Managing all the critical data associated with running an educational institution can be a stressful, overwhelming responsibility, but with a streamlined approach that puts important details at the fingertips of school leadership and educators, parents, students and support staff benefit too.
Dale Brown is the product manager with Posimente – a leading remote accessible software platform that enables school leadership and well-being teams to automate the management and monitoring of well-being, concerns, risks, actions and outcomes, by offering streamlined management of critical school data within the global giant, Salesforce.
“We particularly want to help enable organisations who are in the ‘for purpose’ sector,” he says.
The business name comes from the words ‘positive’ and ‘mentality’, with Brown telling EducationDaily that they want to bring “a positive mentality to seeing social good happen”.
Brown spoke with EducationDaily to explain the many ways their education sector specific tool, Posi-Ed can help school communities become more agile – and safer.
A digital layer of management support
Brown describes Posi-Ed as a student management system with a range of workflows designed to reduce the burden on teachers and school administration staff.
He says the product will enable a school to not only know important information about the student, but also empower them to work out what the best possible next steps should be – and take them automatically in a way that “will help the school care for all of their students”.
Brown told EducationDaily schools need to ensure they are dealing with meeting compliance regulations, as well as the critical responsibility of student well-being and duty of care – and says having a reliable, effective and efficient, data management system that ticks all the boxes is more important than ever.
Data security, he says, is also a “really important thing right now”, which means schools need to have robust systems in place to protect their valuable data.
“Data is a really powerful tool,” Brown says.
“If you have the right data and you use it in the right ways, you can have a really positive impact and a really positive outcome that you can achieve.”
The pressure of the modern school environment
For schools that don’t get right, Brown says a lot of things – “and really big things” – can go wrong.
“Students are under more pressure than they ever have been before,” Brown says, adding that the stress is reflected in the plethora of media reports about the issues they face in everyday life – everything from social media bullying, to mental health struggles and exam pressures.
“A school really is an important influencer on teenagers’ and children’s lives and so they need to know what’s going on with those students,” he says.
For parents, who are handing over their treasured children to the care of schools, Brown told EducationDaily the expectation is that “the school needs to do a really good job of looking after them”.
With Posi-Ed’s ability to put real-time data at the fingertips of those who need to understand where students are at – physically, emotionally and academically – Brown says the tool helps schools not only focus on the kids who are either at the top or bottom band of classroom behaviour and success, but also help look after the needs of all those students in the middle.
He acknowledges that the responsibility of managing stressed students places a huge burden on teachers who he says are currently leaving the profession in droves because of issues around burn-out.
“So, if we’re able to relieve some of that pressure, by a system that’s working really efficiently, then we can enable teachers to love what they do and actually do a better job of teaching.”
