October 2023 MIS Newsletter

We now have some new Distance Learning Courses added for Arbor, including a FREE course on Business Roles and Permissions.

You can view the Arbor Distance Learning courses here.

Our pre-recorded Distance Learning courses give you the flexibility to study online, at a time and pace to suit you. You will have access to the course for twelve months and will receive a certificate once the course is completed.

School ICT and turn IT on are now able to carry out Admin functionality for your school. This means we’ll be able to diagnose and resolve a selection of common issues and perform common data refreshes, for example; Refreshing course calendar entries, populating missing payment accounts and audit logs, negating the need to escalate these tasks to Arbor. We will be contacting schools over the coming months regarding this, however please feel free to contact our helpdesk for more information in the meantime.

Just a reminder to complete the school census. Guidance on completing the return can be found via: –

School ICT customers:

• Primary- https://schoolicts.halopsa.com/article?entity=articles&text=&id=623
• Secondary- https://my.schoolicts.co.uk/portal/kb?id=537
• Post 16 https://my.schoolicts.co.uk/portal/kb?id=514

turn IT on guidance is available here.

The Workforce Census will be available on Arbor from the 19^th October 2023.

For the Workforce Census this year, you can record users with the Position Category (aka Post) of School Business Professional (SBP). Anyone with this Post will need their Professional Qualifications recording, and a Destination and Leaving reasons when their contracts end.

There’s also a new flag to identify members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT).

School Workforce census guidance can be found here along with our handy report which can be downloaded and imported to show which staff will be included in the School Workforce census return.

• Previously when setting up Summative assessments, you could select from a list of pre-named assessments. Now we’ll take you right to the step to set up a new assessment. Please note this means you are no longer able to set up FSP and ELG summative assessments in bulk.
• Assessments added to the Annual Policy on school sites or pushed down from the MAT MIS will no longer be added to any existing report cards.

The Separate invigilation Access Arrangement is now called Alternative rooming arrangements

The EDI export jobs table shows all candidates, and any differences between Arbor data and the EDI file will be highlighted in red. We’ll also show if the UCI is different.

If you are Offering the same Exam qualifications next year. You can now quickly copy over your Qualification Offering, ready to make entries – no need to manually add again using QAN codes.

• You can now include unique identifiers when downloading students’ data from any table. Just go to School > Data > Export > Export Options to add in Arbor Student ID, Year Group, Registration Form, UPN, ULN or UCI.
• Using the Arbor App in IOS? parents and guardians using the Arbor App on iOS can now click the back button.
• Improved the TimeTabler import process for staff and NTAs and made it impossible to import more than one file at once.

Census guidance can be found here.

Important Dates

• Collection Date: Thursday 5th October 2023
• Deadline for returns: Deadline is Wednesday 1st November 2023

*Your local authority may have a shorter deadline if you submit to them rather than COLLECT – please contact them for details of their deadline.

Where to find Autumn Census in ScholarPack?

The census module can be found via Admin > Census > Autumn Census.

You will be shown sections for –

• Documentation – links to the DfE and ScholarPack Guidance
• Known Issues – Information will show here on anything flagged by the DfE or any specific error or queries to be aware of.
• Notes – Useful information needed on certain sections of this census. If the notes are in RED it means no data has been recorded for the required item.
• Specific Data Items – Information on all the specific data items required for this particular school census and a link to the area of ScholarPack where you can view / update the information.
• Standard Data Items – Information on all the standard data items required for this particular school census and a link to the area of ScholarPack where you can view / update the information.

Each blue button in the View/Edit column will take you to the area of ScholarPack where you can check or update your information.

Changes since the last Workforce Census

There are no major changes since the previous collection, though the guidance has been updated in several aspects:

• Guidance on School Business Leaders has been clarified, see section 4.3, 7.2.5, 7.5 and 7.5 of the DfE guide.
• Guidance on Disability has been clarified, see section 7.1.9 of the DfE guide.

 Staff Data Capture Sheets

To ensure your staff data is complete and up to date you can ask staff members to complete a basic personal information sheet. This can be downloaded via Admin>Personnel>Download Data Capture Sheet.

