Nunavut installs new online system to track school attendance

Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak, at right, defends the policies of Nunavut’s education department in the Nunavut legislature’s committee of the whole last March with her deputy minister, Kathy Okpik. (FILE PHOTO)

Starting this year, teachers in Nunavut will have to learn how to use a new computer program to track attendance.

A new “student information system,” called Maplewood, will now record all attendance records on one database.

And all 43 schools in Nunavut must use this system during the course of this school year.

The goal is to offer the Government of Nunavut and its education department better information about attendance trends.

The new information system will “much more adequately track attendance and we will be able to report much better on it,” Kathy Okpik,the deputy minister of education, said during the March 2013 sitting of the Legislative Assembly in front of the Committee of the Whole.

“There has to be a good tie between parents, the school, and DEA’s [department education authorities] to work on this really big issue of attendance for us,” Okpik said.

That is, however, if teachers get the hang of using it in time.

Because the system is new to many, hiccups will be inevitable, said the principal of Arctic Bay’s Innujaq School Adbus Salam.

“There will be a lot of problems at the beginning, because the teachers need to practice,” Salam told Nunatsiaq News.

“It’s not that simple, you need actually practicing and you need to understand it and you need to get into it,” Salam said.

Salam said a day-and-a-half of administrators received training on the new system last fall, but the staff at Innujaq still need more practice.

“It’s not going to be any problem — it’s just getting used to it. That’s it,” Salam said. “But it’s a good system.”

The new Maplewood system can also track progress, and teachers can grade and write report cards on the system.

Parents and students will also eventually “view attendance, mark[s], and historical achievement of their children” from their own home according to the website.

That won’t be until after this year though, said Donald Mearns, director of assessment at the GN’s education department.

“At the moment we have to make sure it’s all working in the schools. We have to pilot and test the system as it is,” Mearns said.

While this year the main focus is working the program for attendance and registration purposes, parental engagement is what Mearns eventually wants to see happen with the new system.

“If parents could see actually how the kids are doing on a day to day basis, it’s going to build strong ties between parents and the school,” Mearns said.

And while Mearns admits it’s “never 100 per cent smooth sailing,” he said feedback from the teachers has been good.

“We had reports from a number of different schools where teachers applauded they were so happy with the system,” Mearns said.

The system is available to everyone who has an Internet connection as you sign in on Maplewood’s website.

You can try out the system in a demonstration version, after filling out some information, here.

Jurisdictions that currently use the Maplewood system include Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, St. Lucia in the Caribbean and now Nunavut.

Mearns said it cost the government of Nunavut $220,000 to switch over to the new system, and another $72,000 for hosting and maintenance contracts. And it cost $129,450 for travel costs to train staff in each community.

But Mearns said this is good bang for buck.

“This is substantially below all the other systems we saw in price. Some ranged from over a million dollars,” Mearns said.

“The choice of this system was picked because this system could work in all the languages that we needed within Nunavut,” Mearns said.

That includes Inuktitut, French and English.

And Mearns said that all data put into the system will be recorded on Maplewood’s backup servers in the South, so no data will ever be lost.