Technology hasn’t reached its full potential in education – a painful truth that the pandemic has brought into sharp relief. However, with blended learning here to stay, education technology (EdTech) has never been more important.
For blended learning to be successful, there must be a step-change in how EdTech is used and deployed across every single part of education as we move beyond the pandemic.
A strong technology backbone in education
While schools have experienced a technological surge over the last few years, its implementation has been fragmented at best. In England, there is no central technology infrastructure that acts as the backbone for education.
With so many disparate software packages to keep track of, the last year has been incredibly difficult for teachers, students and home-schooling parents.
They’ve been forced to jump between multiple programs every day, remembering several passwords and sign-in processes. This has caused mass disruption to the teaching and learning process. It’s clear that a central Management Information System (MIS) is needed that can join the dots for everyone involved.
While Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace are solid foundations, an MIS that can bring together blended learning solutions like Teams with other critical operations software – such as ParentMail for parent engagement and IRIS Financials for admin staff is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity.
For years, teachers and senior leadership teams (SLTs) have been working in the dark, their hands tied without access to critical intelligence on academics, financials, safeguarding, parent engagement or staff wellbeing. They need a real-time, single source of truth that they can access from anywhere, at any time; without this, school leaders simply aren’t able to improve the life chances of children to the best of their ability.
The EdTech revolution
Thankfully, an EdTech revolution is underway. In fact, it was set in motion long before Covid-19, but has been rapidly accelerated because of it. It’s now possible to give teachers time back to focus on their love of teaching thanks to integrated technology solutions.
These are designed to take away the headaches involved in everyday processes. Free time is a concept rarely associated with SLTs in education.
However, the introduction of real-time data, integrated from across the entire school estate and presented in an easily digestible and interpretable way, would enable them to make well-informed decisions that best serve their students and staff.
Over time, software has eroded the impact that a head of department can have on the academic outcomes of pupils or the health and wellbeing of their staff.
SLT staff have had more and more of their time eaten up by the need to collect and collate data into useable formats. Instant access to intelligence will finally enable SLTs to intervene at the point of need, maximise their impact and achieve their goals to ensure every student reaches their true potential.
Instant intelligence access has been frustratingly absent until now across the education sector. However, following their recent acquisition of iSAMs, IRIS Software is now bringing the next generation of fully integrated, cloud-based online school management systems to the sector.
Their cloud-based platform provides live data from across a MAT, enabling teachers and senior leaders to quickly access accurate information in an easy-to-use dashboard.
Putting intelligence directly into the hands of educators through a central MIS will give them the headspace and tools they need to focus on teaching, not processes. While Covid-19 has been undeniably disruptive, it’s also an opportunity to make lasting positive changes to the education sector.
Winston Poyton, Senior Product Director at IRIS Software Group.