Every school will be expected to have a SENCO and to have a headteacher or executive headteacher. If this is a combined role within the school, for example the Head is also the SENCO then a note will need to put on COLLECT for queries 6540Q and 6550Q

To complete and download your Workforce Census, go to Admin > Census > Workforce Census

You are able to access this area when the ‘Census Status’ is showing as Live.

Once you have ensured that all necessary information is complete, go to Admin > Census > Workforce Census> Calculate Full Census Return to validate your information. Any errors or queries will be displayed here.

Once you have checked the validity of your data you will be able to generate a summary of the information in Admin > Census > Workforce > Generate Census Summary. We recommend also printing out this summery so you are able to manually work through each figure and tick off if correct, this can be then signed off by your Head Teacher. Once you are happy that the summary of information is correct, you will need to click on Download Census File from the main census page.

This file will download to your computer (to your chosen destination) and you will be required to either send this information to your Local Authority, or upload directly to the DfE COLLECT Portal. If you are unsure we recommend you contact your Local Authority for more information.

For further advice and support please see the attached link to the DfE census documentation:

If you need further help, please contact us: –

School ICT customers:

• Contact: 0345 222 6802 Option 1, helpdesk@schoolicts.co.uk
• Portal: https://my.schoolicts.co.uk/

turn IT on customers:

• Contact: 01865 597620 Option 2, mis.support@turniton.co.uk
• Portal: https://portal.turniton.co.uk

These include Editable Quick Links:

• Attendance Quick Notes now in Parameters
• Attendance Daily Register and Week View Improvements
• Option to Export Advanced Find results as CSV Export

Communication Centre Send SMS (text message) change – The number of text credits that can be used in a single text message is now limited to 5 SMS text credits (a restriction imposed by our text message provider) to avoid long messages, which are better directed to emails.  SMS text messages are intended for short messages.   Please remember that at any time while writing a text message, you can see the number of text credits that are going to be consumed in a message, as well as the total number of text credits that would be used if sent to multiple contacts.

Children with a Social Worker (CWSW) – A new field has been added to support recording of Children with Social Worker

Social Care Section added to Student Find

Auto-Generated Groups – There is now an auto-generated group which includes all pupils on the current roll.  This group updates automatically when a pupil leaves or joins the current roll.  (The membership is updated overnight). This can be viewed in Modules > General > Groups.

Ability to enrol all current roll students to an Assessment Plan

Key Stage Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) – The MTC has been moved to a separate section of the Key Stage 2 page and behaves in a similar way to Phonics. The MTC now has its own assessment plan and will be removed from the KS2 plan from 2024 onwards. When generating an MTC report the MTC check year will be used to select the desired students.

Letter Templates Update – To improve the usability of the letter templates, they are now automatically listed in alphabetical order of the Template name.  In addition, you can sort any of the columns, so it’s also possible to sort them in alphabetical order of Description or Date Created by clicking on the column name.

We shall be exhibiting at the following events – if you’re there, please pop by our stand to say hello and to find out about the latest services, training, consultancy and support we can offer, and grab some of our event merchandise! : –

• National Education Show, Cardiff – 6th October
• Birmingham HR Services for Schools, Birmingham NEC – 10th October
• LASBM, Accrington – 11th October
• Education People Show, Kent – 8th November
• East London School Business Leaders Conference, Stratford – 10th November
• MGL, Liverpool – 10th November
• Schools and Academies Show, Birmingham NEC – 22nd November
• MGL, Manchester – 23rd November

Data Genie – Virtual Data Management (VDM).

When maintaining your schools data is not possible, our Virtual Data Genie team enables you to maintain, enhance or completely outsource your schools data management, ensuring best practice and continuity of your schools data, at all times. Whether it be a one off to support with a particular time of year such as census or exams, for a short to medium term period like maternity or sickness cover, or if you’re perhaps struggling to recruit – to fully outsource your schools Data Management, we can provide a solution.

For further information on this new service from School ICT, please visit: Data Genie or call: 0345 222 6802 – option 3 or e-mail: enquiries@schoolicts.co.uk.