April 2023 News Blog Post

School ICT & turn IT on work closely with the DfE (Department for Education). Please see below their latest initiative.

The DfE are working with Building Digital UK to identify schools in England that are unlikely to have access to high-speed internet connectivity by the end of 2025. Most parts of the country will be covered by commercial fibre rollouts, but not everywhere. For those schools, the DfE will procure a high-speed line, which the school can then move their broadband connection over to. They will contact you between now and May to invite you to join.

• The DfE manage the process. Schools will not be charged.
• The connections are likely to start being completed in mid-late 2024.
• The DfE will require you to accept the terms and conditions of the programme to include you. The main part of that is that you agree to transfer your existing service, or start a new one on the new line within 1 year of being connected, or if for some reason that is not possible, to inform them.

Please ensure the school office are expecting the email from the DfE. Their email address is, Schools.FIBRE@education.gov.uk and they would be happy to respond to any questions you may have. We attach their FAQ document here

If you are interested in exploring alternative MIS solutions, our expert team can advise on the best solution for your school. School ICT work closely with leading providers, namely Arbor, Bromcom, ScholarPack and SIMS. We can help guide you through the migration process and continue to provide ongoing support.

The link to our previously recorded webinar on moving MIS is below, along with a sheet to assist with assessing functionality and cost:

Https://my.schoolicts.co.uk/portal/kb?btn=46&text=moving%20MIS&entity=articles&id=338

If you would like to arrange a meeting to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact us on 0345 2226802 or via our portal my.schoolicts.co.uk or for turn IT on, email:  mis.support@turniton.co.uk or call the turn IT on MIS Team on: 01865 597620 option 2.

We have been made aware by some of our lovely customers that sometimes our ticket replies get a little lost on their way back to you and often find their way to your Spam or Junk email boxes, or in some instances, are blocked by the school network altogether. If you feel you haven’t had a reply from us, please could we ask you to check your Spam or Junk email folders or give our MIS Team a call who will be able to investigate further for you?

Recently changed your school email address?

Has your schools email address changed?

We have seen that many school email addresses are changing from @myschoolname to @myschooltrustname if this is the case for your school, please let us know so that we can update our records and ensure that you don’t miss out on any valuable information, news or even support tickets.

April is usually a time for NJC and support staff to have their annual increment awards. This is something that should be updated within your MIS as soon as you receive them to ensure they are up to date for the SWC (School Workforce Census).

Please visit our Customer Portal my.schoolicts.co.uk, or contact turn IT on email mis.support@turniton.co.uk or call the MIS Team on: 01865 597620 option 2 for guidance on how to update your payscales within your specific MIS. If you do need any support on this matter, please contact the Helpdesk in the usual way and one of the MIS Support Team will be happy to help.

If you link SIMS and FMS, you will need to ensure these have been updated for your salary projections to be correct.

Look no further! Power BI can bring your data to life,  helping schools to identify key areas within your data, and guide you in making informed decisions to aid school improvement.

Our dedicated inhouse Power BI specialist can talk to you about how Power BI connects to your MIS and what consultancy and reports we have available.

For more information contact the SICT helpdesk on: 0345 222 6802 or helpdesk@schoolicts.co.uk, turn IT on e-mail MIS.support@turniton.co.uk or call the turn IT on MIS Team on: 01865 597620 option 2.

The multiplication tables check (MTC) is statutory for all year 4 pupils registered at state-funded maintained schools, special schools or academies (including free schools) in England.

Schools can access the MTC service to prepare for the check via DfE Sign-in from Monday 17 April 2023.

Schools must administer the MTC to all eligible year 4 pupils between Monday 5 June and Friday 16 June 2023.

Schools can use the following week, Monday 19 June to Friday 23 June, to administer the check to any pupils who were absent during the first 2 weeks or in case of any delays to the administration of the check due to technical difficulties.

Schools must provide a reason for any pupils who are not able to participate in the check within the MTC service.

Information and further guidance available here:  https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/multiplication-tables-check

Relevant dates and information collected:

Please see the sections below for details of running the census on Arbor, SIMS, ScholarPack or Bromcom.

An additional bank holiday in honour of the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III will take place on Monday 8 May 2023. As this date had previously been announced as the first day of the 2023 key stage 2 (KS2) test week in England, a change to the KS2 test schedule will be necessary.

Ministers have considered the situation carefully and have decided that KS2 tests will take place in the same week with tests following the usual order but each taking place one day later than originally planned. As such, the new schedule will be:

·       Tuesday 9 May: English grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS) papers 1 (questions) and 2 (spelling)

·       Wednesday 10 May: English reading paper

·       Thursday 11 May: mathematics papers 1 (arithmetic) and 2 (reasoning)

·       Friday 12 May: mathematics paper 3 (reasoning)

The KS2 timetable variation (TTV) window for each assessment will also move back one day, in accordance with this change.

