IMPORTANT – SIMS Census Exclusion Issue

Is SIMS Census exclusion data being reported correctly in your Spring Census?

Currently the SIMS 7 and SIMS Primary census applications are reporting permanent exclusions data where the Exclusion Review Date is in the range 22/04/2019 to 31/12/2019 (inclusive), when it should be reporting permanent exclusions data where the Exclusion Start Date is in that range. In many cases where  Exclusion Review Date is in the said range, the Exclusion Start Date will also be in that range and vice versa. However, it is also possible for this not to be the case, which will then lead to either that permanent exclusion being reported when it should not be or that permanent exclusion not being reported when it should be.

• When the above problem leads to the report of a permanent exclusion when it should NOT be reported, it will be detected by DfE validation rule 2290.
• When the above problem leads to a permanent exclusions not being reported when it should, it may be detected by DfE validation rule 2485 where the school has followed the DfE guidance regarding entering the E code to represent the permanent exclusion in Attendance.  However, where a school has one of more fixed term exclusions in the data range, validation rule 2485 could be triggered by an absence of at least one attendance E code for a fixed term exclusions.  Conversely, the presence of an E-code will stop the validation from triggering even if it is only there for a fixed term exclusion.

What we recommend for schools

With the above in mind, we recommend that schools do not upload their return to COLLECT until they have applied Patch 25589 (SIMS 7) or until the hot fix has been applied (SIMS Primary) where validation error 2290 is triggered or where there is any chance that one of more permanent exclusions have not been reported in the census. Patch 25589 is available from SOLUS 3 to deal with this issue for SIMS 7 and the hot fix for SIMS Primary has also been applied.

Contact us

If you require SBS to apply this patch for you please contact the servicedesk on 0345 222 1551 • Option 3 or email missservicedesk@schoolbusinessservices.co.uk

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