Extracting Student Data from your MIS

The first step towards importing student data into Analytics is to extract this data for the cohort from your schools’ MIS. To help you do this, we provide links to student report definition files or further information for popular MIS’ such as SIMS, Arbor, Bromcom and iSAMS. These can be found in the following article - Sisra Analytics: How do I extract data from my MIS? (Admin).

Each cohort will need to have their student data imported in separate files.

The data that you extract from your MIS will need to reflect the filters that you set up in your Student Data Profile in Analytics. If you go to CONFIG > Student Data, and scroll to the 'Upload Format Example' at the bottom, you can see an example of what your student data file in Excel will need to look like, so you can see what data you need to export. The columns do not have to be in the exact order shown on here, as these will be matched up during the import.

Please note, the example in your school may look different from the example above depending on what filters your have set up in CONFIG. If you wish to make any changes to the filters or add new ones, please see our Student Data Profile - Creating Filters guide.

Working with KS5?

For KS5, if you’re working with Current Y13 or a Leavers cohort then we recommend extracting two student data files. One containing their historical student data from when they were in Y12 (from the time of the October census), and one containing their Y13 current student data.

Preparing Student Data

Once you have extracted student data from your MIS, we would recommend checking the following in your file:

• All columns from your Student Data Profile are included, as seen in CONFIG > Student Data (at the bottom of the page). The columns do not need to be in the exact order shown, and do not have to be fully populated if a filter is not applicable for a cohort. Any additional columns can be included, but will be omitted during the import.
• If you’re importing a subsequent student data file for a cohort, that the sets of classes names (Subjects column) are consistent with your previous imports.
• You have one row per student, per CLASS they sit in, duplicated down the spreadsheet.
• All of the filter columns for a particular student would need to have a unique value showing in each row, otherwise filter conflicts would occur when importing to Analytics.
• The file is saved in Excel as either CSV, XLSX, XLS or XML format.

Students with a BLANK Student ID, Name, Subject or Class will be excluded from the import.

Below you can see an example of what a student data file ready to be imported into Analytics may look like (depending on your additional filters). If a student doesn’t have a value for a filter, you can leave this blank and Analytics will simply pull through the default value in its place, as set up in your Student Data Profile in CONFIG > Student Data > Filter Management.

If you have students who rotate classes throughout the year (e.g. sitting DT Food Technology in Year 9 Term 1 and taking DT Graphics in the following term), it is recommended that the classes are split into different sets within your student data file, defined by the Subject column. This is explained in the following article - FAQ: How do I approach class rotations?

Importing Student Data

Once your file is prepared, you are then ready to import this into Analytics. For further information on this, please see the relevant article below for the key stage you're working with:

• KS3/4: Importing Student Data (Admin)
• KS5: Importing Student Data (Admin)

Thanks for reading!

Updated 22 October 2025 10:12