The new educational revolution: Increasing efficiency in schools - 17/09/2008

For years new government initiatives and new policies have created many challenges for teachers - so much so that teachers are leaving the profession faster than new ones can be recruited.  Indeed, there was a 23% rise in unfilled teaching jobs reported this summer.

But there is no evidence that teachers don’t like teaching.  Quite the reverse – teachers become teachers because they like working with young people.  They want to get on with their job of working with pupils and students.  What they don’t want is to feel that they are weighed down by administration which hampers their desire to be innovative in the classroom.  

To help teachers achieve this goal (and hopefully reduce the decline in the number of teachers in schools) a new approach has been developed by Scholaris International – an approach which has already had considerable success in Canada and Australia. 

The Scholaris system provides a platform through which teachers can manage all of their work in the most effective manner.  It offers a central school system that incorporates the introduction of a managed learning environment that supports the transformation of teaching and learning, including support for government initiatives such as personalised learning, on-line reporting and a whole range of other factors that are now considered to be at the heart of the well-run school.

And everywhere the Scholaris system is introduced the result is the same:  teachers are better supported and more empowered, while school managers are more able to spot trends and manage the school effectively at both the macro and micro level.  

By bringing all of this into one package it is possible for all teachers in the school to share the latest technologies (including the use of blogs, surveys, wikis and interactive collaboration) to communicate with students and even note down anecdotes and observations about pupils to allow the school to spot emerging patterns and act promptly.

Meanwhile learning activities can be created and shared in one place so that each teacher can immediately access relevant work created by colleagues.  As a result whole courses and sets of lesson plans can be created and shared supporting the use of best practice.

And, perhaps most exciting of all for any teacher overwhelmed by marking, homework and in-class tests can be set, collected and marked online.

At the end of the process teachers can even create a showcase of the best work in the school, or in a class or a subject area, which can be shared with other pupils and students, other teachers, and with parents.

All in all it makes for a systematic transformation of the way in teachers work – but for once it is a revolution that reduces the workload rather than increases it.

"We wanted a single solution that would allow us to meet BECTAs 2008 requirement & our main goals which is to bring students & staff together, in an integrated online environment, with a range of resources with content delivery & tracking.

Whilst reducing the administrative workload on our teaching staff. After reviewing the market we shortlisted 10 products, after various demos, it was clear the Scholaris product was well ahead of everyone else." Noel Reynolds, IT Manager, Lawnswood School

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