Many school leadership teams are attracted to the idea of introducing an assessment platform. They can see how it will support whole school improvement and to support the needs of individual students. However, they don’t want to overload their staff with new systems at critical times in the year.
The challenge is that schools are always busy.
Just like the weather they follow seasonal patterns. Every teacher or school leader will be familiar with the annual cycle; getting to know a new class, the build-up to the Christmas holidays, the stress of running PAT and NAPLAN. There are reports and parents evenings, sports day and final assembly– until finally, your class transitions onwards.
Of course that is layered on top of the day to day work planning lessons, teaching and learning, setting goals, behaviour management, student and self-wellbeing, tracking progress – and of course marking. There is never a quiet time and teaching staff are always overloaded.
The pandemic added to the challenge as it disrupted this ecosystem. Students and teachers have missed school, resulting in hidden learning gaps and stretched teachers playing catch up to thoroughly cover the curriculum.
It’s understandable that school principals are nervous about introducing new systems under these circumstances. But delaying the introduction of an assessment platform because your staff are too busy is like delaying going to the dentist because you have toothache. The right solution will make every one of those priority activities quicker and easier. So, the best time to introduce an assessment platform is now. Right now. Wherever you are in the school year.
As soon as you introduce an assessment platform, it will save your teachers time.
They need that assessment data to get to know their students. To effectively plan their lessons. To provide feedback to students and their families. To make sure that every child meets their potential.
The big difference is that without an assessment platform the teachers have to do the heavy lifting themselves. This means pulling together data from multiple locations, managing spreadsheets and trying to interpret the numbers. This is time-consuming and stressful – a job for a data analyst not a teacher.
In contrast, Elastik is designed to make teachers lives easier – all they need to do is log on. Data sits in a single system, with clear visuals showing them insights not ‘data’. And real humans support you at every stage of your journey – so you can start seeing benefits immediately without overloading your teachers. And in addition to unlimited real-time assessments, teachers have access to lesson guides, and tools to automatically produce reports.
Schools using Elastik save time at every stage of the school year. There is no need to wait until the start of the school year.
Oh – and did we mention we can also help with that marking?
Get in touch here to find out how Elastik can help your school today.
