Articles on: Candidates

How do I create a candidate file?

Don't get stuck in a spreadsheet doom loop! Ask our team for a Dropbox link and they will sort out any formatting issues you have!

To create a candidate file for importing pupil details into your NMM task, follow these steps:

Log in to your school's NMM paid subscription account.
Open the correct task by clicking its name.
On the Candidates page, click the 'Populate, generate, download & print coded sheets' tab (also called Step 1).
Next, click the 'Candidate Upload' tab (also called Step 2).
Then, click 'Download Candidates Template' (also called Step 3).
Once the template is downloaded, delete the sample data and replace it with your own.

Required Fields

All of these fields are required and can't be left blank:

First_Name: The pupil's first name. (e.g., Chris)
Last_Name: The pupil's last name. (e.g., Harding)
DOB: The pupil's date of birth. This is used for age-related results. (e.g., 31/01/2000)
Gender: M/F. This data is not shown to students but is used for national tasks breakdowns.
Year_Group: The national tasks are specific to a year group. (e.g., '7' for Year 7)
Group: The teaching, class, or registration group. Results will be grouped by this field for national tasks.
PP: (UK only) Pupil Premium Status. This is used for generating PP-related results. (e.g., Y/N)

Optional Fields

Candidate: You can use a unique identifier if required to assist with your data matching.

Using anonymised data

Using anonymised data is an option for certain fields, but it comes with a warning. If you choose to use fake names for the 'First_Name', 'Last_Name' and 'DOB' fields, these names must be consistent from year to year. If the names change, it will prevent the system from generating progress reports over multiple years of participation.

Important Notices

Do not change or move any of the column titles and make sure to follow the data formatting precisely.
The NMM system only accepts candidate files in .csv and .xls formats.
You must create a separate candidate file for each year-level cohort and upload it to the correct task. Do not upload one spreadsheet with all pupils to a single task.

You can now proceed with importing your candidate file to the appropriate NMM task.

Once a national task has been reviewed by our team, you might not be able to delete students. If you've made a mistake, please contact us for assistance.

Next step: importing your candidate file to the appropriate NMM task.

Once our team have checked a national task you may find you are unable to delete your students. You can ask us for help if you have made a mistake somewhere.

Updated on: 01/10/2025

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