As Victoria and NSW prepare to close schools, new data has revealed a staggering drop in student attendance nationwide.
The data from school management system Compass Education, which is used across more than 1,800 schools in Australia, found that one in four students have missed school in the past week. Three weeks ago, that number was one in ten.
“This increased usage has aligned with national student absence trends which have seen over one in four students not attending school as of Friday,” Compass CEO John de la Motte said.
“In light of this offsite usage, we continue to recommend that schools consider two-factor-authentication for staff accounts”
De la Motte said there has also been a substantial rise in parent and student communications by email, SMS and through the Compass mobile app as schools continue to ensure their school communities are kept up to date.
“While most schools have already enabled parent communication and the portal within Compass, we have received some questions from schools wishing to enable this functionality,” he said.
“The parent portal and Compass mobile apps are available to all Compass schools at no additional cost”.
To assist any schools who may not have all of Compass’ learning management, online work submission, school resource management or SMS/Bulk Message tools, the company has made the decision to allow schools to enable these at no cost for the next three months.
“Existing schools, without these modules, can email our support team and we will enable these for you, on the spot, free for three months,” he said.
“We understand that schools are at different stages of their implementation of online delivery, reporting, assessment and communication. In light of increased demand from non-Compass schools, we have established a team to assist schools who wish to do a rapid implementation of Compass,” de la Motte said.
“From Monday 23 March, new schools wishing to implement Compass will be able to sign up for a three-month licence at no cost. We have also removed our implementation and training fees, during this time, to allow schools to get online faster.”