This course introduces users to the main procedures for entering and maintaining accurate pupil / student data within the SIMS database.

Course Overview:

SIMS is a School's Information Management system for recording / management of pupil and staff data.

It can record key data on individual attendance, progress, behaviour, achievements and special educational needs. This information is displayed on a single screen, with quick links to all pupil / student information.

Target Audience:

New school office users of SIMS with responsibility for the input and maintenance of basic pupil / student data.  The course is aimed at staff with little or no knowledge of SIMS.

Key Features:

A variety of topics related to pupil / student data are covered including:

• Configuring the SIMS Home Page
• Locating pupil / student details
• Creating a new pupil / student record
• Managing the school population including CTF Import / Export
• Investigating the Links menu
• Running basic SIMS reports

Course Overview:

SIMS Attendance enables you to meet the school's day to day statutory attendance monitoring needs.

Target Audience:

Some knowledge of SIMS .net useful but not essential

Key Features:

Looking at all the Attendance features including:

• Configuring SIMS Attendance
• How to input attendance marks
• Monitoring attendance
• Reporting quickly and accurately on attendance statistics

Course Overview:

The course covers the maintenance and management of staff personal, professional and contractual data. The Personnel Module is one of the key core modules in SIMS .net. It provides basic personnel data to support external returns but it also provides the basis for issuing contracts for staff and maintaining staff development records.

Maintaining accurate data is essential for accurate budget planning and monitoring

Target Audience:

New Admin Officers with responsibility for maintaining staff records. The course is aimed at staff with little or no knowledge of Personnel procedures.

Key Features:

• Topics covered include:
• Entering Staff details into Personnel, including adding and editing staff records and adding qualifications
• Identifying key SWC (School Workforce Census) fields
• Maintaining staff training and absence
• Showing the setup of Service Terms, Pay scales, NI Tables and Superannuation Tables
• Links to the SIMS FMS finance module

Course Overview:

FMS provides a comprehensive at-a-glance picture of your school's finances and resources to help your team to manage their day-to-day financial tasks. Administrative staff can handle payments quickly and efficiently, heads of departments can manage their budgets and bursars can track spending and staff costs against commitments.

Target Audience:

School Finance staff new to FMS

Key Features:

This course provides an introduction to the School Finance module for new staff.

Topics covered include:

• Navigating FMS
• Showing the FMS setup
• Adding / editing suppliers
• Producing orders and invoices
• Processing cheque payments and BACS payments

This presentation outlines the routine for producing the school census via a step-by-step demonstration.

Target Audience:

School staff with responsibility for producing the School Census return.

Currently, there are three School Census returns each year (i.e. Spring, Summer and Autumn), which collect detailed information about school characteristics and pupil details, e.g. pupil attendance, free school meals, exclusions, etc. Different data is collected depending on which return is being prepared and the school phase involved.

The School Census return is required to be completed each term by maintained Nursery schools, Primary schools, Middle schools, Secondary schools, All-Through schools, Special schools, Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), City Technology Colleges (CTCs) and Academies (including free schools) in England. Non-maintained Special schools are also required to submit the return.

This course introduces users to the reporting facility in SIMS.

Course Overview:

There are numerous reports provided within the software to allow users to extract useful information from the pupil / student database in a variety of formats. Users are also able to design their own reports to extract data specific to their requirements.

Target Audience:

Delegates must be familiar with basic usage of SIMS.

Key Features:

The course will cover:

• Running existing reports
• Previewing reports before printing
• Modifying reports
• Designing basic reports in Word and Excel

Course Overview:

FMS provides a comprehensive at-a-glance picture of your school's finances and resources to help your team to manage their day-to-day financial tasks. Administrative staff can handle payments quickly and efficiently, heads of departments can manage their budgets and bursars can track spending and staff costs against commitments.

