At Ninestiles school inBirmingham, teachers use laptops on a wireless network for access to the MIS. Eddie Halliday, an advanced skills English teacher, explains: “I don’t have any paper records of any kind - schemes of work, lesson plans, everything’s electronic. ” The school operates a discipline and reward system that involves teachers recording when a pupil gets a detention or is commended for work.
“It (the MIS) automatically prints out letters to parents which are with the form tutor next morning ready to be given out. And because all the events are recorded, the deputy head can look at patterns: which children are in trouble with which teachers at what time of day.”
Mr Halliday can do the same with his tutor group. “I can show the detentions for my group, then discuss with them how they might stop getting any more.”
He’s seen at first hand how this can work. “I got off to a bad start with one pupil, and I was constantly giving detentions. The deputy head picked this up from the system and called us in then left us alone to talk it through. It was really good to be able to start afresh for the rest of the year. I don’t think that would have happened if the information hadn’t been so visible on the system.”
