NCT - National Curriculum Tests

Q. Are there any 'tips' to using NCT?

A. Yes. See below

1.
Logging-in to access National Curriculum Tests.

The majority of problems when attempting to log in are:
A Pop-up Blocker is active. There may be more than one Pop-up Blocker active. Check that Internet Explorer, Google and Yahoo tool bar Pop-up Blockers are either turned off, or the settings adjusted to allow www.sirplc.co.uk

"Click here for instructions regarding Pop-up Blockers"

The symptom for the above is that when the login details have been entered and the Login button selected, the screen is refreshed back to the same screen and the login details have been removed.

Other login problems are: Incorrect User Name and Password and School Id. Note: The School Id must be in Upper Case.

If you find that when you have logged in the screen is not fully displayed to show the program controls, this can be resolved by adjusting an Internet Explorer setting.

"Click here for instructions regarding incorrect display in IE7"

2.
Make sure the user LOGON's are unique before adding students. Passwords are optional.

3.
You can create as many classes and groups as you like, so split the class into student ability such as Group 1a, Group 1b, Group 1c.

4.
Do not exceed 17 students per class or group until we have fixed the scroll down bar. Sorry, will be fixed at the next phase of development!

5.
Do not run test reports for whole 'Year' as this is not available yet. Phase six! We should really disable the button because it just keeps saying 'Loading Data' and you will have to Ctrl-Alt-Del to end task for reports. Sorry.
However, you will find that the Class and Group reports are working fine.

6.
There is no easy way to bulk remove tests, so if you assign a test to the whole year by mistake, then you will have to remove the tests from each student one at a time. So we would suggest you only assign tests to groups or by class so that it won't be too many to remove if you make a mistake.

7.
Also note that there is no audible or screen confirmation that a test has been assigned correctly other than going to the students list of assigned tests and seeing that it has been assigned. So don't keep clicking to assign the same test, it will have been assigned ok the first time.

8.
If the Group within a class has already been assigned a test and then you assign the same test to the Class, it will duplicate the test assigned to the students. So check what you have already assigned before assigning more tests.

9.
Assigned Tests that have not been attempted and the date for completion has expired, the test will no longer be available to the student and the test will be set to completed. Scores will be zero.

10.
Please don't all end the tests at the same time!
'You can't fit a quart in a pint pot' so please ask the learners to finish their tests and exit the test one at a time. This will give the internet connection a chance to send the data via the Internet to the NCT server for marking. Remember you are sharing the internet with everyone else, so you might have thought you had a fast line, but remember that in most cases the upload speed is slower than the download from the NCT server.
Just for information the NCT server has a 100Meg broadband connection, where most schools will have 2 or 4Mbit/s

If the learner receives an error message it will likely be because the connection cannot cope with the data being sent. Unfortunately this means that a student may have completed the test but the scores will be zero.

So please be patient and phase the finishing of the tests.

"Click here for the online National Curriculum Tests User Guide"

"Click here for the online National Curriculum Tests Teacher Notes"

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