SHANE RATTENBURY and Andrew Barr have announced an end to the happy days of wagging school to go swimming at Pine Island.

“Sick notes and permission slips could be a thing of the past for Canberra parents as a range of routine school administration goes digital under a new budget initiative,” Andrew said.

“The ACT Government today committed up to $10m from the 2016/17 Budget to develop a faster and more efficient digital school administration system that will enhance the way parents and carers interact with their local school and streamline administrative process within schools.

“It is important that ACT public schools keep up to date with modern families and enable parents to easily engage with their children’s school through technology.

“The 2016/17 ACT Budget will focus on our health, education, transport and social inclusion priorities.”

Shane Rattenbury said that the new schools administration system will streamline parent interaction with schools and provide improved and more efficient administration; anywhere, anytime.

“Parents and teachers are busy people and, as the world increasingly moves online, people expect to be able to perform routine administrative tasks quickly and efficiently from their computer or Smartphone,” Shane said.

“The ACT continues to be recognised as a leading digital city and this new package will deliver a range of improvements to our schools, including:

• An enhanced online enrolment experience so parents only need to tell their story once.
• Functionality for additional digital transactions including permissions, consent, payments and updating of student details – reduction in the number of paper forms between home and school and reducing need for repetition of forms or information. Improved access to student data every day for schools to drive continued improvement.
• Online attendance marking and faster absence notifications to parents and guardians personal devices.
• Digital student academic reports.
• Improved administrative efficiency for schools through automated workflows including financial reporting, board reports, student wellbeing, payments and receipts and asset management. This will enable less time spent on administration and greater focus on the classroom.

“This system builds on the successful digital services already available in Canberra Public Schools including world leading high speed internet and the implementation of Google Apps for Education. This program will underpin the digital service transformation of our Canberra Public Schools and enhance the partnerships between home and school.

“The system development is anticipated to commence from early 2017 and be implemented across schools over a three year period.”

[Photo by User:Jicib121212 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32173594]