The past-president of the Prince George District Teachers Association is welcoming news that the Ministry of Education is scrapping the B.C. Enterprise Student Information System.
Matt Pearce said that the current web-based system, used by teachers for such tasks as updating report cards, was slow and cumbersome and was prone to crashes or was unavailable for teachers trying to log on to the system during peak times.
"It simply could not do what it was designed to do, which was have 40,000 or 50,000 users online using it at the same time," said Pearce. "It was very frustrating to be asked to meet the deadlines of your employer and being given a tool that won't allow you to do that."
The BCESIS system, which gives teachers and administrators access to information of student performance, demographics and contact information, was also criticized because it made student timetable changes difficult and was slow to implement student transfers.
Pearce said the system was not tested sufficiently before it was presented to schools and the Prince George district was too quick on the draw when it bought into BCESIS in the second wave after it was first unveiled in B.C. in 2003. He's convinced the district could have saved significant administrative salary costs if it had chosen an alternate system, as did the Delta and Surrey school districts. BCESIS has cost the province $80 million.
"At one point we had two full-time administrators helping to train people in the program and each one of them would be [earning] $100,000 apiece," said Pearce. "That was in addition to all the CUPE staff and all of our staff who took many hours just to get trained."
In its place, the ministry has chosen Follet Corporation's Aspen student information system to replace BCESIS and has hired Fujitsu Consulting of Canada to implement the change provincewide by 2015. The initial introduction will come to some schools in 2014.
The Aspen system is now used in 14 U.S. states and the United Kingdom, serving more than one million students. It promises significant improvements in service and functionality over the existing BCESIS system with features that will encourage individual student learning. It will have a secure web-based portal for parents and students that will continually track of student progress and provide a direct link to teachers.
According to the ministry, the requirements for the system were determined after consultation with teachers, counselors, district staff and administrators, principals and vice-principals and technologists. However, Pearce said no Prince George teachers were part of that fact-finding mission.
"They're touting this new one as having a million users, that's only a small slice of the educational pie in the U.S." he said. "I wouldn't call that a proven application. It won't shock teachers that we've adopted something that has a new set of problems."
