I reproduce in full here Geoff Perry's posting from the SIMS web site for your information:
Patch 17387 has been withdrawn and will be replaced tomorrow by patch 17395
If any school would like this patch - please request it by mailing helpdesk@edit.org.uk
Patch 17387(17:15 20th August)
This utility was written to reduce the amount of manual editing users need to do to compensate for the lack of QAN numbers in the board's supplied data and not to correct any fault in Exams Organiser, which behaves correctly with the supplied board’s data.
There have been an increasing number of calls today, reporting difficulties in installing in some schools but not others, this has been traced to longer than expected descriptions. As a result this utility has been temporary withdrawn and replaced tomorrow morning (21st August) with Patch 17395
Exam Patch Clarification (20th August 11.50)
Patch 17387 can be run over and over again
Patch 17320 (double discounting) can be run on Spring and versions up to Summer 4. Patch 17320 was included Summer 4
Patch 17392 replaces 17287 which replaced 17055.
Patch 17287 was included in Summer 4. So 17392 needs to be run after applying Summer 4
NEW Patches (16:20 17th August)
I am pleased to announce that two exams patches 17392 and 17387 are now available for download from SOLUS
Patch 17392
Updates the PI Equivalence Table to aid the PI calculations using
BTEC/AW1: Grade P, 0.5 GCSE, 12.5 pts (default value, but there are some instances of 0.25 GCSE and 6.25 pts)
BTEC/CE1: Grade P, 1 GCSE, 25 pts
BTEC/AW2: Grade P, 0.5 GCSE, 23 pts
BTEC/DI1: Grade P, 4 GCSE, 100 pts
And after confirmation from the DfE Xs are removed from the calculations
Patch 17387
BTEC basedata is routinely issued without discount codes this patch uses the generic QAN data which can be imported into the census area, to identify and assign the correct code automatically.
The latest QAN data base can be found at: https://collectdata.education.gov.uk/qwsweb and is not restricted for use just in England
Note this patch will not correct any wrongly aligned codes, but will fill in the blanks.
Reposted from Course Manager Feed which has affected some exam users :
Problem with saving changes in Maintain Course (Updated 17/08 15:30)
Some schools have reported that when they try to save changes for some of their courses they get the following error message and are unable to save.
"Dates entered must fall within dd/mm/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy"
We have traced this to a problem with the data, in that dates for the association of a class with its course fall outside the actual availability range for that class. This may sometimes be linked to shortening of the availability of a class, e.g. following the submission of a copy of "next year’s timetable" at the end of the current year.
Work Around
In the cases we have investigated the following work around has enabled the schools to save their Course changes.
Use the Census view, or other appropriate date range to find the required course in Course Manager. Open the course and then change the date range presented to a one day date range when no classes are taking place. Click the Refresh button next to the dates, make the required change and Save immediately. After returning to the browse, the dates will revert back.
e.g. if the message is that dates should fall within 03/09/2010 and 30/05/2012, than change the dates to 03/09/2012 to 04/09/2012.
Permanent Solution
Patch 17386 is available from SOLUS to fix the data that is causing this problem. We are also looking into avoiding such a data problem in the future as part of the next phase of Course Management changes scheduled for the Spring Release 2013.
BTEC Data (16:00 16th August)
Further basedata submitted to us by users has enabled us to refine our PI calculations as they affect BTEC qualifications. New or revised values that we have been able to identify are:
BTEC/AW1: Grade P, 0.5 GCSE, 12.5 pts (default value, but there are some instances of 0.25 GCSE and 6.25 pts)
BTEC/CE1: Grade P, 1 GCSE, 25 pts
BTEC/AW2: Grade P, 0.5 GCSE, 23 pts
BTEC/DI1: Grade P, 4 GCSE, 100 pts.
We have not found any discrepancies at other levels.
A revised PI Equivalence table patch will be released early next week to enable schools that are using these qualifications to improve the accuracy of their PI calculations.
BTEC Data (16:00 15th August)
We have noted that with the BTEC basedata that we have been able to access today that it is routinely issued without discount codes and that it is laborious and error-prone to assign these manually. A repeatable patch is in preparation which will use the QAN mirror tables, imported for the post-16 Learning Aims census, to identify and assign the correct code automatically.
We expect this to be ready for download early next week, in time for GCSE results download and PI collation and calculation.
(Update 11:45 15 August)
Reposted from Census feed that may affect some exam users :
Problem with saving changes in Maintain Course (Updated 15/08 11:25)
Some schools have reported that when they try to save changes for some of their courses they get the following error message and are unable to save.
"Dates entered must fall within dd/mm/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy"
We have traced this to a problem with the data, in that dates for the association of a class with its course fall outside the actual availability range for that class. This may sometimes be linked to shortening of the availability of a class, e.g. following the submission of a copy of "next year’s timetable" at the end of the current year.
Work Around
In the cases we have investigated the following work around has enabled the schools to save their Course changes.
Use the Census view, or other appropriate date range to find the required course in Course Manager. Open the course and then change the date range presented to a one day date range just after the date range of the message. Click the Refresh button next to the dates, make the required change and Save immediately. After returning to the browse, the dates will revert back.
e.g. if the message is that dates should fall within 03/09/2010 and 30/05/2012, than change the dates to 31/05/2012 to 01/06/2012.
Permanent Solution
This is likely to take the form of a generic data fix patch.
Just to reconfirm news items posted elsewhere (10:00 15 August)
We released patch 17287 to update the performance indicator tables, this included the changes made in the patch 17055 released earlier in the year. Note should be used in conjunction with reading The Results Day Survival Kit (RDSK) resource 19874 which describes some of the limitations of the data.
It was also reported that in some cases where a candidate re-sat an examination and obtained the same grade neither was counted this has been fixed by applying patch 17320
Both of these patches can be run against Spring and Summer SIMS .net releases.
Summer Release Version 4 has these patches included.