Managing Curriculum (Lessons Taught) Data for SWAC

This guide explains how Curriculum (Lessons Taught) data is generated and verified in Arbor for the Welsh School Workforce Annual Census (SWAC). 

Permissions

This data is automatically generated from your school's data on timetabling and course setup, resulting in minimal direct administration. However, to ensure the underlying data is correct, you may need permissions to administer the academic structure and view curriculum data.

• School: Academic Structure: Administer - needed to make changes to your Academic Structure
• School: Curriculum: View - needed to make changes to your Academic Structure

If you don't have the relevant permission, ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

Data Included in the Curriculum Module

The Curriculum module automatically includes data for all staff who are linked to a course, providing a picture of lessons taught over a specified period. The period in question is the

The following information is collected:

• Subject code: This is collected for Secondary age only. You can see how to link subjects to courses here.
• Subject Hours: This is collected for Secondary age only and represents the hours taught in a typical 10-day period. This is directly taken from your timetable, so any adjustments are made by making changes to your timetable

• National Curriculum Year Group of the year group specified for the course. The basic structure of this system is that courses are linked to year groups (which can be adjusted in bulk), and year groups are linked to curriculum grades (adjusted on a per-year group basis). 

  This means you could have a year group called Year 4, but the actual year group have a curriculum grade of Year 3. This means Year 3 would be output on the return, not Year 4. Therefore, it is essential to verify both the actual year group associated with the course and the year group's corresponding Curriculum Grade.
   

  • You can see how to link year groups to courses here
  • To check on the National Curriculum grade of a year group:
     
    • Head to Students > Enrolment > Pastoral > Year Groups
    • Change the drop-down to the correct academic year
    • Click on the relevant year group
    • Check the Curriculum grade listed in the Year Group Overview section
    • If the grade is incorrect, click on it to edit it on the slide over

• Lesson Medium: Indicates the language of instruction (Welsh, English or Bilingual). It is not possible to set this in bulk; you do this per course with the following steps:
   
  • Head to Students > Enrolment > Academic > Courses > Overview
  • Expand the list so you see the Bottom-Level courses (these are the courses that have timetabled events)
  • Head to the Admin section
  • Click Welsh Language Use in Class
  • Set the appropriate designation using the dropdown
  • Click Save Changes

How the 10-Day Period is Calculated

The census requires data to be collected over a typical 10 working days. Arbor automatically determines this period using the following rules:

• The system works backwards from the census date
• It selects one or two good school weeks (weeks with all 5 days present). A good school week is a whole, uninterrupted week of school (i.e. no academic holidays in that week).
• For schools with a 2-week timetable (A and B weeks), the two weeks selected may not be consecutive
• Any cover arranged is ignored for this calculation
   

Key Checks for Accuracy

Because this data is pulled directly from your timetabling setup, it's vital to ensure your academic structure is accurate, especially in Primary schools.

1. Check Course Setup (All Schools): Ensure that your Courses (including their Year Group and Lesson Medium) are correctly set up.
2. Verify Timetabled Teachers (All Schools): The teachers linked to each course will automatically receive an entry for each class.
3. Primary School Timetabling (Crucial Check): Be careful about how teachers are assigned to classes in Primary schools. If you have added every teacher to every class as an Academic Lead to simplify register-taking, this will result in an inaccurate return. You must ensure that only the correct class teacher(s) are linked to a class's timetable. If you wish to give non-academic leads register access, use options 1 or 3 as outlined in this guidance.