NSW high school administrators will face an anxious two-year wait for the already long-overdue arrival of the state's new finance and student admin education platforms.
Last week, the NSW Education Department provided the new dates of the learning management business reform (LMBR) project to teachers and staff. The Department had previously refused to give a timeline for the implementation.
The LMBR project replaced legacy finance, human resources, payroll and student administration systems across the department, TAFEs and 2,230 public schools.
The student administration and learning management (SALM) will begin for the majority of primary schools in Term 2 of 2016. High schools will follow in September 2017.
However, the department will need to finalise configuration and testing of the HR/payroll solution before it is formally deployed.
A spokesperson for NSW Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli, told iT News the rollout would be split between primary and secondary schools for “operational reasons”. The spokesperson declined to elaborate.
In September, NSW Premier, Mike Baird, told state parliament that the remainder of the LMBR project was expected to be implemented throughout 2016.
"The LMBR project has had its challenges – we acknowledge that," Baird said.
"Obviously this is a significant program that brings its own complexities. It is not an easy project to roll out, but we are doing everything we can to get it out as quickly as possible to make as much difference as we can to the schools in this state."
The LMBR project was scheduled to be delivered over eight years at a cost of $386m.
However, the current estimated cost of the project is $579m – almost $200m over its original budget. The department is expected to ask for more funding from the state government to finish the project.