K-12 Education


Teacher solves admin challenge for Bass High School


A school is a community with complex administrative, social and academic functions that must be balanced, managed, documented and reported. The need for detailed, accurate record keeping needs to be balanced with the necessity for frequent, secure access by teachers and administrative staff, and efficient production of reports. Bass High School , in Sydney 's southwest, is one such school that has addressed this challenge.

Previously, Bass High School relied on a cumbersome paper-based report system which took up to five weeks for staff to produce an academic report. With over 740 students, i t was taking too much time and resources to locate and update files in centralised filing cabinets. This, i n effect also distracted teachers from their main task of providing effective learning for students.

The solution for the school came in the form of a database system based on FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server. After assessing a number of database solutions, the school chose FileMaker Pro because it wanted the ability to adapt its information system to its work processes, rather than having to comply with someone else's idea of how the school should run. The school required a cost-effective, robust system that would grow with its needs.

“FileMaker Pro has allowed us to streamline work practices and provide a transparent medium by which data can be efficiently gathered and transformed into useful information,” said Dan Breccia, Head Teacher of Science & Coordinator ICT, Bass High School . “This in turn provides the accountability and quality we as educators need to operate effectively.”

The FileMaker solution includes all critical applications for managing student welfare, academic reporting, mark books, time tables and administration on the database. The system has allowed the decentralisation of work processes and procedures, reduced multiple handling of information and given staff secure, instant access to student information. Staff morale has improved, and teachers are free to focus on their main role of educating students.

“FileMaker has been a major influence in optimising our work practices and developing secure solutions which meet our school's specific needs,” commented Mr. Breccia. “We still work hard, but our efforts are better invested in maintaining quality education.”

Benefits of the FileMaker Pro solution:

•  Integrates data and allows secure, managed access to student records by teaching and support staff across the school.
•  Streamlines work processes, resulting in reduced workload and less time spent on data entry and verification.
•  Paper-based academic reports once took five weeks to produce. Now data is collected within two weeks, refined over a further one week, and then printed in fifteen minutes. More importantly, the reports gather more accurate information than before and incorporate a personal profile for each student that integrates marks, performance tracking, attendance and comments.
•  Dependence on paper-based files has been eliminated, yet reporting and compliance has been improved.
•  Academic reports are faster to generate, more accurate, contain more meaningful data, and are more personalised for each student.
•  The intuitive design of FileMaker Pro allows the flexibility to customise solutions quickly and efficiently to meet the rapidly changing needs of the education environment.
•  FileMaker Pro is scalable and able to manage the demands imposed by the school's growing student population and evolving applications modules.
•  The school is site licensed and so is able to use FileMaker Pro to meet syllabus requirements to teach students database concepts.