Barnet College leads FE sector with DRS e-Registration system
Barnet College offers students the opportunity to make the most of their abilities, whether they want to improve GCSE grades, study academic subjects at A level or take on more practical learning for vocational qualifications.
Demonstrating success
The College has earned a reputation for advancing students and has achieved success rates of 81 percent. Barnet College’s range of vocational courses is impressive and long-established - ranging from beauty therapy and hairdressing to construction, childcare, engineering, sport and business. Almost 200 students aged 14-16 are also taking courses at the College as part of plans to extend vocational learning opportunities.
One of the College’s great strengths is the support it offers to students to help them to succeed, but students are treated like adults and are expected to have self-discipline, be responsible for their own studies and to put in the considerable amount of work necessary to pass their course. It is therefore vital that the college is able to monitor attendance data accurately, and in real-time.
Inaccurate and untimely data
Barnet College’s previous registration system was based on manual registers being input by seven full time equivalent administrative staff. This was not only time consuming and costly but also led to inaccurate data. The College was experiencing problems keeping registration data up-to-date and college staff often had inadequate time and resource to follow up on attendance issues immediately and as a result of this, the whereabouts of students’ attendance was not always readily available.
As a result, Barnet College decided to take steps to dramatically improve its registration and attendance system to ensure it has clean, instant, accurate and consistent data that monitors student whereabouts and helps to combat unplanned absences. The College also wanted to allow students to take responsibility and accountability for their own attendance.
The IntelliReg® solution
Following a successful trial with two departments within the College, leading education technology provider, DRS was contracted to deliver its e-Registration and access control solution, IntelliReg®, in three of Barnet College’s campuses – a first across the Further Education sector.
DRS IntelliReg® is an e-Registration and access control solution, which electronically records the presence, absence or lateness of students – in real-time. With IntelliReg® registration software, students use their card, fingertip or a PIN to register. All readers are in constant communication with the controlling PC, delivering real time information, necessary for managing registration and attendance accurately and efficiently. Each registration contains the date, time and reader ID to determine the whereabouts of students at any given time. Barnet College decided to use proximity cards to allow students to take responsibility for their own attendance.
The College chose DRS IntelliReg® because it fulfilled all specifications and was competitively positioned in the market. IntelliReg® also seamlessly interfaces with Barnet College’s MIS, which was of huge importance, as it provides real time updates of data for accurate attendance monitoring whilst saving teaching and administrative time.
The future
Barnet College has been so impressed with DRS IntelliReg® that it is considering using the solution for other applications. The College is already using the solution for access control and is currently looking into cashless catering. IntelliReg® can also be expanded to be combined with smart copiers, library systems and SMS to students, examination candidate verification, staff attendance and more.
Tracey McIntosh, director of planning and performance at Barnet College, explains:
“I chose to update our register system to ensure accuracy of student attendance and to process the large volume of EMA payments from our central data entry system. The DRS e-Registration system not only provides us with clean, instant, accurate and consistent data but also enables us to utilise our resources more efficiently.”
“The DRS team went out of their way to find solutions to issues individual to Barnet College whilst still delivering on time.”
Great results
The IntelliReg® system now captures approximately 27,000 marks a week from a weekly total of 39,000 from 6,200 students. A total of nine departments are currently using the system.
Tracey McIntosh said: “As a result of the e-Registration system we have streamlined the process of registering students, doing away with manual recording with all its problems of accuracy and timeliness, and tutors are able to concentrate on delivering teaching rather than spending time collecting attendances.”
“Monitoring student attendance is more efficient since the information is up to date. We are now able to make rapid assessments of attendance and follow-up accordingly to punctuality issues with absence management.”