A growing number of senior students in Queensland schools are now moving online to prepare and manage their Senior Education and Training (SET) Plans says Concord Australia’s Senior Consultant for Online Education, Maree McFarlane.
SET Plans are designed to help students plan their learning through the later years of school education and are a critical component in the Senior Phase of Learning in Queensland. Students formulate their first SET Plan in Year 10 and then modify and upgrade it through Years 11 and 12. Along with their parents or carers, they meet with school advisors and teachers to work through plans, which are reviewed from time to time with their progress monitored.
In the average school this translates to 500 new SET Plans per academic year or 1,500 SET Plans over any three year cycle - and they all have to be managed!
McFarlane said, “Schools are finding it much easier to oversee student SET Plan requirements in a Web 2.0 environment using Concord scioware™. Coordinators, Career Advisors and teachers find it easier to monitor where students are up to in completing their requirements, students find it easy to complete their SET Plans and parents acknowledge the value of reviewing SET Plans with their children from the comfort of their lounge room.”
“In working with Career Advisors assisting students with their SET Plans, it became clear to us that we needed to deliver on three key criteria. Firstly we needed to make sure the scioware™ SET Plan solution was a purpose built solution and not simply try to adapt an existing product as a piecemeal offering. We then needed to eliminate the administrative workload and nightmare task of managing paper-based plans at both the school and individual level. And lastly we needed to facilitate student, parent and teacher collaboration in the planning and review processes, in an online "anywhere, anytime" environment. I am very confident we have delivered on all these criteria in the first release”, said McFarlane, who has worked closely with pilot schools since 2006.
Concord can offer online demonstrations of the scioware™ SET Plan solution to interested schools on request.