Date of birth field

It is important that all Principal Assessors read and understand this notice. If you are a student reading this, please check your assessor knows about it.

When we set up the INGOT web site we tried to reduce the amount of data entered to the minimum needed. It now turns out that the DCSF require dates of birth (This was not stipulated at the time we went through what were fairly rigorous procedures with QCA) In one sense this is easily fixed, we have added a date of birth field which needs to be filled in when you add new pupils to the system. This can be done by simply typing in the date of birth or by producing a CSV file from your MIS (SIMS etc) that includes the DOB. The help files tell you how to do this on the site. The snag is that for students already entered, they need the DOB field filled in if they have received or are intended to receive a QCA accredited certificate and you want to claim the points. The next deadline for transferring data is the 21st April, then there is another at the end of July and one at the end of September. We will only be able to submit those with DOB fields filled in and so from now on as a condition of making an award the account manager will check the date of birth fields are filled in before authorising certificate printing. It will help a great deal if you can fill in dates of birth for students already certificated as soon as possible.

I apologise for the additional work involved in doing this. If anyone has any problems or has any questions please let us know. If you have a lot of data entry and you can think of a way of short cutting things technologically, let us know and we'll try to help.