SIMS + POWER BI Blog
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filtering by class using bromcom mat vision and power bi
Bromcom's MAT Vision product is a very easy way to integrate Power BI and your Bromcom data - simply point your Power BI at the Bromcom OData feed, enter your ID and password and you have deep access to the underlying data in the Bromcom MIS database. Most of the data...
The free assessment system that you already have
For SIMS primary schools in England and Wales there is a free, robust and easily learned assessment system that is already installed with SIMS Assessment Manager. Here's what it can do. In my next blog post I will show you how to get the system up and running in about...
Bromcom Vision-X gives Power BI access to all your pupil databases (including SIMS, Arbor etc)
Over the COVID lockdown Bromcom released a new service that will be of interest to local support units (LSUs) and MATs everywhere. Vision-X is a service that unifies the data held in pupil databases across your MAT. As such, it’s not the first product that claims to...
Recommended resources for learning Power BI
I'm often asked where school staff should start when learning about Power BI, so here's a post that lists all the online resources that have helped me to learn Power BI over the last couple of years. First, here's all the online websites that I've found useful. Direct...
Using DAX in Power BI to calculate academic terms and half terms
Academic terms (certainly for UK schools) are difficult to pin down in statistical terms. Typically Easter falls in a different week each year, altering the relative lenths of the spring and summer terms and making direct comparisons between years difficult. The...
Bromcom MAT Vision and Power BI
Readers of this blog will know that Power BI is a powerful tool for analysing school data. But for those with responsibility for data across a multi-academy trust (MAT) the gulf between what Power BI promises and what we can deliver, given time-constraints and...
Synchronising Power BI slicers using slicer groups
Sometimes we have columns in different tables that hold the same type of data. For example: A class (eg 11B/Ma1) might appear in a behaviour table (to indicate the class where a behaviour incident took place) and also in an assessment table (to indicate the class the...
Power BI DAX tips: using CALCULATE and ALL
In education data, we often need to compare one percentage with another. For example the attendance of our whole school with the attendance of a particular class or year group. Or the P8 of one group of pupils, compared to the P8 of the whole school. It took me a few...
Using date tables with SIMS and Power BI
In this article, I'll show you how Power BI can create drillable graphs based on terms, academic years and the days of the week. Edit: There's lots of really useful comments at the bottom of this article and I do recommend you read them. Whenever we analyse data, for...
Reducing the number of columns in the programme of study marksheets
The Programme of Study marksheets (PoS) are a great way to record formative assessments against the national curriculum. All SIMS schools already have access to this system - there's no extra charge. Many schools don't understand how flexible the SIMS program of study...
Attendance Dashboards with SIMS and Power BI
After a first page that should consist of the most important 'headline' measures for a school, the next page in any SIMS + Power BI report is probably attendance. Partly, this is because of it's importance to schools and partly because it is one of the few areas that...
SIMS + Power BI dashboards: getting the first page right
Here's the first page of my School Analytics pupil dashboard. It's built using SIMS and Power BI - where SIMS provides the raw data and Power BI provides the analysis and visualisation - and it is intended to show the data required by a primary school to demonstrate...
Removing groups of pupils from key stage analysis
Why many schools have 'official' and 'unofficial' results... I find that schools often have two sets of statistics: the official set of statistics that includes the results of all the pupils who will be included in the year's key stage results, and an unofficial set...
Design tips for visualizing school data with Power BI
You can't just throw a few Power BI visuals into a report and expect users to be able to analyse their data more effectively. In this post I try to highlight what I think makes an effective Power BI report. Firstly, I recommend anyone starting to work with data...
New SIMS assessment system for primary schools
Capita SIMS have just released a complete new primary school assessment system that comprises a set of integrated marksheets, analysis reports and data dashboards using Microsoft Power BI. And best of all? It’s free!
Adding ‘last update’ time and date to Power BI dashboards
Keeping data 'fresh' I've been thinking about what makes a good Power BI report by trying to understand how best to present the information to the audience. When I'm looking at a dashboard that shows the latest pupil data, or attendance data, or assessment data, one...
Useful DAX measures for schools
Update: Check out the comments for some more tips on using DAX measures. DAX is the language behind Power BI. If you want to get the most out of Power BI sooner or later you'll need to write some DAX code. The best DAX reference is Microsoft's DAX reference website....