There will be no changes to arrangements for other assessments, including KS2 teacher assessments, key stage 1 tests and teacher assessments, the phonics screening check and the multiplication tables check. Dates and deadlines for these assessments remain as previously announced.

See the full article here

The Spring 2023 upgrade of SIMS, FMS and Discover is now available via SOLUS3. This upgrade contains a number of highly requested new features including:

• Bulk update Pre-admissions for data such as EAL, Ethnicity, First Language.
• Login enhancements for additional packages, such as Exams, Options 5, Nova T-6.

To see a list of the new features the release notes are available from our customer portal linked below:
https://schoolicts.halopsa.com/article?entity=articles&text=&id=376

For schools where we do the upgrade if you have specific requirements, we have created a form for you to let us know how we can improve and make your SIMS upgrade run more smoothly: – https://forms.office.com/r/W3LU1GSfJw

Primary Schools

Some schools will apply this in house or via a third-party IT provider, please make the relevant person aware this is now available upon request. If School ICT are responsible for your upgrade, we will be rolling this out by taking a phased approach over the coming weeks. If you would like the upgrade applying on a specific date or day of the week, please let us know ASAP by giving the helpdesk a call. If you are unsure about who does your upgrade, please contact our helpdesk for clarification.

To minimise disruption, the upgrade will be run on your SIMS database via SOLUS3 overnight. Once the workstations are switched on the morning after the upgrade has been run you will see a SOLUS3 popup. You can click on the “Deploy Now” button and this will start the upgrade process immediately. If you do not do this, it will wait 2 minutes before continuing automatically. It is then a case of allowing the upgrade to run before opening SIMS/FMS, which should upgrade SIMS to 7.210 and FMS to 6.210. Once the upgrade is complete, if you get an ‘incompatible database’ error when trying to access SIMS or FMS, please contact us so that we can investigate and resolve the issue to prevent this happening in future. For those schools that do their own upgrade we would recommend stopping any third-party app services that link to SIMS before running the upgrade as these we have found can cause issues.

For any newly supported customers joining our service, if you have not already done so, please ensure that your school has informed ESS by email that School ICT Services or turn IT on are undertaking support on your behalf (this process is included in the welcome pack we provide to new customers). This will ensure that we are able to deploy patches and upgrades to your establishment centrally through our online ESS management console. If you are unsure if you have done this, please call us and we can confirm this has been done on your behalf.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Secondary Schools

We highly recommend this is applied ahead of the results download days to ensure this is as smooth as possible.

You are receiving this email as the designated central contact for your establishment. This email is aimed at the technical department in school and we would therefore be grateful if you would please forward this email on as required. If you have no technical staff, please call the Service Desk for assistance.

The software authorised:-

SIMS (Spring 2023) Full Release (7.210)
FMS (Spring 2023) Full Release (6.210)
SIMS Discover (2023 Spring)

The above list is available dependent upon the modules utilised by the school.
 
If you cannot see the releases, then please call the helpdesk. For any new supported customers joining our service please ensure that your school has informed ESS that School ICT Services is now undertaking support on your behalf (this process is included in the welcome pack we provide to new customers). This will ensure that we are able to deploy patches and upgrades to your establishment centrally through our online ESS management console. If you are unsure if you have done this, please give us a call and we can confirm for you.

As usual, prior to performing any upgrade, please ensure that you have a successful back-up of your SIMS system. We have found we receive a number of calls with an issue where SIMS does not update or open on the SIMS server following an upgrade. Please ensure that if you have any third-party apps that link to SIMS, these services are stopped prior to running the upgrade to ensure that SIMS updates on the SIMS server.

The most successful upgrade deployments occur when all relevant workstations are left switched on, but logged out of SIMS. Ensuring that all users have logged out of SIMS prior to the upgrade taking place will help to reduce residual problems. If upgrading overnight, please be aware that workstations that are switched off may fail. If this occurs, please download the upgrade again and re-deploy.

For any newly supported customers joining our service, if you have not already done so, please ensure that your school has informed ESS by email that School ICT Services or turn IT on are undertaking support on your behalf (this process is included in the welcome pack we provide to new customers). This will ensure that we are able to deploy patches and upgrades to your establishment centrally through our online ESS management console. If you are unsure if you have done this, please call us and we can confirm this has been done on your behalf.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

If School ICT are undertaking the upgrade on behalf of the school, please call or email our helpdesk to arrange a convenient date and time, giving as much notice as possible to ensure we can meet any specific requirements. We usually advise for this to be scheduled when your IT support are onsite.

SIMS Upgrade Process – How do School ICT manage SIMS upgrades?

If School ICT carry out your SIMS upgrade, (mainly for primary schools, most secondary schools will manage their own upgrades in house), we carry out the upgrade in the following way:

Once the upgrade has been released, we will start the process of sending it out to schools over the following weeks. We will firstly send out an email to all schools to let them know the upgrade is available, with a link to the release notes. If at any point you have a date you would like the upgrade to be run, please do let us know via the helpdesk and we can ensure this is put into the schedule for you.

