Staffroom has been capturing the hearts of educators since 2009. We aim to keep our clients happy and make their schooling career a little less stressful. We love working in education and solving our school clients’ problems. 

At Staffroom we made sure that the features and the support we offer adds value to your school.  We actively and constantly think about how to use technology for the real practical benefits it can bring educators, parents and students.  

We spoke to some of our clients about how Staffroom has changed the way they do things, here is what they had to say: 

What have you been able to achieve since using our Staffroom? 

At Claremont High School, Alex the System Administrator says that they have centralised their marksheet from all the subjects. The educators at Claremont High School are able to access marksheets when they are not at school, unlike pre-Staffroom when they had Staffroom on a networked drive which required them being in the building. Their absentees system is now simplified and digitised. They have been able to keep records in the ‘journal’ function for each student and have access to parent information in a few clicks. 

If you had to choose one, what would your favourite feature of Staffroom be? 

The ease of editing and altering marksheets impresses Alex from Claremont High School and the fact that parents can track learners academic records throughout the term while being provided with a solid communication platform is what impresses Hendry from Fairmont High School. 

“I have found Staffroom to be a proficient means of collating, storing and retrieving sensitive information about our students. All the information is in one place and is easy to manage.” – Jacqui @The Academy 

How would you rate our customer support service and why? 

We have got feedback from Alex to say that the support that they receive at Claremont High School is excellent and Shane and his team are ALWAYS willing to help when he calls for assistance.  

“A big positive for me, is their excellent support channel with quick feedback and continuous development.” – Hendry @Fairmont High School 

Jacqui from The Academy says that the staff are efficient and always willing to go the extra mile for queries. They do not let your query become closed until you are totally satisfied that it has been solved. The support team is also open to hearing about recommendations that would make using the system easier. 

Anything that comes to mind when you think about staffroom? 

For Alex it is the efficiency of the support team and for Hendry it is the fact that Staffroom is an admin-saver enabling them to interact any device, anywhere, to get the job done. 

I would recommend them to any school looking for a school administrative system” – Jacqui @The Academy 

What we love? 

We love Staffroom because of how it’s encouraging South African schools to move forward into the 4^th industrial revolution. Staffroom enables schools to better communicate with parents and students.  

Our Staffroom support consultant Ntombi enjoys working on the Assess Module, specifically the Report design requests that clients send through. It’s quite challenging sometimes but the finished work is satisfying. 

When clients have been assisted and they respond back with appreciation, especially during the hectic end of term buzz, the job done feels worth it. 

We love our job because it allows us to be in the forefront of migrating schools into the new era of the digital world. Teaching and equipping schools with the skills to perform their activities more effectively, making it easy for educators to focus on the core duties of teaching. 

We also love our morning coffees, hot pizza, sea breezes and sunny Saturdays. 

This review was supplied by our loyal clients who we appreciate dearly. Want to learn how you too can benefit from using Staffroom as a school administrative system? Reach out to our friendly sales and services teams today for an obligation-free demonstration. 

“Staffroom has let Bergvliet High School operate as a modern school by securely centralising our school’s administration needs. From absenteeism to mark input to serving as a hub for generating MS Teams classes, Staffroom has eased the administrative burden of the school over the last almost 8 years of use. Staff no longer need to contact the front office or another member of the admin staff to find out a parent’s contact details for example and the Journal feature also allows secured and important information about a learner to be stored in one centralised place.

My personal favourite feature of Staffroom would probably be the integrated SMS functionality, as it has let the school communicate information quickly and easily to parents without needing to make use of the actual SMS provider’s somewhat arcane web interface. That was a big administrative burden lifted, as well, once that integration was enabled.

The Service

Customer service has always been good at Staffroom, as answers to initial queries usually come pretty quickly and if the first line support team members can’t solve the issue, it’s escalated to the core developers who then usually fix the issue. Although we haven’t needed onsite training from Staffroom in many years when training was required it was performed well. On the billing side of things, things have always run smoothly and we have had no billing hassles over the years. The first line team support staff such as Shane, Dimpho and Thembisa have always been friendly over the phone and have answered our queries, even to some of the sometimes sillier issues or requests we have had.

The Software

What comes to mind most when I think of Staffroom is that it is a piece of software that has become a very necessary tool in the arsenal needed to keep a modern school running. We have appreciated the measured pace of introducing new features as a sign that Staffroom isn’t just rushing to cram in new features but that a lot of thought goes first into developing and testing new features before they are deployed. This has also led to a very stable platform that rarely has technical issues anymore and as such can generally be relied upon in a school context.

It also feels good to support a local Cape Town born and bred software company that actually understands the complexities and vagaries of the South African education market vs an international company that has no idea about the difference between CEMIS and LURITS for example.”

This review was supplied by the System Administrator, Craig,  at Bergvliet High School.

Want to learn how you too can benefit from using Staffroom as a school administrative system? Reach out to our friendly sales and services teams today for an obligation-free demonstration.

Your school has the control!

The uncertainty of our school year has affected so many schools and educators. Early school closures, rotating students, catching up on curricular outcomes…It becomes challenging for parents, teachers and learners. During these times Staffroom is here to help you. With our dedicated support team and developers, we are always trying to improve your teaching experience. Staffroom offers a variety of features, but we would like to highlight our InTouch portal to help make communication a little more easier.

