11-19 Solutions Latest News

i-essex has launched across the county to all schools. i-essex is a web based solution for both young people and members of staff which provides information, advice and guidance in an impartial manner that promotes the best interest of the pupil. It facilitates schools in meeting their statutory duty to ‘provide access impartial Careers Information, Advice and Guidance’. The suite of tools includes a new Area Prospectus and an Individual Learning Planner (ILP). As well as careers information, i-essex gives young people the opportunity to customise their individual learning planner, set targets, record achievements, create online e-Portfolios and start thinking about their career options. The powerful range of administrative tools allow members of staff to track and monitor learners, run reports, share information across establishments and support young people through regular progress reviews; i-essex also fully supports work with parents and carers, allowing them to keep up to date on their child’s learning journey.

"This is an innovative approach to Raising the Particpation Age and supporting schools to meet statutory duty to access impartial IAG. Schools have welcomed this new approach; almost 50% of the schools in Essex have bought the tools within 4 weeks of launch. What’s great about i-essex is that it will continually develop to meet the needs of Essex learners and staff."

- Avis Parker (14-19 Area Adviser, Essex)

Following on from the previous years’ success, Devon and Torbay LAs completed another IAG Evaluation with Year 9 and Year 11 learners at the end of the last academic year. The purpose of the surveys was to collect feedback on how learners feel about the careers education and guidance they have received, with the aim of improving the process in the future. Nearly 2,000 learner responses were submitted for the surveys, allowing the LAs to produce powerful reports and look at implementing improvements for the coming year.

A range of new features recently released also allow schools to create their own in-house surveys, build a library of response options to use in different surveys and compare the results of one survey side-by-side using different reporting criteria.

“Our schools were so delighted with the results from last year that we are running evaluations across the two year groups again this year. We are also supporting them in creating their own surveys for use for example with parents, governors or even subject groups. From an administrator’s point of view the feedback has been very positive in that Survey Centre is a flexible tool and simple to use”.

- Chris Maccullie (Area Coordinator, South and West Devon Partnership)

A new Progress Books module was released at the beginning of September for the start of the new academic year. The new module forms part of the reporting features available to track learners that travel offsite for their courses. New features have been introduced which simplify the process of creating Progress Books, allow the download to Word for customised reports, and introduce colour-coding options for target and actual grades. Feedback received so far has been very positive from all users.

Cornwall LA has successfully been using the Offsite Learning System for the last year to track the attendance and progress of travel to learn students. Starting in the new academic year, two Consortiums will also be piloting the student tools available in the ILP. The six month pilot will allow around 40 students participating in programmes for NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) to have access to an ILP that they are actively involved in.

Working with Babcock 4S Education, the rollout of i-Surrey to schools and colleges across the county over the last 9 months has been recognised as being one of the most successful IT projects in recent years! i-Surrey allows offsite learners’ attendance and progress to be tracked, monitored and reported on; fulfilling safeguarding requirements for schools as well as removing paper based versions. Surrey has also praised the supportive and responsive WebBased team that has made achieving these excellent results possible.

Student tools will be introduced over the coming months, allowing every learner to have their own online Individual Learning Planner (ILP) which will, in turn, lead to a Transition Passport at 16+. The initial focus for the ILP will centre on students following Foundation Learning programmes, before extending it more widely among 14-19 year olds in Surrey.

“This system has made our annual reporting so much more efficient for teachers and administrative staff, saving valuable time and money.”
- Graeme Adams – Guildford 11-19 Partnership

“i-Surrey has made the tracking and monitoring of attendance and achievement in collaborative provision so much easier. We can now see patterns or trends and act accordingly.”
- Jonathan Stewart – 14-19 Consultant, Surrey

Devon are due to launch a new Survey Centre tool, following the successful take up of the Year 9 IAG evaluation survey which was completed last year using the Area Prospectus Online Feedback module. This powerful survey and reporting tool is based on the existing functionality from both Aimhigher and the Online Feedback module, and will allow all of the partnerships in Devon to carry out further evaluations with year 9 and year 11 students in March and April. Individual schools will also have the facility to log in, create surveys and see the results for their own learners.

Surrey started the roll out of the Offsite Learning System across the LA in September 2010 and have seen a successful take up of the system since its launch.

“All external providers in Surrey use the Offsite Learning System to report attendance and track learning progress. With the Yr 9 option process looming, I am confident that the system will accelerate the enrolment and allocation of students.

The eprogress book features have allowed us to track performance throughout courses such as the Higher Diploma, and set up standardised reporting mechanisms. This has made our annual reporting so much more efficient for teachers and administrative staff, saving valuable time and money.”

Graeme Adams – Guildford 11-19 Partnership.

WebBased are delighted to confirm that the new interface for the Area Prospectus sites has been rolled out across Cornwall, Plymouth, Devon, Torbay and Somerset. The new designs give the sites a fresh look, making them more visually appealing and engaging for young people. The uniform layout and prominence of the search on the right hand side of every page will give users a consistent feel when browsing the site. Further releases will follow in the coming months, including updates to the search engine, new reporting functionality and improvements to the screens for adding and managing courses.

