Amended August 2010
Student Management Systems (SMS) are administration software that schools use for registration, enrolment, tracking attendance, recording marks, and reporting.
The Ministry of Education is working with vendors to improve SMS so schools can more easily report in relation to the National Standards. This includes providing for plain language reporting and improving the ways information is gathered, stored, and analysed.
Improvements on the main SMS products should be available for schools in the second half of 2010.
Schools are required to report to parents and caregivers at least twice per year in plain language and in writing. Schools can use any phrases and terms in reports to parents and students, and are not required to use above, at, below, and well below the standards.
When schools develop their own reporting approaches they are better able to:
There is no requirement to use an SMS to capture achievement data or produce parent/caregiver reports. Alternatives include adapting current school reports, using ideas that are provided on the assessment website or commissioning SMS-based reports directly from the SMS vendor.
Starting in 2010 with a small number of schools using eTAP and KAMAR, the Ministry will provide a SRT facility for schools. Schools can choose to use the SRT to transfer student data from one SMS to another when students move between schools. The data includes the student's name, data of birth, gender, and national student number, demographics (for example ethnicity, year level, etc), caregiver details, medical professionals, dental professionals, summary attendance information, and assessment data.
This facility reduces the administrative tasks that schools face when students transfer from one school to another, provides information in a timely manner, and makes more data available than is collected via enrolment forms.
The SRT system involves temporary storage of student data on Ministry computers. The actual transfer of any student data can only be carried out by the source and destination schools and cannot be initiated by the Ministry.
Over the next 12 months improvements to the SRT facility will enable National Standards achievement data to be moved. Existing data protection measures will remain in place while these enhancements are designed.
Additional vendors will also start offering SRT.
Published on: 04 Dec 2009
