John McCabe's Activity RSS Feed
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
The one thing FE Connect has done well has been consultations. I think people do listen and do take notice.
I suppose the classic one is NI numbers which has always been a hardy perennial.
The reason I don't like (online) surveys is twofold:
a) they are not open-ended i.e. you get a limited set of questions [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
The multi site search looks good. This is the sort of thing that could be really useful.
You've missed off the LSC. I know it's dead but it won't lie down. The reading room is always good for a root around.
We were looking for details on when to submit our SAR and can't find anything. [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Change Request 33 – Move ILR to XML format in the group 2011/12 ILR – Discussion Area: 1 year, 5 months ago
http://www.theia.org.uk/ilr/ilrdocuments/201112_ilrdetail.htm suggests that the specification will be sorted by 28th February (or did they mean 29th?) 2011.
However the same page also suggests that the BIS will want loads of changes because of their skills strategy. We also know that there are going to be problems for Sixth Forms because of the way they're moving funding [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Back to ULNs. I knew there was something I had missed and the words are Prior Attainment.
To us this is a pain because we're not (much) worried about level 2 or level 3. We do have a few, genuine unknowns because they have foreign qualifications.
What is important is that they have 4 or 5 Cs [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
As to web services, I think you should be registered as an LRS developer, that way you could write a web service that used the underlying APIs to get ULNs.
When it comes to the LAD, we've been looking at the so-called "analytical" LAD – the flat file version that has all the main fields. [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
To continue with John Stout's questions:
We currently have had about 650 applications for next year. We've got ULNs for about 550 of them already and will probably do another batch before Christmas. We find it very useful because it picks up all sorts of things – changes in forenames, errors in dates of birth, changes [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Replying to John Stout.
We went the in-house route because, in a sense, we had always been there. We started with the Surrey System back in 1992. That was a consortium with a single lead developer, the late Chris Bishop, and lots of other input. We had a core system that we could add to and [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Drat. I jumped in there.
I don't mind the LRS making comments. I know they are trying to make improvements.
I think it's a great idea. It's better than the UPIN which was always a blind number.
It's much better for us than NI numbers which keep rearing their ugly head.
One problem seems to be that the infrastructure [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Final point on this, it might also help some students for UCAS entry if the full module profile was shown.
We had somebody this year who had an offer of 2 As and a B. He was doing Maths, Further Maths and Physics. The exam board re-arranged his maths modules to give him the best Maths [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Now going on to UCAS, the same thing applies only on a much larger scale.
There are several points coming up. One of the things that was raised at the pilot ULR meetings was that UCAS could see what students were doing even if they were not aggregated. Schools do this, as did we until they [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Next point, if you want a nice neat up to date system, it would be far better to have awarding bodies data than to wait for the school census in January.
It would also mean that we could get genuine subjects rather than the notional QAN ones. It would be nice to know if somebody [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Somebody somewhere is telling porkies.
When I went to the initial trial meetings on the PLR, there was a universal feeling on the part of Colleges that we needed qualifications on entry data. This was matched in the feed back we got from the other meetings.
It was precisely because of the difficulty of getting decent and [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
I've been thinking about site searches. One thing that has always surprised me (and others) was that if you searched on the LSC site using its own search engine and then repeated the search using google and site:lsc.gov.uk you got better results.
Maybe the problem isn't in searching but in the lack of an overarching vision [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
A links page would certainly be a start. There are some things missing – benchmark data, first statistical review, LIS software, disadvantage uplift files, average guided learning hours. But that's basically a good idea. It's the sort of thing you could start and then build up on.
A multi-site search tool would be invaluable. The problem [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Thanks Selvy for the compliments and good wishes.
Looking back, it's a matter of yes and no. The old ISR was a bit clunky but at least we did have destination data in there which would have saved a lot of work on the Framework for Excellence.
The simplest change to make data collection more efficient would [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
To answer Mike Wicks question, the big thing the Data Service could do would be to provide us with a centralised web site – all the necessary documents, algorithms, pseudo code, software, funding guidance all on one easily searchable site.
The trouble is we end up running across four and that means that we can miss [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
The ULN needs a lot more said about it.
It should be a godsend because it would allow all sorts of joined up thinking – the old Connexions, UCAS, qualifications on entry and much more.
But – it's not updated enough. I send off 300 records and get 60+ exceptions – changes of address, middle names on [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
Next, the top five things. I can't think of five, thankfully, we seem to have got on top of many of the "silly" data requests.
There are,however, two things which stick out.
The restricted use indicator – an absolute waste of time. The funding authorities want to talk to the student, the students don't want to talk [...]
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John McCabe joined the group John McCabe – Hot Seat 1 year, 5 months ago
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Questions for John McCabe in the group John McCabe – Hot Seat: 1 year, 5 months ago
First of all, advice for a successor or somebody new to FE:
There are four areas you need to work at:
Funding guidance – start back in 2007 and work forward. There is a tendency now to publish amendments rather than repeat the full guidance. It helps to study the development of demand led funding to get [...]
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John McCabe commented on the blog post Data Service Data Collections – Strategic Replacement Program 1 year, 5 months ago
Final point PDSATs and Analysis Software e.g. Pro Ahieve.
Nobody has mentioned this and it’s an interesting one. Both rely on the LIS export to get their data. Both are vital tools. We need to be sure that they continue to work.
PDSATs raises an interesting point as well. Those of us who have use it for [...]
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John McCabe commented on the blog post Data Service Data Collections – Strategic Replacement Program 1 year, 5 months ago
Next point, the LIS.
This really comes in two flavours – the LIS export and the funding reports. The problem is documentation or rather the lack of it.
The LIS export is invaluable for doing all sorts of custom reporting. But ultimately we need to know what is in the reports.
We all know that the reports [...]
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John McCabe commented on the blog post Data Service Data Collections – Strategic Replacement Program 1 year, 5 months ago
I also echo pmudd’s comments.
OLDC works so I can’t see much of a need to change it. The LAD is a disaster area – totally out of date and the documentation of the underlying structures is poor. This is one major area where we need change.
I’m going to tackle this in several posts as it’s [...]
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John McCabe commented on the blog post Countdown to F05, ER04 and xmas! 1 year, 6 months ago
Ho hum!
My personal one of note is 33 days til I retire.
We’ve known about the hard close of F05 for some time and been watching it carefully.
The big problem isn’t the learner numbers thing, it’s the sheer lack of funding. We’ve been growing rapidly for the last few years, doing miracles with funding. [...]
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John McCabe posted on the forum topic Foundation Learning funding in the group Data Issues: 1 year, 6 months ago
It's going to be a functional skill these days. It gets recorded separately.
If you look at the rest of this topic, you'll get some idea of this.
To repeat again, the entitlement funding is 114 SLN GLH. It is available to all students funded at 16-18 rates who are doing 336 GLH or more in [...]