Visit the Area Prospectus site for 14-19 year olds in Devon & Torbay

Following the launch of the Aimhigher site in September 2010, a series of further updates have now been released. The new features build on and enhance the existing functionality, and include, the addition of a staff sign up screen, the facility for young people to reveal the quiz answers and see how the rest of their class answered, the introduction of an Ickle-Me gallery and the ability to upload answer sheets for each quiz.

The WebBased Offsite Learning System is being rolled out across the London Borough of Sutton to track their diploma learners. The LA is particularly impressed with the variety of features on offer within the system and how this is helping them with tracking and monitoring attendance, assessment and behaviour while learners are attending offsite delivery centres.

WebBased is pleased to announce that Cornwall County Council has launched the Area Prospectus and Offsite Learning System across the LA. The Offsite Learning System is being used by local consortiums to track attendance, record progress,produce reports and monitor the young people that travel to offsite delivery centres for their learning. The Cornwall Prospectus is currently being given a fresh new look and the site will be launched in January.

Surrey has launched the e-ILP across the LA, with phase 1 of the rollout introducing the Offsite Learning System for each network to mark registers and track attendance for their travel to learn students. Further rollout phases will introduce target setting, recording achievements, ePortfolios and SIF. A multi- channel Content Management System is also being launched, which will allow information and resources to be stored in one central place, further supporting their 11-19 agenda.

The WebBased Offsite Learning System has received a powerful addition to its reporting features. The update allows Attendance Officers to view all absences for their learners on a given day, check that registers have been marked and view any notes that have been added by the offsite delivery centre – all at the click of a button! It is also possible to run reports that show attendance data for an entire academic year quickly and easily.

Schools in Devon and Torbay have been using the Online Feedback module within the Area Prospectus to collect feedback from young people on the quality of the IAG they are receiving. The reporting options within the module allow the LA and individual schools to evaluate the responses and target improvements for the future. “We are very excited about using the Online Feedback module... and believe it will be a powerful tool in supporting the improvement of services we provide our young people.” Christina Maccullie, Devon County Council.

The WebBased 11-19 products are fully SIF accredited. This allows the reading of core learner and staff data from MIS, as well as the reading and writing of attendance and assessment data. SIF is currently being rolled out across Surrey and three LAs in the South West.

A fresh new interface has been added to the Area Prospectus, making it even more visually appealing and engaging to young people. The search has also been given more prominence, appearing on the right hand side of every page, and a uniform structure has been applied to every screen to give users a consistent feel when browsing. Devon, Plymouth, Torbay and Cornwall will all be launching the new site in January.

The WebBased family continues to grow and we are pleased to announce that we have recently hired Rosie Thomas as our Marketing and Promotions Coordinator. Rosie will be fully involved with the marketing campaign that we will be launching for all of our products. Catherine Hartley has also joined the 14-19 Solutions team and is providing email and telephone support for our LAs.  

The WebBased Aimhigher site was showcased by learners from Lipson Community College at the ‘In our Words’ conference in September. The Aimhigher site complements the Higher Education resource pack which has been developed by the Aimhigher Peninsula Programme and allows learners to complete quizzes about Higher Education, and discuss and learn more about the various options that are available to them.     

Recent updates to the Tracking and Monitoring module have simplified the process of adding and managing tracking and monitoring entries in the ILP. We have improved the design and layout of the screens and added new features, which include external email alerts, a new print facility and the ability to select courses/lessons that the alert relates to.          

A new homepage design has been added to the student side of the ILP. The new design gives learners an overview of their notifications, groups and goals on their homepage in a simplified accessible format. We have also introduced a new page called ‘My Groups’, which allows learners to see the tasks they have been assigned for each of their groups. Further updates will be made to the Groups page shortly to show resources and Attendance data related to each group a learner is in.

WebBased are pleased to announce that Cornwall LA will be rolling out their Area Prospectus and Common Appliation Process this September. The Area Prospectus is currently being populated with courses and we are working closely with the LA to ensure a successful rollout in the coming months.

WebBased are currently working with CASCAiD to integrate the IAG tools they offer into the ILP. 'Super web link' technology allows users to launch CASCAiD programmes within the ILP, such as Kudos, without having to log in again.

The second phase of this project is for the results of the users' action plans in Kudos to appear automatically within a new 'Careers' tab in the ILP.

Since May 2010, schools in Devon and Torbay have been using the Online Feedback module to create careers questionnaires for learners to complete, as well as run reports on the responses.

"We are very excited about using the Online Feedback module to evaluate various aspects of our Careers Education Information, Advice and Guidance programmes, and believe it will be a powerful tool in supporting the improvement of services we provide our young people." Chris Maccullie, Devon County Council.

Recent updates have been made to the Report Builder, which is currently being used by TVC to pull together Attendance, eProgress Book and MIS data into one report.

Reports are now generated offline and an email is sent to the report administrator to confirm when it is available to view or download. This allows reports to be created for long date ranges such as an entire academic year.

