Anglo Singapore
International School

Anglo Singapore International School aims to better prepare students to meet the changing national and global needs of the 21st century.

Focus is on educating students in the core areas of literacy, numeracy and science to provide a strong foundation for future learning. Our WCBS school management information system (MIS) is giving us the data management and communication facilities we need to run our international school
in the best possible way.

Contents

Life at Anglo Singapore

Our student body is primarily international with about 30 nationalities consisting of Singaporean, British, American, German, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, South African, Taiwanese, Dutch, Irish and Thai. We try to adapt to their native languages when it’s appropriate but, as an English medium international school, the vast majority of learning is in English.

We believe we combine the best of two worlds in our teaching and learning. Our children follow the National Curriculum of England combined with the Singapore curriculum at kindergarten and the Singapore curriculum for the primary years. Our high school students study towards IGCSEs using a combination of the British and Singapore curricula. Students at our junior college study for UK A Levels through an adapted Singapore curriculum.

Managing our school’s data

When we opened the school, we created our own data tracking system to meet the requirements of our different curricula, assessments and qualifications. There was no coordinated approach to the management of data so when we looked for information relating to a student, it was very hard to find. As the school expanded, it became evident that we needed a much better system for documenting our students and their progress. All records needed to be in one place for the effective running of day to day operations and for tracking performance. We started looking at MIS, considering local and international vendors.

We found that WCBS provided a system that could meet our needs. Support was available from them 24 hours a day and we felt the opportunities WCBS could give us for flexibility and for working with us to develop an MIS was right for our school.

“As the school expanded, it became evident that we needed a much better system for documenting our students and their progress.”

Implementing a new MIS

Launching our new MIS of course had some teething problems, as we expected. Naturally, not all of our teachers were enthusiastic; it was a new way of doing things and some people don’t like change. Everyone received training to help them through the transition.

Now 100% of our teaching staff, and nearly all of our administrators are inputting or accessing data and information into the MIS and are appreciating the benefits; to them and their time, and to the students. Once they are competent with the MIS, teachers realise that putting all the data into one central system means they can see the big picture of each student, of their class, of their year, and even of the school. It helps them to see a child’s learning progress and what steps they need to take next.

Using our MIS is now compulsory for everyone in the school. We have always had very accessible consultation with WCBS support staff. This was especially crucial during our early implementation because it reassured the staff; giving them a sense of comfort that support was there for them when they needed it. This built a very positive relationship between the school and WCBS.

Without the support team, I don’t think we would have reached the level of competency and progress that we’ve achieved at this point in time. Whenever we have encountered a problem that we couldn’t handle ourselves, we turn to WCBS and get help very quickly. The support continues to be extremely responsive.

Achieving what we wanted: tracking student performance

Has the system helped us to improve our tracking of student performance? It’s definitely helped us. All data on a student (from their learning progress, to their attendance, to their medical details), is now input into the MIS and used in a wide range of ways.

It’s helped us to achieve a much better understanding of each student’s learning progress. Through the WCBS Markbook programme, we have access to advanced calculations which produce detailed analysis of each student, plus provide a common assessment across the school, at the touch of a button.

Our teachers can now see at a glance if a child is making improvements, areas they need to revisit, and where the teacher needs to modify the learning. In that sense, teachers can effectively monitor their students’ learning and see how they can deliver the necessary support. It also enables us to view a student’s reports and assessments which is particularly valuable for new teachers, and for making sure report feedback correlates to previous reports.

Data integration across multiple school campuses

Having the ability to directly import data to and from the applications that we find of value is very important to ensure that our one data source is always current and accurate. We have been able to integrate several of our preferred data applications, such as our library system, our CCA sign-up system for extracurricular activities, and our parent-teacher meeting system into our MIS.

Parents can now simply log into the school portal, identify their child’s teachers easily, and book meetings available to them at a time that best suits them. We have also successfully integrated an attendance card reader system and, as we identify new and valuable classroom and administration apps, we work with our support team to integrate them.

WCBS always welcomes new reputable technology. One example is our recent addition of Firefly. We are very happy that Firefly and WCBS will work together; that integration between two good suppliers is important.

