School Reporting Suite

Saving Teachers Time

Month: June 2015

The Importance Of Language Learning In Schools

June 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Archivo_basePoster vector designed by Freepik

The need for an increase in the number of children learning languages has been a hot topic in the last five years. This is partially due to research that shows that 75% of all people in the United Kingdom are monolingual.

This demonstrates a supply that is at odds with the demand for languages, particularly from an employment perspective. It is believed that 41% of businesses feel that knowledge of a foreign language is beneficial for staff to possess, whilst 28% believe that this could help their company grow overseas.

Recently, Scotland announced an increase in funding for the provision of foreign language learning, with the Education In Scotland Secretary stating

“Language learning has been in the news on a regular basis in the last five years. Stories have continually shown an increase in the demand for language skills in the United Kingdom and across the world, as well as a marked decline in those possessing the requisite skills.”

The Benefits of Language Learning

The benefits of language learning are twofold: first of all it can help a child in their future careers; more generally, there is also strong evidence that it can help boost overall brain power.

These two factors mean that there are a wide range of benefits to learning a language at school and beyond, which means it is important that suitable language resources are invested in schools.

The Languages That Need Teaching

The British Council has published a list of 10 languages where skills need to be developed to protect the future of the United Kingdom. These are Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish, and Japanese.

The diversity in the languages in the list reflects changing global economics. Whilst demand from businesses for speakers of traditional European languages such as French, German, and Spanish remains strong, it has declined in comparison with more global languages, and Asian languages.

The benefits of language learning are clear, and it will be interesting to see if programs to boost engagement have an impact in the next decade.

Tip of The Week – Coping With School Reporting Season

June 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Tip

As the weather gets better and the summer break creeps into view, it brings mixed blessings; for one thing pupils can be harder to motivate as they drift into holiday mode. Then, of course, there are the reports to write.

Traditionally, reporting is a time consuming and laborious task, that involves scouring through previous tests, reports, and notes in order to put together more than 20 reports. These need to be typed up, checked, reviewed, and amended before they get anywhere near a parent.

This produces stress, long hours, and is enough to test the patience and will of even the most driven and experienced of teachers.

The process of writing reports can vary widely from school to school: some rely on the traditional paper based model, whilst others look to cloud based software to manage pupil tracking and report generation.

Regardless of what system your school uses, we asked our resident teacher to give us their top tip on how to cope with the school reporting season.

The tip they gave revolves around having the tools to hand to craft unique and engaging reports with a little help from a structural crib sheet.

Have a crib sheet of useful comments to hand

Parents want to know how their children are getting on in a clear and easy to understand way. Next to the CTRL – C copy shortcut embedded in your brain, having a list of useful comments in your mind can save time and add depth to your reports.

These key phrases could include things like “grasps new concepts quickly”, or has a “lively imagination”, which help paint a picture of the child’s progress.

If you are still struggling for ideas, we found this inspiring and quirky book on “how to survive the first year of teaching” which has useful tips even for those whose first year of teaching was long ago.

3 Ways SRS Can Save Teachers Time

June 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

clock

Regardless of the idealised image that those outside the profession may have, we all know that despite the rewards, teaching can be a challenging vocation.

Teachers need to work within a supportive environment, where they can develop their skills, feel valued, and transfer this into a positive teaching environment.

One of the ways that schools can do this is to ensure that their teachers have the tools they need to succeed. These can be tools that make it a little easier to perform admin, to track progress, and to communicate effectively with the different stakeholders in their role – such as parents, pupils, and the management team.

SRS Reduces Report Admin Time

One way that SRS can support teachers is by making the admin involved in student performance tracking simpler and easier to monitor and manage. The system can be cloud based, which allows teachers to update it from any device in any location. This also means that teachers can access the system outside of school hours, as it is conveniently available 24 hours a day.

SRS Enhances Tracking

The SRS system allows for results and progress to be tracked for classes and individual children in line with the school curriculum, whether that is a national curriculum or one bespoke to the school or faith.

On the back of this, reports can be generated on an individual student basis, which in time provides a powerful analytical tool.

SRS as a Communication Tool

Using our cloud based system, reports can be submitted to management for review electronically, and comments added that can then be incorporated, saving time and effort at both ends. We have also received great feedback from parents about this service.

When you think back to your schooldays, you may remember being given a school report in an envelope which you nervously handed to your parents hoping the news was good. This was a long process for review, and getting comments back from parents could take time.

Using our cloud based system, reports can be sent to parents electronically and comments – but not amendments – added to the document and sent back.

Both of these tools mean that SRS is a powerful step forward in the way reporting is tracked and communicated in an educational environment.

Archives

© 2023 School Reporting Suite

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