Target Audience:

School Finance staff with prior knowledge of the basics of FMS

Key Features:

This course provides more in-depth training to the School Finance module for staff already familiar with FMS

Topics covered include: -

• Funds and budget allocation
• Processing a bank reconciliation
• Manual journal processing, including cash book journals and normal journals
• Petty cash processing
• Non-invoiced income
• How to do a bank reconciliation
• Adding salary payments to individual members of staff
• Maintaining staff salaries via the links from Personnel in SIMS .net
• Running VAT returns and various reports

The course follows on from Personnel 7 - Part 1 and demonstrates how to produce reports based on the data entered onto staff records to support pay related and absence data management.

Target Audience: New Admin Officers with responsibility for maintaining staff records. The course is aimed at staff with little or no knowledge of Personnel procedures.

Key Features: The Personnel Module is one of the key core modules in SIMS .net. Reporting in Personnel provides the opportunity to check and maintain the information on staff records ensuring records comply with School Workforce Census requirements.

Topics covered include:

• Running basic Personnel reports
• Running pay related reports
• Reporting on staff training and absence

Following on from the SIMS Pupil Administration Essentials course this session will look at more detailed pupil / student data.

Course Overview:

SIMS is a School's Information Management system for recording / management of pupil and staff data.

It can record key data on individual attendance, progress, behaviour, achievements and special educational needs. This information is displayed on a single screen, with quick links to all the pupil / student information.

Target Audience:

School Admin Assistants responsible for the input and maintenance of basic pupil / student data

Key Features:

A variety of topics related to pupil / student data are covered including:

• Maintaining the school's pastoral structure
• Recording exclusion data
• Adding pre-admission groups
• Using the bulk update routine
• Creating and using User Defined Fields
• Maintaining / editing Lookup Tables
• Using the School Diary

Course Overview:

The course follows on from the Introduction to SIMS Reporting course and so assumes that users are able to create basic reports.

Target Audience:  

This course requires users to have a solid knowledge of reporting up to the level obtained through the Introduction to SIMS Reporting course. It assumes that users are able to create basic reports and have used SIMS Analysis and other output types from SIMS.

Key Features:

The course will equip users with a clear understanding of how reports are produced in SIMS and in particular be able to:

• create reports using sub-reports
• explore the benefits of using a Rich Text Format (RTF) report
• create reports using different focuses
• output reports to Excel
• edit reports with attached mail merge documents
• create mail merge letters
• create mail merge labels
• edit the quick letter template

The course provides a complete overview of the SIMS Behaviour Management area which a school can use to record, monitor and manage pupil behaviour and achievements, including detentions and the use of report cards.

Target Audience:  Familiarity with the pupil data held in SIMS will be helpful but it is more important that you have a good knowledge of the way behaviour and achievements are currently recorded, reported and analysed in your school and your school’s future ambitions in this area.

Key Features:  Routines covered in the course include:

• Setting up and configuring the Behaviour Management area
• Editing relevant lookup tables to meet the needs of, and terminology used in, an individual school
• Using the behaviour and achievement recording routines for both individuals and groups of pupils
• Setting up and administering individual and scheduled detentions including letters to parents
• Defining report card templates and creating report cards to enable the monitoring of session/lesson behaviour
• Defining and recording interventions where required
• Producing reports on the data held in this area

This presentation outlines the routine for producing the school workforce census via a step by step demonstration.

Target Audience: School staff with responsibility for producing the School Workforce Census return.

The school workforce census is a statutory data collection that takes place each autumn.  The census collects data on all teaching and support staff in regular employment.

The school workforce census is required to be submitted for staff working in:

• local-authority-maintained schools
• academies
• free schools, including:
  • studio schools
  • university technical colleges
• pupil referral units

The course introduces users to the reporting facility in SIMS.

Course Overview:

There are numerous reports provided within the software to allow users to extract useful information from the student database in a variety of formats. Users are also able to design their own reports to extract data specific to their requirements.

Target Audience:

Delegates must be familiar with basic usage of SIMS. A basic knowledge of reporting is useful but not essential.

Key Features:

The course will equip users with a clear understanding of how reports are produced in SIMS and in particular be able to:

• run existing reports
• preview reports before printing
• modify and design basic reports in Word and Excel
• create reports from scratch
• create reports using sub-reports
• explore the benefits of using a Rich Text Format (RTF) report
• create reports using different focuses
• output reports to Excel