The problem
Parents want to know when their child will move up, and teachers answer the same questions at the poolside and write report cards each term. A school with 300 swimmers can spend 10 hours a term on report cards and about 1.25 hours a week answering progress questions.
What the AI does
Class Manager is class management software with a skill tracking feature. Its skill tracking page says you set the skills and levels that matter to you, give each skill its own status, mark progress as you go, and track stroke and badge progress lesson by lesson. Families can see a child's current grade and when they move up; you choose whether skills appear on the family portal, and parents don't see the full breakdown. Its pricing page says there is no monthly subscription, only a service charge on payments taken online. Set up your stages and the skills in each, and teachers update progress on a phone or tablet after each lesson. The teacher still decides when a child moves up.
A worked example
A swim school in Ipswich with 300 swimmers across 8 stages uses paper report cards each term. It sets up its stages and skills in Class Manager and teachers update progress on a tablet kept in a waterproof case at the side of the pool.
Before
10 hours a term on report cards; about 15 progress questions a week from parents
After
Progress recorded after each lesson and current stage visible to parents; 3 hours a term on reports and half the questions
What it's worth
About $118£89€106A$171C$167 a month in teachers' time saved, at an assumed $27£20€24A$38C$38 an hour. That is 21 hours a year on report cards (7 hours a term), $47£35€42A$67C$66 a month, plus 0.625 hours a week of questions, times 4.3, which is $71.49£53.75€63.96A$103.20C$101.05 a month. Class Manager has no monthly fee if you don't take payments through it.
How to set it up
- Open a free Class Manager account and set up your stages and the skills in each.
- Decide which statuses to use, such as working on, nearly there and achieved, and whether parents see skills or only the stage.
- Give each teacher a login for their own classes and a device in a waterproof case.
- Ask teachers to update progress after each lesson, not at the end of term.
- Tell parents where to see their child's stage, and keep conversations about moving up with the teacher.
What goes wrong
- Phones and tablets near water break. Use a waterproof case and update away from the pool edge.
- Your own stages aren't official awards. If you use a national awards scheme, keep its records and certificates as that scheme requires.
- Progress records are only as current as teachers make them; check a sample each month.
- The pricing page doesn't state the rate of its online payment charge, so check it before moving fee collection in.