How to prepare an extract without creating a second job for the office
Send the files you already export for the examination office and the register. Do not rebuild a workbook to impress the analyst. We will say if a column is unreadable.
The slowest briefings we have run were not the ones with difficult governors. They were the ones where a well-meaning deputy spent a weekend making a “clean” workbook, dropped the original column names, and left us unable to see which marks were examinations and which were last Tuesday’s quiz.
Send what the office already produces. For examinations, that is usually the file that goes to the examination office or the sheet the deputy already uses in August. For attendance, the export from the register, with dates still attached. For internal assessments, the term grid you already print for subject heads.
Name the years on the file name. Say if a sheet is incomplete. Do not colour-code for our benefit; colour often dies in a CSV. Do not add pupil names “in case they help.” They do not help, and they create a deletion job.
If a column is coded in a way only one clerk understands, a three-line email is enough. We would rather have that email than a rebuilt book. Three working days after the files arrive, we say whether we can draw from them or what is missing. That message is part of the work, not a complaint about the office.