Communicate with Parents and Caregivers

Staffroom’s InTouch module is used for communicating with school staff, as well as people who are external to the school such as parents and caregivers.  InTouch allows you to send emails or SMSes to groups of people that Staffroom knows about e.g., all parents of students in a particular grade, all the school staff, or the parents of absent students.  

All emails and SMSes that are sent using the Staffroom InTouch module are visible on the student records in the Staffroom Infobase module.

The InTouch portal is a website that students and parents can use to see information about their family and school.

Share With Parents and Students

Schools can use the portal to share useful information with families about their children and about activities at the school.  Your school can use the InTouch portal as a convenient way to help keep parents and students up to date with a variety of information, including:

• School announcements
• Upcoming events
• Calendar and timetable information
• Student & family contact information
• Student journals
• Correspondence sent to the family
• Homework tasks
• Attendance records
• Assessment marks
• Student behaviour
• Copies of term reports

The InTouch portal is a separate website from a school’s Staffroom site and a school can control what information they wish to share with their parents and students on the portal. Each school’s InTouch portal is separate from other schools and is accessed via its own web address (URL) like a school’s Staffroom site.  Schools are also able to do some simple branding of their InTouch portal site so that their school’s portal reflects the colour and logo of the school.

Targeted Information for Families

The information that family members see on the InTouch portal is tailored to their family:

• Parents only see information about their children
• Parents only see announcements and events for grades, classes, and groups that their children participate in
• Students only see events and information for grades, classes and groups that they participate in.

There is some more important information you should know about the InTouch Portal – Click the link to read more: https://support.mystaffroom.net/important-information-about-intouch-portal/

Want to save time creating classes for the new academic year? 

This academic year started later than usual. We received many calls and emails to support our schools using Staffroom with their administrative side of things at the beginning of the new academic year. One of the most asked questions included ‘how do I create new classes for 2021’. 

We have compiled a quick “how-to-guide’ that will help you going forward for when you have to tackle this for the next Academic year. We are using classes that need to move from 2020 to 2021 in our below steps. 

How to duplicate classes from one academic year to the new one: 

Staffroom has a feature that allows you to copy previous academic year classes without students. 

This then eliminates the process of having to create the classes one by one – while saving you time. 

Please note: If you have manually created a 2021 class this option will not appear on your screen. 

Here are a few easy and simple step by step guide on how to save time creating classes for the new academic year. 

• You will first login to the system 

• Once you have logged in – you then navigate to the infobase module 

You click on the classes option – then click on view  

The screen should show you all your 2021 class lists, but since you have not created your 2021 classes yet, nothing will appear. Now let’s says for instance you have already created a 2021 class, you will now see a button that gives you the option to copy 2020 classes into 2021. This is referred to as ‘Duplication of Classes.’  

How to Duplicate 2020 Classes: 

Click on the duplicate option and a warning message will appear – select the “all good” option. 

If you are not going to be changing any class teachers, then you don’t have to take any further steps: Your 2021 classes have now been created. The only thing left to do is assign the learners to their classes. 

Scenario 1: Changing Class Teachers 

If you want to change the class teacher for a grade – you will have to click on the edit option.  

• Then change the teacher’s name and abbreviation and choose to ‘update’ your class. 

Scenario 2: New Grade 

Say you did not have a grade 11 in 2020, but for 2021 you do have a grade 11 class, you will have to create the class manually. To do so, click on the ‘add new option’, then type in your grade and assign the teacher. 

Note: This is a required field so every time you create a class you must select a class teacher otherwise it will not save the class record or add the abbreviation. 

The click the save option. 

This about sums it up for creating classes – quick and easy! Especially if you did not have to create your classes for the next academic year manually. 

For ease of implementation, we strongly recommend that you use the duplicate option for the previous year classes, 

Once you’ve duplicated your classes for the next academic year, you would need to initiate the year-end roll-over which means that you assign all the 2020 students to their 2021 class. 

This will be explained in the next article in our “How-to with Staffroom” series. 

Over the past 12 months, the Staffroom team has been busy with updates and improvements. We’ve been reworking the Infobase, which is one of the older parts of the Staffroom system. We’ve been doing this in order to make Staffroom more flexible and so that it can do more of the things that our schools have been asking for!

The good news is that we’ll be releasing the first part of these updates later this week (12th of February 2021). The first release is an update to the student profile to make it much more flexible. You can read more about the new flexible customisable student profiles here:

• https://support.mystaffroom.net/students-custom-profiles/
• https://support.mystaffroom.net/students-custom-profile-uses/
• https://support.mystaffroom.net/students-editing-custom-profiles/

The changes to the student profiles are the first installment of changes that will include customisable online applications and customisable student profiles on the InTouch portal. They are also the first piece of work which will ultimately bring a complete upgrade to the Infobase; and include much of the fantastic feedback that everyone has been giving us over the past few years.

As with all changes, you and other staff at your school may find issues or have questions. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team (support@mystaffroom.net / +27 (0) 87 095 3444) they will be happy to help!