All government subsidized schools on St. Maarten will soon have a digital Student Tracking System to record and manage the data of all their students and track their development and progress from the time they are registered until they leave the school system.
The school board representatives on both Primary and Secondary level, that are presently without a digital student tracking system, have all signed off to have this system implemented in their schools.
The program will also be made available to the new SBO school in Cay Hill that will soon be operational.
This project is part of the Project Plans for the Innovations in Education and has been realized through the team effort of various Ministries within the Government of St. Maarten.
The Division for Educational Innovation, a Division of the Ministry for Education, Culture, Youth and Sports along with the assistance of the Department for Interior and Kingdom Relations and the I.T. Department within the Ministry for General Affairs, were able to contract a vendor who will supply all government subsidized schools with the Schoolfit student tracking system.
This system is not new to St. Maarten as it has been operational in the Secondary schools of the Milton Peters College and the Sundial School for the past few years.
Presently a pilot project is being implemented at the M.G. de Weever school and the Sr. Magda Primary school. The pilot is being coordinated by Ms. Caren Matthew from the I.T. Department who is assisting the Division of Educational Innovation with the roll-out of the system in the selected pilot schools.
After the program has been fully operational in these two schools by the end of June 2013, it will also be rolled out in the other Primary schools as well those on the Secondary level and the SBO school , which are presently without a digital student tracking system.
During the month of January 2013 the staff of the both pilot schools, were introduced to the system via a familiarization sessions whereby they were shown how to capture and record data of their students.
Since then the Education Department and the other Divisions within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports have been meeting with Ms. Matthew from the Dept. of I.T. and the representatives from the Division for Educational Innovations. These meetings are to work out the various features of the tracking system that will be customized by the vendor to the Education system on St. Maarten.
Assistance has also been sought from the various school board representatives of the government subsidized schools, for their input in this process. As the project moves on, the various school managers and their staff will be approached, for their assistance when needed.
The Division for Educational Innovation will organize trainings for school managers, office administrators, teachers and support staff to efficiently and effectively use the system.
At the end of the roll-out of the student tracking system, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports will be able to capture the much needed data from the schools and their student population. This data will be uploaded into the Educational Management Information System (EMIS).
Some of the other benefits of this program are:
– Teachers will record attendance and input students grades and other data into the system
– Report cards and other educational reports will be generated from the system
– Parents will have access to view the progress of their children at school
– School boards and School managers will have a better over view of the performance of the students enrolled in their schools
The funding for this project is made possible through USONA from the Dutch Funding agreements between the Government of St. Maarten and the Netherlands.