School Reporting Suite

Saving Teachers Time

Month: June 2016

What Schools Say About The School Reporting Suite

Teacher Pointing at Map of World ca. 2002

Teacher Pointing at Map of World ca. 2002

An efficient and accurate way of reporting pupil progress is an important part of the UK education system. It has been something we have worked tirelessly to implement with our School Reporting Suite platform.

One of the challenges we face when talking with schools is allowing them to picture how our solution works and the benefits it can have.

We are happy to demo our system to any school that may be interested to help bridge the conceptual gap, but we thought we would share a couple of testimonials from schools that use SRS for their pupil assessment, tracking and reporting or other IT work.

Here are two examples of clients that are reaping the benefits of working with SRS.

Menorah Primary School

We have completed our first full year’s assessment schedule using SRS, using both the tracking and reporting modules. The software fully represents our assessment ethos. It is easy to deploy and data entry is very straightforward even in Hebrew! Layout is comprehensive without being cluttered and print copy is aesthetic and ready to send to parents. We now have the tools to generate full reports and charts on classes, groups and individual students in all their subjects and categories. We can track, assess, compare and plan – all within one software package.
Thank you, Aspiring Panda! Your customer service is ‘top-shelf’ with immediate and effective response to all our technical enquiries.

————– Rabbi Atlas

Wexham School

Aspiring Panda the company behind SRS have been providing a professional service for the School’s IT requirements in respect of Structured Network Cabling, installation of interactive whiteboards and AV Sound Systems. Recently, we had a need to update our website and approached Aspiring Panda for this task.

We would like to thank the Aspiring Panda team for designing our school website and was particularly impressed by their usual professional approach and the speed at which the website was prepare to meet our particular requirements. We would definitely work with them in the future and also have no hesitation in recommending Aspiring Panda to other organisations.

Dubai Schools Allow High Performing Schools To Opt Out Of Assessments

dubai-1119425_1280

In Dubai high performing schools are getting the ability to opt out of regular assessments as part of a new education initiative.

This is of note as in the United Kingdom schools only have a limited amount of flexibility in the way they track, monitor and assess the progress of pupils.

Schools are required to comply with the national curriculum and the wide range of formal and informal assessments that are monitored at a local and a national level.

However, the requirement for regular assessment as part of the education process is not universally accepted and others across the UK and the world think other approaches may be more appropriate and beneficial to the learning of pupils.

The Dubai Approach

One country that has taken a different approach in schools is Dubai, where schools that are high achieving are able to opt out of regular assessments.

Arabian Business outlined the project in a recent article

“The Abundance Group project, initiated by Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) will allow schools rated very good and outstanding the option of a differentiated inspection based on self-evaluation, allowing them to focus their resources on giving back to other schools.

This marks the first time an education regulator in the UAE has offered schools a choice to carry out self-evaluations instead of formal inspections in order to help improve standards across other poor performing schools.”

Analysis For The UK

It is noteworthy that at this point this is only for high achieving schools and whether this is a recognition of the importance of uniform assessment is beneficial in providing a pathway to measuring and improving pupil performance.

The Dubai Initiative is an interesting case study and I am sure people across the education system will be watching to see how this change affects performance.