Achieving a Balance: ICT and Workforce Remodelling

Achieving a Balance: ICT and Workforce Remodelling - "The (UK) Government has accepted for some time that the administrative workload of teachers needs to be reduced so they can spend more time on their key role – teaching. Measures are in place to remove from teachers a number of tasks that can be done by support staff in school – photocopying of resources, for example – and at the same time, reduce the administrative burden on teachers. This calls for a new allocation of roles and responsibilities within schools and involves a whole-school approach.

Alongside this initiative is a requirement for schools to improve the quality of learning and teaching, management and administration. One of the key approaches to both these tasks is to use the power of technology.

Many schools are now larger than some businesses, employing hundreds of staff. Like businesses, they handle large budgets and vast amounts of information, and need to manage both efficiently. Increasingly, schools rely on management information system (MIS) software that enables information to be recorded, manipulated, accessed and used by all staff. Once entered, data is available to school managers to support decision-making, to administration staff to support financial control, and to teaching staff to support classroom teaching, lesson planning and the monitoring and assessment of pupils' performance."