The new Attendance module has been live since the start of the summer term. All existing attendance data was transferred to the new module and feedback from the schools and providers using the module on a daily basis has been extremely positive.

Further updates will be made to the Attendance module shortly, including the addition of an Attendance Reporting tool which will allow instant access to daily attendance data without the need to navigate through individual registers; and the ability to retrieve attendance reports with longer date ranges.

Surrey LA will shortly be launching a multi-channel Content Management System for their 11-19 agenda and are gearing up to roll this out across the Local Authority from September. The focus for the first phase of the ILP rollout in June will be the Offsite Learning Module, including tracking and monitoring tools.

The Offsite Learning module will support all of the Surrey networks for their travel to learn students.

We are delighted with the feedback we have received so far about our ILP Offsite Learning module. In particular, Tamarside Community College is pleased with the latest additions to this module. They have commented that it is now even easier to see all students that are offsite on a daily basis, and whether they have arrived safely. 

WebBased are delighted to have rolled out the new Attendance module ready for the start of the new term. The new module builds on the existing functionality from the classic system and also introduces many new features which further simplify the process of marking registers, building timetables and viewing attendance data. All existing attendance data has been successfully migrated from the old system to the new module, ensuring a seamless transition.

The attendance reporting options which the new module offers forms a key part of WebBased's offsite learning module; allowing the tracking of attendance and progress across sites.

Supporting schools and end users with questions regarding the ILP is a key task for Local Authorities. To help reduce the number of questions which are received, a new online help system has been added to the ILP this week, whichallows users to access the latest versions of the help material online.

Feedback from the LAs has been extremely positive and they are looking forward to further updates in the coming weeks. These updates will include the addition of online help videos throughout key areas of the site, as well as an FAQ section.

WebBased have been working with Education Leeds to establish a Shibboleth solution that will enable users to be authenticated in the ILP after logging into the Leeds Learning Network. This is shortly due to be rolled out to schools across Leeds. Following on from this success, Shibboleth will be implemented in the South West, using the Merlin IDP as a mechanism to authenticate users.

WebBased are excited to be working with the DCSF to achieve national interoperability between all CAP and Area Prospectus sites. We were tasked with putting together a proposed adoption plan in response to DCSF's draft interoperability roadmap; this was returned in January.

The DCSF are due to release a Local Area Guidance Pack at the end of March that will provide guidance on how we work towards achieving their objectives.

The Area Prospectus Online Feedback modle was originally designed to collect feedback from users on the site itself as well as being a general feedback/questionnaire tool. Devon and Torbay Local Authorities are taking this one step further by using the module as an IAG tool to create careers questionnaires for learners to complete.

To maximise the potential of this tool, updates will be made to the module to allow the creation of sub-questions, as well as additinoal reporting tools.

WebBased is currently working with South West LAs to develop a SIF Agent. To allow the integration between MIS systems and the ILP, schools will install a SIF Agent which reads and writes data to the South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL). By the end of March, WebBased's ILP SIF Agent will be able to read and write core data to SWGfL.

We chose BETT 2010 as a platform to launch our new 14-19 Solutions suite and are delighted with the interest it has received. 14-19 Solutions has been designed to help you fully meet the current DCSF 14-19 requirements. Advertise your courses with Area Prospectus, collate and track applications with CAP and once the students have enrolled, enhance and empower their learning with their own, customisable, electronic Individual Learning Planner.

We feel that experiencing our products is a much better way to learn how invaluable they are and this year, our stand had more PCs than ever before. This enabled us to demo our products to many more visitors, which was especially useful considering at the time of writing, BETT 2010 was on its way to exceeding last year's record figure of 30,000 visitors!

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to visit our stand and we look forward to working with you in the future!

The Tamar Valley Consortium is responsible for delivering training to over 1,000 learners across 130 sites in Plymouth. TVC have used the online attendance tracking facility in the WebBased e-ILP for two years. Bob Mountjoy, TVC Director, said, "The success of the e-ILP to track attendance has exceeded our expectations. Students know they are being tracked more closely and our retention and success rates have shown a marked improvement."

Click here to visit the TVC website.

Keeping the Area Prospectus up to date is one of the largest challenges LAs face. LAs and Providers were therefore delighted with the new and improved course upload facility. Providers simply export courses from their in-house system into the Area Prospectus, allowing them to add thousands of courses in one go.

Click here to read more about Area Prospectus.

A new feature has been added to the WebBased e-ILP that allows learners to think more carefully about the goals they are setting themselves. In early 2010, learners will have the opportunity to list the individual actions which they need to complete in order to successfully achieve their goals. Each action will be highlighted in red or green to show its status within an action plan. As actions are signed-off, learners will see their goals getting closer to completion.

Click here to visit the e-ILP website.

14-19 presents many challenges to LAs, not least joining together different IT systems. WebBased are delighted to be rolling out their much anticipated Common Application Process in January 2010 as pilots begin with three South West LAs. The Common Application Process integrates seamlessly with both the Area Prospectus and the e-ILP, providing young people with the easiest possible route to plan and complete applications.