Does your school run like a well-oiled machine?

Schools are complex organisations, but at their core is a straightforward goal:

to prepare students for productive and successful lives, equipping them with the proper knowledge and skills. Schools must operate like a well-oiled machine, where various systems and processes work harmoniously to achieve this. Implementing effective school management systems can streamline these operations into four key areas, ensuring that schools can focus on their primary mission—providing quality education and student support.

While teams in these areas share a goal that unites them, they each face unique pain points, challenges, and priorities. Often, this risks pulling them in conflicting and even opposing directions.

We saw this in the Education Horizons Group’s 2021 annual survey of teachers, school leaders, and administrators, compiled from over 1,000 respondents from more than 590 schools (56% independent) in every state and territory in Australia.

Teachers and school leaders

The top priority for teachers (57%) and school leaders (54%) was ‘consistently embedding best-practice pedagogy across the school’ (57%) and ‘improving workflow to reduce workload’ (42%).

School management and administration

However, school Management and administration staff identified ‘Improving school facilities and asset management’ (46%) and ‘streamlining administrative tasks’ (62%) as their most significant priorities.

While it seems only natural that different school areas will have other areas of concern, it does illustrate that schools battle with competing goals. Using the metaphor of a machine hints that not all parts work together to function like a well-oiled machine.

Recently, we asked schools about their ideal school system. Most schools want a single integrated system that is the single source of truth for all their data. Interestingly, this research showed that schools are instead implementing additional systems with functionality that overlaps their existing systems – or, in other words – doing the exact opposite of what they aspire to do.

The average number of integrated systems a school uses increases as its student numbers increase, often causing friction for others and creating more overlaps, double-handling, and, ironically, more time wasted. For example, a school with 1,200 students can have as many as 12 different software systems to address the various role needs and requirements. The graph below highlights the issue.

This graph illustrates that many schools have overly complex systems, which are often more challenging for staff to navigate. This usually results in ‘chaos’, disorder, and confusion on the user’s part as they try to figure out what system to ‘use’ and ‘when’.

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So, how can schools address their key priority areas and reduce the many systems they use?

Under our model, the complexity of a school’s needs is respected. However, the way these needs are met is simplified. A school can now use as few as three complementary systems to meet most of its operational needs. For example, when schools use SEQTA and Synergetic combination, the two systems seamlessly connect, providing visibility to the data teachers and administrators require. The teachers use SEQTA to meet their teaching and learning requirements.

A SEQTA and Synergetic combination, the two systems seamlessly connect, providing visibility to the data that brings transparency to this area so leaders can focus on their priority areas – to support teachers to ‘consistently embed best-practice pedagogy across the school’ whilst also ‘improving workflow to reduce workload’.

The administrators use Synergetic for their key business processes so they can address their key priority area—‘streamline administrative tasks’—and complement this with the addition of AssetWhere (AW) and Facilities Management (FM) to address their other priority area—‘improving school facilities and asset management’.

The AssetWhere and Facilities Management systems integrate seamlessly to provide schools with complete oversight of their assets, properties, and facilities. AssetWhere centralises all property information in one place, enabling schools to make informed decisions. The Facilities Management module offers an online portal for property stakeholders to manage work requests, monitor scheduled and ad hoc maintenance, and oversee contractor and insurance details. Together, these tools promote a strong asset and property management culture, simplifying the management of school infrastructure and services.

This means that schools only deal with only one technology partner, Education Horizons, to support all their business, teaching and learning, property and facilities management.

Why should a school select us as its technology partner?

The number of systems a school uses increases proportionally to its student numbers. However, the downside is that the school’s data can become siloed, preventing them from accessing live analytics and identifying trends and patterns in their data. They can’t see the whole picture, often leading to increased manual data processing as the data is moved from one system to another, increasing their workload and pain.

All these additional systems also increase costs and dependence on technical support. Our work with over 2,000 schools globally highlights the significant amount of overlap that occurs between systems.

For example, a school we recently dealt with called School A had their teachers working in five separate systems

1. OneNote: Used for documenting teaching and learning.
2. Teams: Utilised to communicate with students and share lesson information.
3. Atlas Rubicon: Employed to map the school’s curriculum.
4. Firefly: Served as the school’s learning management system (LMS).
5. ManageBac: Used to track teachers’ units of inquiry.

None of the data flowed between systems, and the teachers constantly handled the data.

This is a simple illustration of one of the key priorities identified by teachers and leaders: ‘improving workflow to reduce workload (42%)’. Imagine the cost and workload savings if the school had taken a more strategic approach to their system acquisitions. This school did not function as a finely tuned machine did the opposite; they were inefficient, causing increased workload and stress for staff.

Implementing the three of our systems enables schools to save money, time and resources while having only one point of contact for questions and support.

Please contact us to book a demo of our innovative school management systems.