We are 110% sure that our system is able to work to our school’s specific needs; that includes across multiple campuses. Whatever we do on the main school campus, we are able to implement and integrate on the other two campuses. Our Database Manager is able to see what is going on across the system within all our campuses. We monitor this as frequently as we can to ensure everyone is following the same processes and functioning well.

Parent Communication within the bilingual MIS

We are in an age when schools must strive to be digital in their services and our MIS is helping us to reach our parents that way using the school portal.

Through this parent portal, we can communicate news, invitations, and instructions quickly and easily, and also give our parents access to live data and analysis on their child. Before having access to the portal, our parents would not have a clue how their child was doing until they met with the teacher. Now this information is available to them at any time and anywhere, through their login on any online device.

Our parents now have access to a wide range of information that relates to their child. They can easily view their child’s timetables and school reports. Before a meeting with the teacher, parents are able to see their child’s grades which helps them to plan questions and aspects of their child’s learning that they want to discuss. They can email a teacher at any time, select what extra-curricular activities their child wants to participate in, sign up for teacher meetings, all by simply logging in.

“Before a meeting with the teacher, parents are able to see their child’s grades which helps them to plan questions and aspects of their child’s learning that they want to discuss.”

They also access our schoolwide announcements this way, including urgent messages. In these cases, they receive an SMS text message telling them to go to the portal right away. Many are also non-English speakers but as the MIS has Chinese translation 30% of our Chinese parents are logging into our portal in Chinese; the rest of our parents are doing so in English.

Improving School Administration

In all areas of school life, our MIS is supporting us. In terms of leadership, we frequently consult the system to give us the basis that we need to make informed decisions. It provides the internal analysis necessary to reassure the senior leadership team that we’re making sound decisions.

We are using the data now available to us to inform our targeting, and to benchmark by comparing with previous years, which helps our planning. We do the same with our children’s’ scores from the previous year to the current year; and against global standards, to assess how we are doing in key phase examinations. It helps us to quickly see where there is a weakness and what we need to do.

Our system enables us to see detailed demographics of our students and where our new admissions are coming from. This helps us to adapt our marketing and admissions strategy for the future. We have integrated a risk management system and are currently developing a system to record and analyse the progress of our staff from the day we hire them. Our next data development project is to track student travel; which street their bus is on, how far away from home they are. This will be a very useful tool for parents. In many ways, our MIS is helping us to look towards future growth of the school.

WCBS has given us a tool that has inspired us to collect and use data for the right reasons. This couldn’t have been done without the right sort of MIS. All the new data projects that we are considering, we’re able to move forward with, because of our system.

What to look for in an MIS

We have discovered that one of the most important features of our MIS is that it is user‐friendly because not all teachers and administrators are tech savvy. Every process is well guided and, being intuitive, can be quickly embraced by most people.

Having access to enough skilled, friendly and responsive support staff who are always there when we need them is very, very important too. Our day‐to‐day management of the system becomes smooth and productive because of the help from the WCBS team.

An essential factor is security of all data. Using a reputable brand like WCBS who specialises in the complex and very sensitive area of MIS has given us confidence that our data is as secure as it can be. Our system enables the security to be set at different access levels for different users. And we regularly thoroughly test it, giving us the confidence that our data is well protected.

Another crucial aspect of using an external and reputable specialist MIS provider is that we have a system that we can trust and is sustainable, regardless of changes in our own technical staff. If we had built and managed our own system internally, and that person who built it leaves us, then we would be faced with a huge challenge to know and maintain the functionality.

Flexibility is also a big advantage of the system that we have. We had very complex needs from the start, which required a lot of computations away from a standard format. During our early discussions, we could tell that WCBS was willing to work with our specific needs and very quickly, we were able to see how flexible their system could be. It reassured us that our particular requirements could be accommodated.

International School MIS must haves:

• Make sure that the system you choose can be customised. As an international school, we have unique practices and it’s important to be able to adapt for how you want to use it.
• Ease of use is essential. Your system must be user friendly for all staff, regardless of their technology skills.
• You need to be able to control the access of data by different people.
• Support from your MIS provider needs to be accessible and openminded so that you can work together to achieve solutions. We take a team approach with WCBS regarding support and that is very beneficial.
• Contact WCBS! We know that we can trust them, not only in helping us to create a system that’s absolutely right for our school, but also in the ongoing support that they are able to give us.