SIMS Assessment encourages school-wide assessment policies by enabling schools to identify and define their own assessment tracking criteria. Additionally, SIMS supports assessing pupil progress by providing pre-defined templates for the recording of achievement and for tracking progress across the primary phase from Nursery and Reception Years through to KS1 and KS2.

SIMS has provided the Assessment Mapping Tool, which enables you to map aspects and result sets that have been defined in school with those defined by Capita SIMS.

For more information relating to the Assessment Mapping Tool, please refer to the Using the Assessment Mapping Tool chapter in the Creating Assessment Related Components handbook.

Once you have mapped the school's assessment aspects and result sets to those provided by Capita SIMS, the associated assessment results are visible within the resources supplied by Capita SIMS. The associated assessment results are also displayed in the SIMS School Report.

For more information relating to the SIMS School Report, please refer to the Running the SIMS School Report chapter in the Reporting and Additional Functions in Assessment handbook.

You can access the SIMS Assessment Mapping Tool via Tools | Performance | Assessment | Assessment Mapping Tool.

Schools may want to talk to their LA or other local schools to see how they are approaching this process. You may also want to investigate the SIMS School Improvement Service, which works closely with individual schools to help them design and implement a new assessment policy that suits all their requirements. To find out more about the SIMS School Improvement Programme, please call 0844 892 1142*.

*Calls to 0844/0845 numbers will cost three pence per minute, plus your phone company’s access charge.

The SIMS School Report displays a comprehensive overview of key pastoral factors in your school based on the latest data in SIMS. This provides members of the School Leadership team and governors with insight into areas of strength and weakness to inform their decisions. The report can be run via Reports | School Report and can be exported in a number of formats.

Schools can record and analyse attainment for each skill/knowledge in the new National Curriculum on a four descriptor scale – Emerging, Developing, Secure and Mastered. Analysis and progress functionality has been provided in SIMS called Programme of Study Tracking Entry.

For more information relating to the new National Curriculum in SIMS, schools in England should refer to the Life Without Levels in SIMS Assessment handbook. Welsh schools should refer to the Tracking Against the Programmes of Study in Wales handbook.

New reformed GCSEs in English Language, English Literature and Mathematics will be taught in schools in England from September 2015, with students receiving their results in August 2017.

During 2016 and 2017, additional reformed GCSE subjects will be added. To view the list of reformed GCSEs, please visit the DfE website (http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/timeline-of-changes-to-gcses-as-and-a-levels/changes-to-gcses-as-and-a-levels-that-will-affect-each-current-school-year-group).

The Assessment Mapping Tool has been updated to include all newly reformed subjects for 2015, 2016 and 2017 based on the aforementioned list with the appropriate grade set of 9:1. However, the new aspects and grade sets will not be incorporated into the SIMS School Report calculations at this stage.

NOTE: The Double Science qualification has not yet been assigned a grade set by the DfE or Ofqual so in the interim, it has been added as a single subject option.

Secondary schools can import additional KS4 resources that contribute to the accurate generation of PI values in the SIMS School Report. These resources are available from the My Account website (https://myaccount.capita-cs.co.uk) by navigating to Knowledge Base | AMPARK documents.

The additional resources are now based on the DfE list of qualifications, which count towards performance tables for schools. All points used (with the exception of 9:1 reformed GCSEs) are based on a single GCSE equivalence.

The KS4 Assessment Mapping Tool provides generic (non-board specific) GCSE and AS subject aspects. It is possible that the specific qualification being taught in a school is not one from a board, or of a subject that is included in the various EBacc and Performance Table measures lists supplied by the DfE for a given year. Therefore, schools should consider this when mapping aspects and results, especially for the purpose of running the SIMS School Report, because this could produce results that conflict with those produced by Examinations Organiser.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have previously mapped results to an aspect that you knew was not the correct one because the aspect you required was not available, you must retrospectively remove these mappings and results before mapping the results to the correct aspect. If this is not undertaken, the calculations in the SIMS School Report will be inaccurate due to doubled-up results.

The KS4 resources are available after importing the following files:

• Assessment Mapping Tool Secondary.xml
• KS4 Assessment Mapping Tool Aspect.xml
• KS4 Assessment Mapping Tool Resultsets.xml.

From Autumn 2015, a change has been made to the GCE AS Double grade set (from single to double grades) so that the grade set more closely matches the actual grades that students are expected to achieve at Key Stage 4.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If schools have previously mapped results to any of the double AS aspects, these must be removed before importing the new Key Stage 4 resources, otherwise the import will fail because of a mismatch of existing and expected results in the grade set.

For more information relating to KS4 resources, please refer to the Additional Key Stage 4 Assessment Resources mini guide.

From the SIMS 2015 Spring Release onwards, Primary and Independent school users must click the Yes button on the Import Assessment Manager Resources dialog when prompted to import the new and updated Assessment Manager resources. These resources are fundamental to the new functionality provided on the Programme of Study Tracking page.

If you click the Remind me later button, you will continue to be presented with the Import Assessment Manager Resources dialog each time you access SIMS until the new resources have been imported. The No button has been removed from the Import Assessment Manager Resources dialog to ensure that the new resources are imported as soon as possible.

If necessary, individual files can be imported directly from the AMPA folder, typically located in C:\PROGRAM FILES\SIMS\SIMS .NET\AMPA.