from staggered starts and the difficulty that may cause if most of your children are bussed in, to meticulously cleaning science equipment between bubbles.

Schools Week has published a brief outline of the guidance which set the scene and could be useful to share with governors as a starting point for discussion, which is available here.

United Learning, a church charity working within education has produced some exemplifications based on different types of school. They are offered as a set of ideas which other schools might find helpful. Find the document here.

United Learning have cleared the document with Public Health England and the government to ensure it accurately reflects official guidance. While the examples may not apply to you directly some of their solutions may help you in reaching your own solution.

As always, we will try to keep you informed of any useful material that we find and also share any good practice that we come across in schools.

Digital Education Platforms

Recent DfE guidance for full school reopening recommends that schools have contingency plans to provide continuity of education; in the case of a local outbreak or in cases where multiple pupils or staff need to self-isolate. High quality remote education (which aligns as closely as possible with in-school provision) allows you to build your capability to educate pupils remotely. The DfE has publicised government-funded access to one of two free-to-use Digital Education Platforms: Google (G Suite) for Education or Microsoft Office 365 Education.

To assist schools we have created a 45 minute video which includes an outline of Government funded support available for schools who don't currently have a Digital Education Platform configured for pupils' remote learning. The video also highlights ways in which schools can fully exploit the use of cloud technology longer term to reduce staff workload, improve collaboration, and achieve budget savings including:

• The Benefits of Adopting a cloud-based Digital Education Platform.

• Government funded support available for schools that don't currently have a Digital Education Platform.

• Choosing the Best Solution for your School - Comparison: G Suite for Education and Office 365 Education.

• Benefits of Linking your Digital Education Platform to your School's MIS.

• Benefits of embedding the use of cloud technology in schools moving forward.

You can view the video here.

In case you missed it, you can also read our special edition newsletter regarding Digital Education Platforms here.

SIMS and the Disadvantaged Pupil

Research over the last decade has consistently highlighted the gulf in outcomes between children from deprived backgrounds and their more affluent peers. In the UK, 21% children are eligible for free school meals.They start school behind their better-off classmates and the gap widens throughout their schooling. By the time they finish Key Stage 4, 37% of disadvantaged children achieve 5 good GCSEs compared to 63% of other pupils.

This presentation demonstrates how SIMS can be used effectively to track and monitor children in school receiving Pupil Premium funding, to support your strategies in narrowing the attainment gap.

If you would like further help please contact us on 01392 385300 or email scomis@devon.gov.uk.

End of Year Procedures

Don't forget you must complete your SIMS End of Year Procedures before the end of term!

Just a few of the procedures you must complete include:

Creating the new academic year for 2020/21
Setting up the pastoral structure for the New Academic Year
Adding intake and admission groups
Recording leavers
Setting up the promotion mapping for the new academic year

Up to date guidance notes can be found now via the SIMS Documentation centre accessible from the SIMS Home Page.

For more information you can access our FAQ here or sign up to our End of Year digital learning course at ScoLearn.

Guidance for the Download of Examination Results in SIMS Examinations Organiser 2020

Regrettably, due to the current Covid-19 situation, Scomis is unable to offer our usual classroom based training. Therefore, we have provided guidance on preparing SIMS Examinations Organiser to aid the successful download of the examination results 2020 from the Awarding Bodies. This guidance is now available from the Scomis Website. Please click on the following link: https://faq.scomis.org/kb25987/.

STOP PRESS!
Scomis is pleased to advise that the recording of the free session to complement the above guidance (delivered on Wednesday 8^th July 2020) is now available.

To access the recording please contact:
scomis@devon.gov.uk with 'Exams Results recording' in the subject line of your email.

Scomis Customer Annual Survey

Congratulations to Alison Reynolds from Corpus Christi Primary School, in North Somerset who won a SIMS Audit in our prize draw and thank you to all of those customers who responded to our survey,your feedback enables us to continue improving our services. The results of the survey will be published in the Autumn term.

Training Courses

ScoLearn

Any time Any place Any pace - NEW COURSES!

We have three new digital learning courses available to buy from our ScoLearn site :

Dinner Money – all you need to help you set up and run SIMS Dinner Money smoothly, including letters to parents, collecting and recording payments, daily meal arrangements and reports
Managing Communications using InTouch – communicating with parents ,pupils and staff by email, texts and instant alerts. Effective tools for communication are really vital right now!
Reporting from Personnel – to enable you to produce reports from the staff data held in SIMS Personnel. Shows you how you can run and edit existing reports or design and produce your own to help school leaders and governors have an overview of staffing issues

It's the end of the year but don't panic!

Our SIMS End of Year Procedures digital learning course will tell you all you need to know.

