Like with any other field, education in India is also undergoing a revolutionary change to keep up with the changing times.
In K-12 sector especially, school leaders are understanding the importance of going digital and the use of smart techniques and tools to augment the teaching learning process. A necessary and useful outcome of digitizing data is to get data insights, through analytics, for student performance improvement. Report Bee, a very well known startup from Chennai, is helping over 900+ schools in doing so.
We reached out to the Co-founder & CEO of Report Bee, Mr. Anantharaman Mani, to hear how Report Bee is actually helping schools in and beyond India. Here’s what he had to share with the EdTechReview Community:
1. Describe Report Bee in few lines
Every school aspires to continuously improve its teaching methodologies and exceed student and school academic and non academic performance goals. However, achieving this is not a simple task, mostly because it is driven by contribution from every individual in the organisation. The entire ecosystem of school should work seamlessly and there must be appropriate feedback and checkpoints to alert the management in case of deviations from the goals set. This mechanism of feedback and checkpoints is what Report Bee brings to a school. The benefits of Report Bee are not just for the school management but also other members of the ecosystem such as parents, teachers and students.
2. What problem are you solving and for whom?
As rightly pointed out by Nelson Mandela ,“Education is the most powerful weapon, which can change the world.” However, the Education field needs to evolve with time in order to stay connected with the new generation of educationalists, parents and students. One such evolution is the digitization of exams and marks data to improve student and school performance and Report Bee is becoming the de-facto digital partner for schools to help them in this important evolution. The benefits of Report Bee are:
School Management/leaders :
- Retain your best teaching staffs and increase the stickiness by reducing their stress levels and workload through automating the date recording, reporting and analytics process.
- Make yourself independent by getting easy access to the school performance and other information through any internet enabled device by click of a button.
- Take important decision based on school performance data and not “ intuitions “
Teaching Staff :
- Avoid embarrassing calculation and writing errors in Report Cards. Software calculates the marks and grade and generates ready to print PDF Report Cards, with a click of a button.
- Individual child performance graphs for each subject helps you have a meaningful conversations during parent teacher meeting.
- Time saved due to elimination on manual reporting work is better utilised for workshops to improve skill set or better lesson planning.
Parents :
- Access online repository of Report Cards (current year and previous years) and performance graph of your child on any internet enabled device.
- Receive important student specific notification such as attendance, exam marks and general notification such as holidays, circular, events in mobile app or website.
- Identify academic weakness and strengths of their child and take corrective measures.
All of these feed into improvement of a school’s functioning and ultimately its performance.
NOTE: Read in detail about Report Bee here.
3. What are your views about the growth of Education Technology industry in India?
It is quite amazing to see the pace at which changes are taking place in teaching learning process in schools. This growth would only accelerate with time. Some of the biggest changes we see in EdTech industry in the past decades are :
- Exponential growth of smartphone usages and internet connectivity is allowing users to access information at their convenience.
- Availability of online educational information is not just content for educating students but it also acts as a feedback loop with the help of online tools and gives a well rounded education system to the students of this generation.
- Availability of low cost online platforms and tools will enable affordable and low income schools to provide better facilities to their students.
- Digital-friendly government policies such as ‘Digital India’ and ‘Skill India’ to spread digital literacy, create a knowledge-based society in India.
Report Bee is one such low cost online platform, which when combined with other resources, has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of education in India.
4. What kind of acceptance have you seen for Report Bee and what does the future look like?
Over the last 7 years, Report Bee has evolved from being a product that primarily offered automation of Report Cards to one that also offers critical data analytics capability, thereby creating a “data-driven” decision making culture within the school. In the same period, Report Bee’s adoption in schools has seen a two fold increase every year. Currently, Report Bee serves 900+ schools in 58 cities, 18 States and 4 country. Report Bee serves users across the spectrum from high-end schools to affordable private schools. These schools are located in urban, semi-urban and even rural locations.
In the next couple of years, Report Bee will make strategic partnerships to offer a new basket of products and services that will operate on/augment the current products of Report Bee to deliver more value to the school.