Ordering year groups with Power BI
If you have been using Power BI to create data visualisations for primary schools, you've probably run in to this problem: you want the x axis of your graph to run from nursery through reception to year 1 and then to year 6, but Power BI insists on alphabetical order...
Primary key stage analysis resources 2019
Primary schools will find these special marksheets and reports incredibly useful when analysing EYFS, KS1 and KS2 results this summer. Updated January 2019 These resources were updated by Capita in January 2019 to include the changes to the PAG groups and national...
Welcome back to SIMS assessment
Over the past few months I've spoken to an increasing number of schools who are starting to use SIMS assessment again, after using third-party assessment products for several years. Talking to these returning schools, it seems there are several drivers behind their...
SIMS and Power BI in ten (yes ten!) minutes
If you have access to Capita MyAccount you can now watch a 10 minute demo by John Christian during which he takes you through all the key tasks in setting up the automatic report link from SIMS into Power BI. The resource is part of Capita's 'Customer Success' strand...
SIMS for beginners course
It always amazes me how many school jobs require SIMS experience. But if you want a job in a school you need SIMS experience, but to get SIMS experience you need a job in a school! It's a Catch-22 situation, made all the harder because as a priviate individual, SIMS...
Course: SIMS and Power BI for Beginners
If you read my article about the SIMS Consolidated Report utility or if you just want to find out about SIMS and Power BI - I've developed a free course for you. It's aimed at school staff with no previous experience of Power BI although you'll need to have some SIMS...
New Microsoft Power BI Resources for SIMS
New analyses with Microsoft Power BI Microsoft Power BI is an analysis tool that allows you to create powerful data visualisations easily and quickly - it's like Excel on steroids. The BI stands for Business Intelligence and it's used by many large business...
Primary Assessment in 2019
I wrote this post before the news that SPTO, one of the main assessment products for primary schools, was to close at the end of December 2019. Perhaps we can expect more consolidation in the assessment marketplace. Ofsted have announced that they will no longer take...
KS4 Resources Update October 2018
Capita have just released an update to their KS4 Resources to include the new estimates released by the DfE a few days ago. If you use the KS4 resources now is a good time to log in to MyAccount and download them. For convenience (or if you don't have access to...
SIMS Primary Update October 2018
Introduction Last week I met with Graham Cooper and Ben Jones from Capita to talk about progress with SIMS Primary. A few weeks ago I blogged about how quiet progress seemed to be, since the official launch back in January and Graham was keen to update me on recent...
School expectations for programmes of study – new functionality in SIMS make life easier
Hidden away in the summer 2018 release of Capita SIMS was an extra feature that will make the programme of study marksheets much more useful. Since they were introduced in 2015 (as a response to the removal of levels from the curriculum) the programme of study (PoS)...
Two new features for SIMS assessment for autumn 2018
If you are a true SIMS geek you'll love the first of these new features... New feature 1: Add new columns directly above an existing column Previously, new columns always used to add themselves to the bottom of the template. So if you wanted the new column to appear...
Progress 8 is being gamed – how to spot if your school is gaming progress 8
Emma Ing has just published a new article about the techniques certain schools use to enhance their progress 8 score by promoting 'easy' subjects in the Open bucket. There's a good definition of gaming: Gaming happens when the decisions made about the curriculum...
Calculating KS1 to KS2 Progress Measures 2018
You can now use SIMS to calculate the KS2 value added for your Y6 pupils. This article shows how to do it in simple steps. First, here's a video to show you how to set up and use the resources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSLSB3A9uJk&feature=youtu.be&hd=1...
Using SIMS Interventions
Earlier this year Capita release a new module for SIMS. Called SIMS Interventions it helps schools to record the interventions that schools put in place for their pupils. It also helps schools to record the associated costs and link those costs directly to pupil...
Create a SIMS mobility report
When you are analysing your assessment data it can be useful to know how many pupils joined and left a particular year group as the cohort progresses through school. This report will list every pupil who was ever in the cohort, regardless of how long they stayed with...
Next Generation SIMS – what we know so far
I was lucky enough to be invited again to the recent SIMS Annual Conference. The focus of the conference was on SIMS Primary, the next generation SIMS product. In my next post I'll talk about the specific changes for assessment in next generation SIMS, but first...
If you need a little extra help with your SIMS system I'm here to help. Contact me at david@davidpott.com for consultancy and training. Or you can subscribe to my termly assessment newsletter using the button below.