Review periods

|	Permissions required to access this module:
Section:
Reviews
Permission(s):
Access student reviews

|	Permissions required to access this module:
Section:
Grading
Permission(s):
Access grading

Fig. 1

PARS can be used to generate student reviews, which are progress or end of term reports sent home to parents. These reports are created by our programmers to your specification free-of-charge. Click here for examples of student reviews which we have created for other schools.

The reviews are generated using two components, the xls stylesheet and the xml datasheet. The stylesheet is designed by our programmers for you. The xml datasheet (called OUTPUT.xml) is generated by PARS on a computer at your school. The two files are mixed together using a web-browser like Internet Explorer (see fig. 1)

This page is accessed via:
PARS main menu > Grading > Review periods

The review periods page

Adding or editing a review period

To create a new review period, click the "Add" button from the top toolbar. You can also select an existing review and click "Edit" to access the same options.

A window will open where you can configure your new review period. First enter the title for the review (e.g. End of Term report) and an optional description if necessary. You also need to give your review a start date and end date, which typically will be the beginning and end of the academic year. Our helpdesk staff will advise you if this is not the case.

More options

When creating a review period, you can click the "..." button next to each year group for more options:

Design

Which student review design do you want to use. These are imported via the review designer.

Previous years

Use this if grades from previous school years are to be included. This will slow down the generation of reviews.

Allow aged ASM

This will include all SIMS ASM grades found for a student regardless of the result set, date range, or when they were entered.

Include student photos

Tick this option if the review is to contain a photo of the student. The photos are stored in the user's PARS TEMP folder (along with the OUTPUT.XML when the review is generated. There is a preference to delete the contents of this folder when PARS exits.

Approved grades

You can choose whether the report should use all grades, only those that have been authorised or only those that are not unauthorised. See grade authorisation for more info.

Include extra detail

You will only need to use this when advised by the PARS helpdesk staff.

Use the end date as effective date

By default the OUTPUT.XML file will contain data for all classes and subjects attended by each student over the whole date range of the review. With this setting turned on, only the classes/subjects that a student is a member of on the final day of the review will be included.

Include average attendances for year groups

You need to have this setting on if you want to include average attendance figures for year groups in your review.

Generate minimal output.xml

Use this if the generation of student reviews is too slow. WARNING: using this means that your reviews cannot contain behaviour or attendance information and may need to be redesigned.

For import

If you are using a student review to manipulate data then import it back into a grading element, then you need to use this option.

Deleting a review period

To delete a review period, first single click the highlight it. Once done, click the "Delete" button from the top toolbar. This will delete the review period, but not the report template that our programmers created for you, nor any reports that you have generated.

Generating an OUTPUT.xml file

For our programmers to design a report for you, they will need a file generated from your PARS system. This will include information about pupils' grades and classes. The OUTPUT file can easily be generated from this page by clicking the XML button on the top toolbar. This will open a window where you can select pupils - select a few pupils (5 to 10) who have grades recorded in the system.

This will download a file to your computer that you will then need to send to our helpdesk.

If you have not used our helpdesk before, you may find this guide useful:
A guide to using our helpdesk

Generating your reports

There are three buttons at the top of the page to generate your student reviews. The "Generate" button allows you to generate a student review for any selection of pupils, whereas the "Generate class" button lets you generate student reviews for whole classes.

The "Upload" button will upload your student reviews to the pupils' linked documents in SIMS.

You can change the notes and summary that will be used in SIMS if required. There are also drop-down options for you to select the status of the document (Public is recommended) and Type. If you have previously uploaded the same report to SIMS, then you may want to select the "Overwrite" option which will replace the old upload. If you also select "Update uploaded date" then the review you upload will use today's date as its upload date, not the date of the old review.