5. What are the biggest achievement of Report Bee in the recent past and how has that impacted your product?
Our biggest achievement has always been the adoption rate of the Report Bee product by schools users. In our first year, we had less than 100 teachers who used the Report Bee product. Today, there are over 15,000 teacher users. Their love and, at times, critical assessment of our products, have been key inputs in finalizing new product development and product delivery.
During this journey, the company has also received international appreciation. We were awarded the top 10 EdTech innovator by Kaizen in Singapore. We were also awarded the top 50 fastest growing companies in India by Deloitte for 3 consecutive years. These awards reaffirm our belief in the products and also add market credibility for any potential customer to see.
6. What feedback do you get from your customers that confirm that you are on the right path?
A well known group of schools based out of Mumbai recently informed us that we have mastered the art of reporting. This appreciation only bolstered our faith in our design philosophy “inch-wide mile deep” i.e. Report Bee will only concentrate on solving a small set of critical problems faced by schools, but, will solve those problems with a deep focus and commitment to make our solutions world class.
7. Can Report Bee be categorized as an ERP for schools ?
No! Report Bee cannot be categorized as an ERP for schools. It actually compliments one. ERPs focus on bring administrative ease by offering products for fee management, payroll management, accounting, bus tracking, etc. The users of these modules are generally administrative staff and parents to an extend. Report Bee’s products, unlike ERP products, focuses only on academic and co-scholastic data recording, reporting and analytics. Our products help a school meet it’s non-administrative goals such as school academic performance improvement, better utilization of teacher time and improvements in the teaching learning process.
Mr. Anantharaman Mani also introduced us to few of his customers to get views on Report Bee’s product.
Here’s what they had to say:
It has been a great experience generating report cards on report bee. Our school has various designs and formats of different boards, but report bee adheres to all. With its simple and user friendly interface, marks and grades are calculated within minutes and we are able to deliver a complete analytical report to the parents. It is an excellent team with all around support. – Mr. Amit Desai , CTO – Kangaroo Kids Education ltd, Mumbai
We also got in touch another customer school of Report Bee – Sanskriti The Gurukul, Guwahati, Assam. ‘Sanskriti The Gurukul’ has been ranked No.2 in India, No.1 in Assam and Guwahati under the category Day- cum-Boarding schools in a survey done by Education Today among 836 schools in the country. It has also been selected as ‘India’s Most Influential Education Brand for 2015-16’ for the ASIA ONE WHITE SWAN AWARDS by ASIA ONE MAGAZINE. Here what Mr. Sanjay Purkayastha, the headmaster to Sanskriti The Gurukul school had to say :
How would you compare the processes in your schools before and after Report Bee?
After implementing Report Bee in our school, life has become much more smoother for us as well as our stakeholders. We have not yet used Report Bee to its true potential but it has helped us immensely by providing an in-depth analysis of the academic and co- curricular performance of a student, which can also be tracked across the years. This has helped us better counsel a student regarding his/her career options. In addition, preparing the report card of a student was considered as a humongous task as it involved calculations and entries, which if incorrect, lead to wastage of time and paper. After implementing Report Bee, the whole report card generation process ensures smooth, stress free, correct and on-time generation.
Its product is very user friendly and is versatile to allow the school to create it’s pattern of assessments and exams as guided by the school’s pedagogy.
Our stakeholders are very happy about the product more so because it is easily accessible and presents an in-depth analysis of the performance. Last but not the least by any means, the 24×7 support we get from the professionals at Report Bee is very encouraging and soothing to the mind.
How did Report Bee helps the teachers in your school in their day to day work?
With just one training, the teachers found Report Bee to be very user friendly. They can make the mark entries at their will and at their own pace and also complete the formalities even if they are not in school. This released the so called pressure of making silly errors while calculating or even correcting.
The teachers use the in-depth analysis provided by Report Bee to refine their remarks for an exam for a student and thereby gave more effective and precise inputs to the parent and student regarding the performance. Teachers also use the in-depth analysis to prepare for the remedial classes/revisions.
If you wish to watch the explainer video or get in touch with the Report Bee team, visit: http://bit.ly/2LlOu1Q
