BESA CORNER
BESA CORNE R
In our regular feature this month featuring members of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, Education Today hears from Adam Stanton of ParentPay on the benefits of going cashless; and assessment software providers BSquared on assessing children with special educational needs.
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In our regular feature thismonth featuringmembers of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, Education Today hears fromAdamStanton of ParentPay on the benefits of going cashless; and assessment softw providers BSquared on assessing childrenwith special educationa l needs .
Nearly 70 per cent of schools plan to go cashless
There are clear and growing issues around pupils bringing cash and cheques into school to
are easily lost and cash can be pay for school meals, trips and
corner shop on the way to sch trigger for bullying.
With all this in mind it’s not What the research says What the research says
Whilst research has regularly shown that the vast majority of parents want to pay schools online, it’s interesting to compare this with school staff views.
ParentPay’s recent Income Collection Survey 2016 was conducted with school staff to find out more about their perceptions and challenges to becoming a ‘cashless’ school.
Over 1,100 schools responded to the survey and prov eid d valuable insights; for instance, some staff are still concerned that a lack of access to the internet and cash based families will mean they can never completely remove cash from schools; despite the high availability of cash based payment alternatives like PayPoint bein g available in 33,000 locations across the UK .
An income collection revolution An income collection revolution
Taking one school as an example,MonicaMorley, school business manager at St. John Payne Catholic School in Essex, explains why the school went fully cashless and the lessons learned in the process: “Before ParentPay, the time required for collecting, reconciling and banking cash and cheques was almost becoming unmanageable; we had to do something to tackle this issue.”
Parents were already shopping and banking online so I couldn’t see why they wouldn’t also want to pay for school items online. Having spoken to other schools using ParentPay, I persuaded the School Leadership Team (SLT) that we should start to take online payments from parents.”
The school started to extend its use of ParentPay to enable parents to pay online for trips and other items.
Monica said: “Within a year we were starting to se over £75,000 collected on trips and other items, we s
aved numerous e benefits, with
administration hours, which were put to good use elsewhere. The ParentPay system was already giving us a good return on investment but as far as I was concerned, that was just the start; we really neede d to exploit all th e possibilities ParentPay offered. ”
Despite an impressive start, around 60 per cent of the school’s total income was still coming in as cash, this was mainly down to the continued availability of ‘cash loaders’ which students had always used to load cash onto their dinner cards.
When the cash loader stopped working one day, queues of students were again at the finance office; a headache school staff thought they had long seen the back of.
Monica saw the opportunity they had been waiting for: “Instead of rushing into a quick and expensive fix, we asked ourselves whether we should be spending money on upgrading the cash loading system, when we already had a proven, ready-made solution that would eradicate the need for cash in school. So out went the cash loader s and we becam e totally online with payments. ”
It is not surprising that an increasing majority of schools are working towards online payments only.While the transition for some parents may require a little support, it is certainly a very achievable goal.
wwwww.parentpay.com 8 www www
.education-today.co.uk.co.uk
lost, spent in the clubs. Cheques
surprising that so ool, or act as a
many schools are now working to totally remove cash.
Small steps become significant in Pembroke
When working with children on a daily basis it is quite easy to underestimate quite how much progress they have made over a 6- month period. For children with learnin g difficulties this can be particularly hard. The same is true for the parents. They also need to see the progress, however small the steps, that their child is making. At B Squared, our Connecting Steps software focuses on these small steps. It is important for any such Centre or
special needs department of a school to break down each level of progress into these small steps. This allows them to track tiny increases in development that could be missed in other systems.
Pembroke Additional Learning Centre (ALC) provides us with a great example. It offers specialist provision forMonmouthshire LEA wit h school placements for children in the South of the county. It supports individuals aged 4-11 years with Profound andMultiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD), Severe Learning Difficulties and Autistic Spectrum Disorders.
Head of Centre, Simon Carnell has worke Educational Needs settings for over 15 years
, teaching children aged 3- d in Additional
19 with Severe and Profound learning difficulties. During his career, he has had a particular interest in developing ways to assess children in a meaningful, accurate and informative way.
The system at ALC Pembroke allows them to monitor progress and inform future learning without being tokenistic, vague or simply ticking a government box.
Children are given a profile with targets focusing on their Key Skil l areas. This helps them develop into independent, secure learners whilst raising self-esteem and developing peer relationships. For the past eight years, Pembroke ALC has tracked academic progress using B Squared assessments; providing extremely accurate tracking of individual pupil’s achievements, to help guide target setting.
By linking to the Progression Guidance the Centre is able to show everyone involved that the child is in fact making exceptional progress. As B Squared’s Connecting Steps software is available as an iPad app, with the app on the support staff and teachers’ iPads, they have been able to easily record an achievement and indicate emerging understanding. By having more frequent access to the descriptors the Pembroke ALC team is more familiar with the levels and is making more accurate judgments on pupil progress.
As Simon Carnell explains; “When preparing Annual Reviews and reports for Inspectors, this is vital especially when working with PMLD learners as they may only move 1 P-Level in a Key Stage (KS). This breakdown of the levels allows us to seamlessly tie-in with Progression Guidance, a document produced by the Department for Education. We are able to accurately calculate the percentage increase of academic levels they should make each year in order to meet these challenging targets. B Squared gives a percentage of level completion so by cross-referencing our targets with our assessments we are able to see if pupils are on track. The small steps are also useful for teacher s in planning how they will move a child forward, as they can be used as lesson objectives or weekly targets for pupils”.
It has been heartening to see the huge satisfaction that teachers, support staff and parent’s get when they clearly see this improvement.
www.bsquared.co.uk Novembe r 2016 2016
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