This November and December, we are running a small number of VSware Certification Courses for Administrators. Our Timetable courses, as well as further Administration courses will commence again in 2020 and will be announced later this year. This years courses include:

– VSware Certification (Standard)

– VSware Certification (Advanced)

– Attendance Management

– Newly Appointed Deputy Training

The 2-day Admin course covers all administration aspects of VSware. You can attend these courses separately however we advise attending both for a more comprehensive understanding of the system.  Newly employed admin staff and secretaries could benefit from this training if they were not with the school at the time of the initial training, however this course is open to anyone with secretary access who is interested in learning more about how to use VSware or simply feels like they need a refresher.  

We are also continuing our Newly Appointed Deputy Training course and also our Attendance management course which deep dives into all aspects of managing attendance in VSware.

Read below for the content of each course.

VSware Certification (Standard)  

General

• Entering / Changing Household details
• Sending, Topping up SMS
• How to add filtering feature to class /year

Attendance

• Taking attendance
• Entering bulk attendance for a student (e.g. ill, suspended etc.)Creating groups for attendance (e.g. Match, Drama panel etc.)

Access Rights

• Creating users accounts and resetting passwords
• Adding privileges to teachers – what a year head /tutor should have access to compared to a standard teacher. GDPR Update – Uploading your School policy

Exams

• Creating Exams, adding additional fields.
• Entering exam results and entering/editing comments(Teacher, Tutor, Year head)Printing student data, printing exam results. Creating additional fields (e.g. Attitude, Effort etc.)

Special Education Need & Medical.

• How to enter special educational needs for a particular student.
• Giving rights to SEN Teacher /officer to be able to add diagnosed condition / notes to a student.
• How to turn ON/OFF this feature for teachers.How to print report for all students with SEN record.
• How to print report for all students with medical details. Create additional SEN codes/categories.

PPOD

• Syncing and what is being synced Where to best enter level for exam year students

Fees

• How to create fees and assign to a year/ student/ group. Online payments – what is required?

VSware Certification (Advanced)  

Attendance

• Creating and printing custom letters/reports from word templates
• Creating and cleaning up attendance codes
• Attendance for Resource and Learning Support Students
• Using Attendance reporting section
• Steps to take to allow for provision of evening study attendance

Exams

• Bulk enter state Exam numbers per class (e.g. LC & JC Results)
• Using Assessment reporting section

Letter Templates

• How to create a letter template and upload to your system (e.g. Proof of attendance letter, Absentee letter etc.)
• How to use word variables linked to VSware
• How to print a letter for a complete year group (e.g. issue an introduction letter to all 1st years etc.)

General

• Advanced search overview, creating groups via advanced search etc
• Searching for past students and their enrolment history
• Getting your school ready for next academic year, what will be carried forward and what administrators have to do in August /September
• Entering new students
• Creating and renaming classes
• Setting up your school academic Calendar,- entering holidays, in-house training days etc
• Bulk enter /Search Locker numbers per class, per student
• Creating SMS Groups – e.g. bus drivers, coaches etc
• Creating Custom Groups – e.g. LCVP Students only , Teachers only (less SNA, Admin etc. ) All students less PLC’s etc.
• Printing list of all students with 2nd address, siblings.
• September returns submission – what needs to be cleaned up and entered.

Access rights

• Generating parental access – What is involved
• Parental /student access overview
• How to create a list of parents Usernames and Passwords
• How best to re-issue a forgotten username and password to a parent

Behaviour

• Best practice for using and setting up behaviours feature
• Using behaviour reporting section

Substitution & Supervision

• How best to address /reallocate a teacher’s timetable once constructed and published
• Manually editing teacher timetables – assigning S&S offerings, removing /adding teaching groups
• Adding new teaching groups and rooms – Pastoral Care, Tutorial etc
• Renaming subject names

Class List Management

• Where core subjects are assigned and can be found
• Explain why option blocks are not visible
• Adding students from multiple years to a teaching group. – e.g. Agricultural Science 5th & 6th years assigned to 6th years teachers timetable
• Turning off meetings – YH / Management for attendance / exams.

Attendance Management

• Tulsa codes
• Creating and cleaning up attendance codes
• Explanation of bell times and their meaning in our software
• Signing students out of school
• Addressing attendance notes – individually and in bulk (Yearhead/AP)
• Assigning rights (roles) to teachers
• Best practice to address students out long term
• Addressing attendance for internal exams
• Movement of students within the school environment: Eg. Internal suspension, Learning support (removing a student from just one lesson), Career guidance visit, Counsellor visit, Late to class
• Group attendance – signing out teams etc.
• Attendance Reporting
• How to read and extract data and reports for primary (in/out of school) and secondary attendance (class to class)
• Tusla report – Generating attendance letter
• LCA – Students reaching teaching group attendance
• Report for student attendance award etc.

Newly Appointed Deputy Training

This course is designed specifically for newly appointed deputies. Our aim is to give you a useful overview of the administration aspects of VSware that are relevant to deputies. This includes:

• General use of VSware
• Supervision and Substitution
• Assessment management
• Attendance & Behaviour management
• Timetabling will be touched on, however it is not possible to go into this area in depth in the time given.
• Please ensure that you have admin level access on your VSware account before attending this course (secretary or principal role in VSware).

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