Qualification Accreditation Numbers (QANs) are numbers that are applied to each individual Exam Award. These are used to universally identify the exam Board provider, the Level being studied and the Subject of an exam.

There are two sources of QANs that can be used simultaneously throughout Course Manager, depending on the circumstance:

• QWS QANs are downloaded from the DfE QAN website. These are applicable to all Learning Aims without a result or an entry in the basedata supplied by the exam Awarding Organisation Body (AOB), including new courses and completed school-assessed Learning Aims.
• AO QANs are provided by the exam Awarding Organisation Body. These are an integral component of Exams basedata. Ensure that you are using the most up-to-date basedata in line with the Exams season.

To ensure that you are using the most current QANs available for each course of study, you are strongly advised to download and import the QAN catalogues provided by the DfE. This is an important activity to undertake before you start to create the School Census Return.

The files must then be imported via Tools | Examinations | Import Qualification Data.

If you start next year's curriculum early, there will be an impact on class and course memberships. If this year’s student scheme memberships finish at the end of the Summer term, they need to be terminated at the date that the new timetable begins. This should be done to prevent old, as well as new students from appearing in class lists.

Schemes exist for the whole academic year, even if classes and student class memberships within the scheme have end dates before the end of the academic year, unless it was anticipated during the Summer that schemes would finish earlier. If it was not anticipated that the previous timetable would finish early and existing memberships need to be adjusted, this should be done before making the new assignments.

Where you want to show students as being in next year's classes, i.e. Year 12 students in Year 13 classes, you should consider the following:

• Class and course memberships for the previous year should finish on the correct date.
• The curriculum plan and timetable should be transferred from Nova for the next academic year.
• Students should be assigned to classes and courses for June/July.

If an early commencement of next year's timetable results in an early start to courses, the affected courses should be recorded as such in Course Manager. This ensures that the Learning Aims are collected accurately in the School Census.

If extra curricular activities are created, these can be defined with a Level identifier of Other. This ensures that they are not collected in the School Census. For detailed information on how to proceed, please refer to the Starting Next Year’s Curriculum Early mini guide.

1. Select Tools | Academic Management | Course Manager | Maintain Course Classification and locate the Description of the required level. Change the Active State to Active and click the OK button.
2. Select Tools | Academic Management | Course Manager | Maintain Course, click the Level(s) drop-down arrow and the missing level is now available for selection.

The census checks the QAN codes attached to courses. Levels are for SIMS processes only.

The annual hours that count towards a course of study are categorised as Qualification - Planned Learning Hours or Non-Qualification Hours - Planned Employment, Enrichment and Pastoral Hours. To qualify for funding purposes, Planned Hours must be recorded as directed time within your school's normal working pattern.

You can record information relating to Programmes of Study for Post-16 students, enabling you to submit details of the total Planned Qualification Hours and Planned Non-Qualification Hours in the Autumn School Census.

Student planned qualification and non-qualification hours can be viewed and edited via Tools | Academic Management | Course Manager | Maintain Programmes of Study.

In SIMS, check the staff member's contract to ensure that a Date of Leaving has not been recorded in error. If it has been recorded, remove the date and save the staff record.

Select Tools | Cover | Statistics | Cover and run the report again. The staff member's cover statistics are now displayed correctly.

There are a number of factors that can affect a staff member's visibility in the Available Staff list.

Select Focus | Person | Manage Classroom Staff, locate the required staff member and ensure that the Cover Option has been set to either Provides cover or Cover Supervisor. If it has been set to Does not provide cover, the staff member is not required to cover absences.

You can also check that the staff member's working pattern has been defined with the correct start and end times.

Teachers who have been assigned a blanking code or a PPA period are not available to cover absences during these times.

Select Tools | Cover | Global Settings and ensure that the Reference Start Date for Cover Totals is set to the beginning of the current academic year. You should also check that the thresholds for Max. Amount of Cover Per Day (in minutes) and the Max. Amount of Cover Per Week (in minutes) have not been exceeded. It is also possible that the teacher was absent on the day before the cover is required and the Consecutive Day Cover Protection check box may be selected.

The Reference Start Date for Cover Totals is the date from which covers are counted when calculating how much cover a member of staff has already done. This affects the value displayed in the Covers to Date column that is visible when the Available Staff window is unpinned from the Cover Diary.

This date usually reflects the start date of the academic year but can also be changed to reflect the start date of the current term.

If the date is left blank or is earlier than the current academic year, this warning message is displayed when opening the Cover Diary.

This error is displayed if the timetable has not been applied for the current year. Please liaise with the school timetabler before proceeding.

Schools with a Nova-T licence are entitled to run Nova-T as a satellite installation. A number of prerequisites are required:

• A Nova licence must have been obtained before installation commences.
• You must have Local Administrator access rights to the laptop or satellite machine.
• It is imperative that the version of the software installed on the satellite machine corresponds with the version of the software in use at your school. If the versions are not identical, you will be unable to copy directories and files back and forth without causing data corruption.

It is now suggested that you contact your LSU to obtain the URL to the storage location of the satellite setup files for the latest version of SIMS. After November 2014, schools will be able to download the satellite setup from SOLUS3.

The MLICENCE.DAT file must be copied from the main school's system into the standalone installation and placed in the S:\SNOVA\NOVAT directory.

It is possible to create and edit subjects in Nova-T6. Any changes made to subjects in Nova-T6 should be exported to SIMS to ensure consistency between the two modules. If the subject codes have been used, they should only be changed or edited with extreme care as this will affect historical data.

Select Plan | Subjects to display the Add/Edit Subject dialog.

Please ensure that you have taken a recent, full backup of your SIMS system before proceeding. You must also ensure that the correct .SPL file is in use.

Select Data | Export Timetable cycle to SQL and proceed through the wizard. It is imperative that the start date entered corresponds with the date from which the new timetable cycle is due to start.

The purpose of assigning levels to classes is to enable the creation of courses when the timetable is exported to SQL. These courses are defined by a level and a subject, and initially the assumption is made that students belonging to all classes with the same subject and level are on the same course. However, other courses can be created in Course Manager, and then a student can be re-assigned to one of these courses. In this way, it is possible to represent the situation in which a class serves the needs of students following different courses.

To assign levels to classes, select Tools | Assign Levels to display the Assign Levels to Years, Blocks and Classes dialog.

If Unknown is shown as the Level for a Year, this indicates that a statement has not been made about the level. If a Class is shown with an Unknown level, you will not be able to export the curriculum and timetable to SQL. For this reason, Unknown is displayed in red text.