How to add an Inset day to SIMS

Go to Focus > School > School Diary. Find the correct date and right click on this field and select ‘New Staff Training’. Enter ‘Staff Training Day’ as the category and ensure the Session options are correct. If necessary enter a description. Click OK and this will have been added to the Diary.

Students will automatically have # codes for all Inset days.

Note for Attendance / Lesson Monitor:

When viewing Take Register / Edit Marks the sessions and lessons for any Inset days will be greyed out/won’t appear. This is expected functionality. Inset days recorded in the School Diary cause the sessions and lessons to be greyed out and Inset days in the Academic Year cause the register not to appear.

Recording Inset Days for Specific Students

For Schools where an inset day is only occurring for specific years the above solution will not be applicable. This is due to inset days in the Academic Year and School Diary being effective for the Whole School, and as described above it can cause registers or cells to be unavailable for attendance mark input.

An Exceptional Circumstance will need to be created for the specific students who do have an inset day. Ensure the description of the Exceptional Circumstance is clear that it is for an inset day, if you require further assistance or are unsure which code to use then please refer to.

If you would still like to record the staff training day then you will need to go to Focus > School > School Diary and add a ‘New School Event’. It is extremely important that a ‘New Staff Training’ record is not entered as this will cause a training day to be effective for all students and session attendance will not be able to be recorded.