“It is well established in education literature that monitoring and feedback is the single most effective strategy for improving student performance,” says Dawn Sewell- Lawson, Assistant Programme Manager for the Centres of Excellence project “and the introduction of this software is the project’s intervention in boosting the capacity of the school and its leadership to carry out monitoring and feedback.”
The software, called the Complete SMS, produces a range of data, which teachers and school administrators can use to track trends in student performance, determine their progress, and to develop necessary corrective strategies, Mrs. Sewell-Lawson said. It was introduced in five of the six upgraded high schools participating in the Mutual Building Societies Foundation’s (MBSF) Centres of Excellence project last year. The MBSF is a joint initiative of the Jamaica National Building Society and the Victoria Mutual Building Society.
“The students’ academic performance can be analysed over time and any change can be quickly identified,” she explained. Similarly teachers’ success rate can be tracked using the average performance of the class as an indicator. Another very innovative feature of the system, which will be implemented at a later date, is that it can allow students, using their identification numbers, to monitor their own performance. This will help students to take personal responsibility for their education, Mrs. Sewell- Lawson commented.
The system allows teachers to create a class profile by selecting indicators such as average performance, gender, behavioural incidence, learning styles and average attendance. Mrs. Sewell-Lawson pointed out that the software can also generate identification cards, report cards, school vouchers, receipts and transcripts.
Complete SMS can store photographs and individual profiles of students, detailing their academic performance, as well as catalogue the involvement of the child’s parents in school activities.
Many students in upgraded high schools continue to perform poorly in core subjects and teachers struggle to maintain discipline. According to the Planning Institute Jamaica’s Economic and Policy Analysis, Research and Statistics Unit, although there was marked improvement in the performance of some new and upgraded high schools, the average performance in subjects entered in the 2009 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations remained significantly lower than that of traditional high schools. Only an average 59% of subject entries received passing grades in new and upgraded schools compared with 81% in traditional high schools. As much as 30% of students from the new and upgraded schools failed to attain passing grades in half of their subject entries.
Dr. Cynthia Anderson, Principal of the McGrath High School in Linstead, St. Catherine attests that proper use of the software has begun to improve administration efficiency. She pointed out that since receiving the software teachers have been engaged in ongoing training. With the support being provided under the Centres Excellence project, data can be accessed easily and used more effectively.
“It’s much easier for the teachers now, as they no longer have to walk around with 200 reports,” Dr. Anderson said. She added that the teachers were also producing timely and more accurate reports.
Reading specialist at the Mile Gully High School, Manchester, Loytoya Henry, examines a student report card produced using the Complete SMS. The Complete SMS is a school management software which assists school administrators to analyse data on students. The data can be used to develop timely and effective intervention programmes to meet student needs. Mile Gully High is one of six schools under the Mutual Building Societies Foundation Centres of Excellence project that has received the special software.
“Class averages have also been improving since the increased use of the software, as many of educators have been able to use the data to match their teaching strategies with the learning styles and abilities of the students,” Dr. Anderson said. “They are also able to provide students with more useful feedback on their performance in particular areas to help them understand what they can do to improve their grades,” she adds.
Llewelyn Bailey, Programme Manager of MBSF, says the training to increase the use of the software will strengthen efforts to develop an evidence-based approach to teaching and learning in schools.
“Our schools need to be able to have more reliable data so that educators can accurately develop intervention programmes to address student needs,” he concluded.
