What are school groups in Nexus?
Nexus offers you the ability to group your schools together in any way which is useful for your Local Authority. Once in groups, those can be reported on throughout the system. So, for example, you could report on a in-LA Multi Academy Trust / Federation or on a group of schools that you have deemed to be at risk in some way.
The reasons for grouping schools are unlimited, but the method falls into two broad categories with lots of overlap between the two:
Standard Groups
Standard groups of schools are where a Nexus user - usually with admin permissions - places a number of schools in a group together by selecting the school directly. They will remain in that group until removed by the same process (covered below).
Dynamic Groups
Dynamic groups respond to input from any users with permission to amend the criteria that control membership of the group. Dynamic groups can respond to changes in LA Category, LA Grade, LA Target Grades, RAG and TAGs. So, for example, you could create a Dynamic group for schools with a new head teacher in your LA. This would be where a TAG representing the new head status had been set up. As status of head's changed (some becoming more experienced and others being added as they also gain new heads at a later date) the group can be maintained by ticking and unticking the TAG for new head. See also the TAG's article here.
Dynamic groups allow you to have multiple such criteria.
Where do I administer school groups?
If you have the necessary permissions, you will the option in the Admin menu:
You will be taken to the Manage School Groups page where - by default - you will see all the groups already set up in your LA. Nexus comes with 'All Schools' and 'My Schools' set up already and these cannot be amended here.
Any other groups listed can be deleted or edited using the controls on this page.
For the purposes of this guide, we will assume there are no other groups and you just wish to create new ones.
Click 'Add New Group'
- Fill in the Group Name (making it as descriptive as necessary for your LA set up. Consider how many groups you plan to have and any necessary naming conventions)
- Select the Group Type you want - we'll assume for now it is a standard group.
- Click Create Group
Creating and editing a Standard group
This is a simple process. Schools that are NOT in the group are listed on the left of the screen. Schools that ARE in the group are listed on the right. Using the Add and Remove controls, move schools from one side to the other after selecting the one you want to move.
This is the only way that a standard group can be edited, and most users won't have permission to administer this group.
There is no save button. Any changes are immediately saved in the background.
Creating and editing a Dynamic group
Instead of adding schools to the group, with a Dynamic group you are administering which statuses will determine any schools membership of the group.
The options you can set for this depend on what LA Grades, LA Target Grades, LA Categories, RAG Ratings and TAGS you have set up in the system. If you don't have - for example - LA Grade set up to use in your LA you can't set that as a criteria for including in the group (See articles below on how to set up each of these)
Tick each criteria that you want to set for membership of this Dynamic group. That can be one or several of them.
As school will only be included in the group if they have ALL of those items ticked.
As soon as ANY of the items is removed in the school's record, they will leave that Dynamic group and not be included with any reporting.
Remember that only Nexus Admin can amend the set-up of a Dynamic group BUT any user with permissions to amend TAG, RAG, LA Grade, LA Target Grade or LA Categories can effectively move schools and out of these groups by amending the school's records under the elements if they have been set up to control membership of the group. See the articles listed below around the administration of each of those areas.
Why pick Standard or Dynamic groups?
You will probably have determined that you could easily use either a Standard or Dynamic group for your purposes and often there will be no negative to picking either one. The deciding factor should be whether you expect the members of the group to change and who you want to be able to maintain that status. If you want a group that will not often change (for example based on geography) you don't want some accidentally unticking a TAG for that geography and moving the school out of what should be a standard group.
On the other hand, if you want School Improvement - for example - to be able to maintain their own groups without needing to come and request changes after each round of visits or meetings, then you would want to have the necessary school attributes set up and create a Dynamic group.