We now have 13 digital learning courses available - for details of all Scomis training click here.

Scomis Service & Product Updates

SIMS Summer Upgrade

The Summer Upgrade for SIMS & FMS is planned to be rolled out on the 17^th July 2020.

You can find our bulletin, which links to the Upgrade FAQ here.

Managed Reporting Service

The new Scomis Managed Reporting Service is a web-based solution which gathers data overnight and combines it into a ready to use dashboard for your academy group. The dashboards make it easy to understand the data, combining key performance measures and useful pupil demographic filters for a consolidated view. Being automated, your academy group will have data at their fingertips without having to put demands on the schools.

"The dashboard has enabled us to review the data for all of our schools in one place, with the filter tool enabling us to drill down to groups of schools and specific groups of children. It saves us time, as we no longer need to spend time crunching numbers, we can focus on interrogating the data to identify next steps for improvement. This is an invaluable tool for reporting to SLTs, the Trust Board and local governing bodies."
Helen Brown, Education & Standards Manager, Plymouth CAST

"Working in the HR department of a trust with 35 schools is challenging, especially when you have no easy way to collate information. The Scomis reporting dashboard has revolutionised the way we work. We can now get data at a touch of a button, no more sifting through spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Absence reporting, equality assessments and employee resourcing are just a few key tasks that are made easy by the dashboard."
Adelle Pope, HR Manager, Plymouth CAST

If you would like more information please click here, or contact your Scomis Account Manager.

Online Safety

New Guide for Schools using Facebook Apps from SWGfL, Childnet & Facebook

SWGfL and Childnet have worked directly with Facebook to produce a new guide on how education professionals can safely use Facebook apps including:

Whatsapp
Facebook Pages
Facebook Groups
Facebook Live
Facebook Messenger

This new 12-page resource gives you everything you need to consider when it comes to managing your communications via a digital platform, including safeguarding considerations and security information.
Access and download the resource:
https://swgfl.org.uk/assets/documents/a-guide-to-facebooks-family-of-apps-for-schools.pdf

Please note: The guide is only suitable for internal communications between staff and external communications with the parental community. It does not cover educators communicating with students. It is important that your school policy clearly defines how to communicate with students digitally.

Using Zoom Safely
Zoom allows you to virtually meet up with other people through video or audio calling and has become one of the most popular platforms, being available on laptops, tablets and mobiles.

Zoom has become a fantastic method of staying communicated with family and friends throughout this uncertain time. If you are one the millions of people now using its services you should check you know exactly how to use the platform and more importantly, know how to stay safe when using it.

Did you know?

Users must be at least 16 years old to have a Zoom account
You do not need a Zoom account to join a meeting
You should always update the Zoom app to ensure security settings and features are updated as it's important to always stay on top of the latest version
Several types of personal information types can be collected including information commonly used to identify you, such as your name, address, email and phone numbers

Check SWGfL's advice on:

How to set up Zoom
How to host and join Zoom meetings
Zoom's security features
Zoom's additional features

Further information from SWGfL about other video conferencing platforms is also available here.

Remember: Stay Safe Online too!

Partner Updates

Capita Announcement about the Sale of Capita ESS

You may recently have received a communication from Capita about the planned sale of their educational software business, Capita ESS after an announcement to shareholders on Friday 19th June 2020.

Following a briefing by Andy Bennett, MD of Capita ESS to the Scomis Senior Leadership team, we would like to reassure all of our customers that this announcement has no impact on our service offering to you or on Capita ESS services to us or their planned product developments.

Read our statement regarding the sale here.

Dear Grace

How can I implement a staggered lunch setup in Nova?

Where staggered lunch periods are required/overlap, it is best to create an extra period. This manages the staggered lunch much better, but will distort any period analysis.

On the Cycle screen - choose the lunch periods and give them a green period type Lunch - i.e. not exclusive

In Plan | Subjects, create a subject called Lunch

On the Model screen - create a block for each year group (or part year group if they do not have lunch together)

On the Block screen, build these blocks. Either leave them to be autoscheduled, or schedule and lock them if required.

On the NCC screen, create an NCC called Lunch, highlight it and click the Lunch button. This will give each teacher a single lunch period for each day, i.e. 5 for a one week timetable, 10 for a two week and so on. The number of lunch periods for part time staff will need to be edited individually.

Schedule these lunches manually on the NCC screen or autoschedule them on the Auto screen. They can be left to be shuffled around by autoschedule, or, if required, they can be locked onto the schedule to prevent them moving. The automatic lunch function will only create single lunch NCCs for teachers. If the cycle has changed it will need to be sent to SQL.

Please see our FAQ.