Kathleen Woods, principal of St Joseph’s Primary School in Bessbrook believes in leading by example. A firm advocate of SIMS (Schools Information Management System), she has been encouraging staff to make full use of all the program’s modules.
Her enthusiasm for the integrated management system is now paying dividends and Mrs Woods says that teaching and office staff in the County Armagh school are now seeing the benefits.
“Teachers are finding SIMS a very useful tool for many aspects of their work, from curriculum planning and helping to improve overall pupil performance, to identifying pupils in need of support in certain areas of the curriculum. From an administrative perspective, SIMS is also used to manage the school’s finance and resources.
“SIMS gives us quality and up-to-date information about the school which is then used to inform our decision making process,” says Mrs Woods.
Even straightforward but often time-consuming tasks such as managing the school diary are so much easier with SIMS, she continues.
“All diary markings are stored electronically online so the diary is always up to date. This makes it easier for everything we’re organising in the school from planning activities such as in-service training, school trips, and visitors to the school, to the use of the assembly hall. It lends itself to greater co-ordination and as a result, everything operates a lot more smoothly. It makes life easier for everyone involved to make the appropriate arrangements when they know what else is happening in the school on a particular date.
“Now that everything goes into SIMS, we‘ve even done away with the traditional wall planner in the staff room. It’s just the same with any changes to staff or pupil contact details. These are automatically changed in all school records which both reduces the administrative burden on teachers and school office staff and minimises the risk of errors in data-entry.”
Mrs Woods admits that at first, it did take staff some time to get into the way of using SIMS but now that they can see the benefits, it has become an important and valued resource in the school.
“It certainly helps when teachers can actually see how SIMS can help reduce, rather than add to their workload. With SIMS, they can access information about children in their class, such as their academic records and liase with other teachers to identify any children who are underachieving. They can also monitor behaviour and attendance or know whether or not a child has brothers or sisters in the school, all of which can be very useful from a pastoral point of view.
“With so many changes to the curriculum, teachers are interested in initiatives that will lessen their workload and SIMS is starting to really make a difference at St. Joseph’s.”
Eilis Fitzpatrick ICT co-ordinator and primary 5 teacher at St Joseph’s agrees and says that many of the initial teething problems have now been ironed out. “Teachers have had to deal with a lot of changes in recent years but I think we all recognise that SIMS has the potential to reduce our administrative workload and free up time for teaching.
“Feedback from both parents and teachers indicated that the initial Pupil profiles generated on SIMS Profile 7 module were too generic and impersonal but now teachers feel more confident in using SIMS report tool to create a more individual report for parents.”
Eilis explains that teachers have the option of either using comments from the comment bank, which have been developed by teachers or adding a comment of their own which they feel best describes the progress of a specific child.
“The layout and presentation of our school report have been improved and in keeping with the Revised curriculum, it facilitates reporting on other skills such as ‘working with others’, ’dealing with conflict’, ‘self esteem’, which helps paint a more holistic picture of a child’s progress. This is particularly useful for giving teachers the ‘heads up’ on children in each class as they progress through the school.”
Now that the initial training is complete and everyone in St Joseph’s is using SIMS, the consensus among staff is that it certainly is helping to makes their life a little easier.
Phillip McGovern one of the Learning Support Teachers at St Joseph’s says this is particularly beneficial for teachers involved in learning support at St Joseph’s. “SIMS makes it easier to plan and co-ordinate IEPs (Individual Education Plan) and to suggest targets, for example in Maths and English, for children in need of support, including those in the school’s special unit.”
“It’s now two years since SIMS was introduced in the school and although all staff are now using the programme, everyone has their own favourite way of doing things so we are constantly learning from each other and there is plenty of cross fertilisation of ideas,” he adds
