How My School Connect is Reducing Administration in Schools
Anyone in the education sector will know that the daily running of schools relies heavily on administration tasks. The academic success of Australia’s youth should be the primary focus in schools, however this is currently not achievable without teachers and principals devoting their time to administration. My School Connect has worked hard to change the way that schools manage administrative tasks so that the valuable time of staff can be devoted to activities that see a direct and positive impact on students’ learning.
In 2019, the NSW Department of Education conducted research to find that principals are spending 40% of their precious time managing their school through administration, with almost three-quarters stating that their workload was “not at all achievable”. Furthermore, consultants at Deloitte surveyed 119 principals in term two of 2019 and reported that most experienced difficulty fulfilling their roles as educational leaders due to excessive time being spent on administration tasks in the school1. It is evident from this that there is desperate need for reform in terms of systems and processes in schools when it comes to administration.
It isn’t just the principals in schools who are being swamped with administrative tasks. Teachers, who are the most ‘student-facing’ members of school staff are also suffering. An anonymous young teacher, who leads her department in an Australian secondary school recently stated that she was ‘leading a brilliant team of teachers who, like her, believed that the time spent with the children is more important than a thousand ticked boxes’2. Teachers are finding themselves using free periods and time after hours to jump through administrative hoops before being able to focus on the most important thing in schools – learning. Not only is this impacting the morale of teachers, who are finding their roles as educators are being compromised, and the lines blurred with that of administrative assistants, but it is ultimately hurting the way that students are educated. When administration takes precedence over the learning curriculum, it is clear that there is an underlying problem with paperwork in schools.
My School Connect aims to assist school staff in managing the burden of admin and HR by taking away the paper trail and introducing efficiency. Providing schools with a digital platform that can be accessed by relevant departments seamlessly has seen an invaluable shift in administrative workload for schools who have implemented My School Connect’s system. St Andrews Lutheran College, who have 1200 students from prep to year 12, and an early learning centre of 100 students onboarded My School Connect in 2018. They have found that ‘My School Connect has freed up a lot of staff’ due to it being ‘a very powerful system’3 when it comes to reducing administration and HR. Shifting the focus for school staff away from administration and back to learning is one of My School Connect’s biggest priorities, one that is paying off for those who have implemented the system thus far.
It is evident that the issue of administration lies within the systems and processes within schools. Not only is the old way of swamping school staff with admin work impacting the morale of educators, but it is leaving them with little energy to devote to teaching. The answer to this big issue is My School Connect. My School Connect provides the administrative management that schools are looking for in order to run more effectively and efficiently, and spend their precious time where it counts most. It’s time to focus on learning, and letting My School Connect take care of the rest!
1Alexandra Smith, “Overworked principals spending more time on admin and less on education”, (09 February 2020)
2 “Secret Teacher: help, I’m drowning in admin” (09 February 2020) https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/jan/25/secret-teacher-admin-lessons-assessment-feedback3 Stephen Cook, Business Manager, St Andrew Lutheran College, 2019.