Teachers need content management systems, too

The Guardian has an article today called “Teachers and parents criticise ‘robotic’ software-generated school reports“. It explains teachers are finding report writing software isn’t meeting their needs:

“It often frustrated as none of the options would quite capture what he wanted to say about a child and the end product was never satisfactory.”

It states, as an alternative, some teachers have a comment bank, which they use to cut and past into school reports. One teacher said

“I’ve got a bank of literary comments, maths comments and general comments. You can pick one that sounds about right, whip it out and plonk it in.”

A better solution might be a content management system that could contain a single-sourced comment bank, templates and some advice of what to write where.

As the spokesman for the National Association for Head Teachers said:

“Headteachers invest a lot of time and effort into making sure this happens. Technology can help that process but it should never get in the way of a truly personal report for each and every child in the school.”

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