We plan the upgrades depending on whether you have a preferred day or date first. Then following this, we work alphabetically, selecting a number of schools from the beginning and the end of the alphabet.

On the morning of your upgrade, we will create a ticket within our ticketing system. This will go to the main contact we have listed for the school, or if you have provided us with an Upgrade contact, this will be used instead. The title of the ticket and subject of the email will be ‘<date> SIMS Upgrade.’

Once the ticket has been created, we will send you an email with the details below: –

School ICT are planning on running the SIMS update out of hours tonight. If this is not convenient, please let us know ASAP so we can reschedule this at a more convenient time.

To ensure the upgrade runs smoothly, we advise you to ensure all users are logged out of SIMS but their PC has been left turned on. If any PCs are turned off, when they are next turned on, the upgrade will automatically apply.

This email will be sent by 12pm on the morning of your upgrade.

If you feel as though the date provided is unsuitable for any reason, please reply to the email and we will be happy to rearrange it for a more suitable date. We do ask, where possible, to please let us know by 3:30pm if you do NOT wish for your upgrade to go ahead. After 3:30pm the upgrade will be released and will run automatically on your system after 8pm.

If School ICT completes your SIMS upgrade, please fill in the form below. This allows us to ensure the correct people receive the email regarding the upgrade and if you can provide us with your preferred dates and any other details you feel are relevant, we can make the upgrade as smooth as possible for you. This is a good way if your IT technician is in on a Wednesday so you would like it to run on a Tuesday.

https://forms.office.com/r/W3LU1GSfJw

For schools who purchase turn IT on Patches and Upgrade Service

We will be rolling out the SIMS / FMS upgrade and Workstation Patch to all schools week commencing 18th April, for schools on a late Easter break, this will be rolled out week commencing 25th April. If you have a consultant, we will try to schedule this to coincide with the time they are normally onsite, so that this will allow any issues to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. We will be in touch to schedule the upgrade.

We require all users to be logged out of SIMS and FMS, (your internet, email and other software packages are still able to be accessed whilst the upgrade is running) and it will take approximately two hours (depending on database size). Laptops and PCs should be left switched on so that the upgrade can deploy to all necessary machines.

For schools who do not purchase turn IT on Patches and Upgrade Service

Please arrange for your SIMS / FMS to be upgraded to version 7.210 / 6.210. These will be made available on SOLUS once they have been released.

Bulk Update on Pre-Admissions – The pre-admissions bulk update is available for pre-admissions applications to help ensure the correct information is recorded without having to go through each application one at a time:

Bulk deletion of linked documents on Student Records:

• Various items added to the Reporting Dictionary.

• New functionality in SIMS Assessment. With the Spring release, within an Assessment marksheet, you should be able to see new functionality to switch on Hover Help. Please note that this functionality is user and marksheet specific. If the Hover Help box is ticked and saved on the marksheet, when hovering over the column header, it will provide the following details:

• • • Aspect Name
    • Column Heading
    • Result Set
    • Description (of the Aspect, where applicable)

As in the example below, hovering over the English Language column in the marksheet, would result in a pop-up to show more details, that can be used in other areas of Assessment, e.g., Individual Reports, etc.

Please note that within the Spring release ESS will be continuing to check that customers are eligible to use the software via the Eligibility Check. If you have not applied the Spring Release 2023 by the 23rd of April, then for SIMS, access to the CENSUS menu is disabled and for FMS, access to the CFR Menu is disabled. All other areas of SIMS and FMS will continue to work. Applying the release after this date will allow the Eligibility Checker to unhide this functionality.

In SIMS, setting up the new academic year and pre-admission groups can be done whenever schools are ready so you can start now if you like. The new year must be set up before the old year ends to avoid major, and potentially costly, issues (so don’t leave it until you come back after the Summer!!). SICTS do offer a service where we can do this for you. Please contact the helpdesk for further information on 0345 222 6802 or helpdesk@schoolicts.co.uk

Scanned Invoices

You can now scan and store images of invoices in FMS! This is a quick and simple process to set up and use. If you would like more information, please contact us.

Cost Centre/Ledger Code Links

Top Tip!!  Did you know that you can link Cost Centres and Ledger Codes within the Cost Centre Allocation Screen? This saves time as you don’t have come out of this screen to go to Tools | General Ledger Setup and create a new link within the C/Centre Ledger Links tab and then go back into Cost Centre Allocation to continue entering your budget.

Within the Cost Centre Allocation Screen (Budget Management | Cost Centre Allocation if you use the shortcuts, or Focus | Budget Management | Cost Centre Allocation if you use the menu routes). Go into the relevant Cost Centre and to add a new Ledger Code click on the spyglass on the right:

This will give you a window where you can select the new ledger code from the left-hand list, click on Choose to move it to the right, and then click on Update to save:

This will take you back to your screen and your new Ledger Code will now be linked to your Cost Centre: