A digital tool to help track a child’s progress through school has helped staff and parents at St Joseph’s School and on Thursday, March 5, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School was the first in the UK to be awarded National EdTech accreditation.

St Joseph’s was presented with a certificate marking the ‘Kinteract Innovator Award’ for commitment to innovation in education technology.

The award recognises the school’s ability to use advanced digital tools to effectively record a child’s achievements, individually monitor and evaluate learning and provide feedback to parents. As a result, there has been a knock-on effect of also reducing teacher workload.

Shehzad Najib, CEO of Kinteract said, “Despite the investment going into EdTech only 3% of the market is currently digitised. Kinteract wanted to officially recognise schools which have integrated technology within their assessment process, and taken steps to share their experience with other schools, with a special ‘Innovator’ status. We are delighted to present St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School with the first award in the country.”

According to Deputy Head Alison Murray, “Using Kinteract as our assessment system has allowed us to measure the implementation and impact of the curriculum we are teaching at St Joseph’s. The Kinteract app allows our Nursery and Primary school staff to immediately record observations of individual pupils and groups of pupils across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, the National Curriculum and Catholic Education Services Age Related Standards in Religious Education.

“The app also allows parents to view the progress their child is making rather than only seeing work during parent consultations. Parents are able to respond to these observations, giving them a greater link to their child’s education.

“Recorded observations support staff when making summative assessments. The reporting system allows senior management to monitor attainment and progress from Nursery to Year 6 by year group and by groups of pupils, identifying positive results and any areas that require improvement”.

Year five and six teacher Rhys Gunter commented, “Using Kinteract has been great to track and assess a child’s progression in class. It has saved me a lot of time when uploading national curriculum objectives a child has met by grouping children together. The graphs produced, after assessment data has been uploaded, are clear and show where the class are at for meeting objectives”.