eForm - Student - Case Study in overcoming the challenges in reacting to Covid-19 in Education

Case Study submitted by:

Mr Matt Bennett - Deputy Principal - Avondale College - Auckland, New Zealand

At 4 pm on Monday 20 April, the New Zealand Prime Minister announced that New Zealand would be moving out of the Level 4 lockdown situation and schools across the country would be able to reopen for all students from Year 1 to 10. Families were encouraged to keep students at home where possible to continue to contain the virus, but the situation provided an unknown potential for many students to return to school.

At Avondale College, a large Auckland co-educational secondary school, a possible 1155 Year 9 and 10 students could return to school. With a nine-day lead time and the rules around student return changing by the day, the Executive team had to communicate with families quickly to determine their intentions while working from home offices during the lockdown. This data collected had to allow for timely planning to occur and decisions to be made around how to manage the complexity of reopening. With the help of Karen Willison from PCSchool, an eForm was developed to determine whether students would return. Seven hundred ninety-seven responses were received within 24 hours of distributing the eForm. This enabled the Executive to make informed decisions around how best to reopen the College based on the certainty of who would be returning. This data also allowed for staffing decisions as a separate eForm was issued to all staff to understand their ability to return to the College given the constraints of social distancing and the implications of work within a Covid-19 world. 

The PCSchool eForm platform offered a powerful tool to collect and subsequently, interrogate responses efficiently and effectively. Targetted follow-up using alternate communication methods could then occur while families continued to submit eForm answers. The insights gleaned from the captured data allowed the Executive to plan for an effective and safe return to education in a school environment while continuing to offer distance teaching and learning for the majority of the College population.

If you would like to learn how PCSchool eForms can assist your school in timely collection and compilation of data please contact support@pcschool.net