Choosing the right EdTech strategy for schools in Africa

Education Horizons has been working across Africa for many years now, and its solutions are found in many leading schools there. Our knowledge of the region has informed us that there are several critical requirements identified by African schools when selecting a management information system, including:

• reporting;
• notifications;
• communication;
• creating a single source for all information;
• accessing data anytime and anywhere.

A school information management system should streamline your school operations and overcome your pain points by offering:

• meaningful, accurate and timely reports on all students and their progress;
• staff portal newsfeed and key student notifications, such as absences and incidents, in real-time;
• strong communications channels and a multilingual system that empowers staff, parents and students;
• a single source of truth – one powerful system driving your admissions, academics, performance assessment, reporting, administration and finance, all in one place;
• insightful reporting on a range of visual, interactive dashboards that show real-time information in an easily digested format.

Our Engage school MIS platform can offer all these features and more. Many alternates either cannot match these capabilities and/or need to integrate a complex assembly of separate software packages from multiple suppliers.

How do you choose the right EdTech strategy?

To ensure you choose the most efficient strategy for your school, ask what problems need to be solved and which functions your EdTech needs to perform. Without a strategy, your school may ultimately invest in the wrong solutions. Here are key pointers to consider in your planning:

Identify your goals

• Define what it is you want to achieve with your school management, information or learning system.
  • Is it to centralise your reporting and quickly surface the reports that matter to your school?
  • Are you wanting to improve your communication and engagement between teachers, parents and students?
  • Do you want to have a system that makes planning lessons easier?
  • Would it be more efficient to have one system to operate the whole school from?
• Think about how your edtech strategy can align with the school’s vision, mission and strategic goals.
• Consider where your education technology fits in with supporting students, educators and your wider community.
• In addition to human-focused goals, you should also consider how you manage and maintain school property and assets.
  • Your EdTech strategy may need to include a school asset management platform or property information software.

By defining and setting goals, you ensure a clear purpose for selecting and implementing an EdTech solution and will keep your focus on the features or tools that you need to achieve your goals.

Identify objectives around your use of school data

How can you use your school data to its full potential? Are you only using a small percentage of your data to make decisions? Is school data viewed in isolation and not cohesively to continually provide an overview of each student’s wellbeing and academic performance?

By building the desired outcomes of the project, you can then select the right solution.

Expected benefits should include:

• automating processes to improve efficiencies, enabling teachers to spend more time focusing on activities that positively impact students’ learning and wellbeing progress;
• analysis of your wealth of data to gain insights and support more informed decisions.

You should expect any system you use to be able to offer real-time dashboards and reports that enable evidence-based interactions between teachers, parents and students.

Future proof your school

As you build your EdTech strategy, consider the future growth of the school and consider what features you will need to support that growth. Search for a system that can stretch and adapt to future needs and avoid those that might limit your plans.

Schools typically work as a complex network of interdependent departments and individuals who all need to interact with each other. Any EdTech product you choose should enable, support and complement your school’s vital ecosystem, even as it is growing or adapting to unforeseen new demands.

Prioritise digital security

Cybercrime presents a real threat to any school community; an EdTech strategy must prioritise data security. By partnering with an experienced EdTech provider like Education Horizons, you can be assured that we are committed to helping African schools maintain their data security.

More information on data security can be found in our blog: 6 tips to ensure your school’s data remains protected.

Select a single source of truth

Placing one single platform at the centre of your EdTech strategy can reduce complexity, save time and prevent difficulties in managing multiple platforms and complex vendor relationships. An excellent School Management System (SMS) can act as your single source of truth and provide a core database that manages complex family dynamics and hosts current, future and historical data that you can access when you need it most. Why have multiple systems that don’t integrate when you can have one solution to solve your school problems?

Start your journey to success today

The Education Horizons team is experienced in helping schools in Africa with their Ed-Tech strategy and streamlining school management for success.

Please speak to one of our experts about your plans for technology or to arrange a demonstration of our Engage MIS and other solutions. Call us on +44 1935 403 020 or +61 1800 498 642, or email sales@educationhorizons.com