Improving efficiency in schools with the use of ICT & Technology
There has been a lot of debate over the past two or three years surrounding saving teacher’s time. This has led to more debates centred around one main question. How can technology assist schools in making better use of resources and therefore delivering better value for money?
Schools have varying degrees of input costs unique to each individual school, such as:
- Cost of teaching staff
- Additional staff costs such as administrative and teaching assistants
- Running costs like utilities, ICT technology and building maintenance
These are easily defined input costs and the information should be readily available at any school. These input costs have to be measured against the school performance outcomes in a contextual manner. A Key measure of this is the contextual value added formula as published by the DCSF. In order to effectively measure improvements and progress achieved by schools and individual pupils, a number of factors need to be taken into account. These include:
- Pupil prior attainment
- Gender
- Special Educational Needs
- First language (for given prior attainment)
- Measures of pupil mobility
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Free School Meals (for given Ethnicity)
- Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI)
- Average and range of prior attainment within the school (KS2-3, KS2-4 and KS3-4 only).
We know from past financial reports that some schools are regularly achieving lower costs in terms of inputs yet they also attain a high CVA measure. In simple terms this means they are being very efficient schools. Industry and the government are interested to learn how technology can play a key role in this function – can technology really help to reduce overall costs whilst improving performance outcomes?
BECTA is in the process of building case study evidence which they hope will show that with proper planning and the effective use of technology, schools will be able to reduce costs in key back office areas. We know from the corporate world that technology is ideal at automating routine processes such as human resources, finances, report writing, and recording information.
Will the report prove BECTA’s theory, well we’ll have to wait for the report for that answer, but our best guesses is that yes it will. The corporate world has been using technology for decades in order to improve efficiency, there is no viable reason why educational organisations cannot make themselves more efficient with technology either.
