Peter Richardson, Senior Marketing Manager PFU (EMEA), explains why digital transformation in education plays a crucial role
When the Final report of the Commission on Assessment without Levels was released, it recommended that schools should build an assessment framework to check what pupils have learned and whether they are meeting expectations, and to report to parents and other stakeholders.
A significant part of this system is collecting assessment data, however, the report acknowledged that many teachers found data entry and management in their school burdensome. This is where the right technology solution can make a difference.
Capturing evidence of progress
Technology can play an important role in capturing the detail of students’ work, which helps teachers and parents monitor how a child is progressing. By documenting handwriting and creative work, for example, comparisons can be made at intervals against content already stored digitally, leading to a better understanding of who is improving and who requires more attention.
In addition, when schoolwork is available digitally it can be more easily shared. Some schools already capture all student content each day and share it directly with parents, instead of requiring children to take home physical documents.
Supporting school administration
Document capture solutions also help schools’ administrative duties, such as managing permission slips and invoices. An OCR-enabled (optical character recognition) scanning device can extract the relevant data from the forms, saving time on manual data entry. Some universities also use this technology to capture data on lectures.
Instead of asking students to complete online forms to provide post-lecture feedback, they are given paper versions in the room. These are then scanned, and the information captured digitally, which is leading to higher response rates and helping to improve teaching.
Reaching the right stakeholders
Schools that cater for excluded and special needs students face additional challenges as they often have to liaise with a range of stakeholders, such as the SENCO (special educational needs coordinator), child services, councils, other schools and the students’ parents, who each regularly require different datasets.
By digitising documents used by, and about, school children – and harnessing OCR – these schools can capture all the necessary data at once and, by using the right solutions, send that information directly to the relevant party safely and securely.
Data compliance
Under new laws, individuals have the right to access their personal data. This is commonly referred to as ‘subject access requests’ and, while schools currently only receive very few, this is expected to increase. With much of the information currently only available in paper format, responding to such requests is time-consuming and could potentially lead to non-compliance if the requested data cannot be found. Paper records are also less secure than a fully managed digital platform, and security is an issue teaching institutions must address now that the general data protection regulation (GDPR) is in place.
By implementing digital working practices, including the scanning and digitisation of administrative and student material, schools can very quickly see the benefits that they bring to staff members, pupils, parents and wider support personnel.
Visit https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/education/index.html for more information about how Fujitsu supports educational institutions.
Peter Richardson
Senior Marketing Manager
PFU (EMEA) Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)208 573 4444
peter.a.richardson@uk.fujitsu.com
Please note: This is a commercial profile
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