Following the results of EdvalPTN's analysis for their earlier parent teacher schedule, the school decided to adopt EdvalPTN for their scheduling of subsequent events. As the school had only recently adopted the manual based school-led scheduling model, they decided that the EdvalPTN Immediate mode approach may be best, as this would require no further immediate change in how parents organised their schedules. Tenison decided to trial the Immediate mode first and if successful, they would use EdvalPTN Batch for subsequent events.

 

The school was able to use EdvalPTN internally, so the only difference parents observed in the system was the printed results as they still phoned the office to obtain their times. Parents certainly noticed a big difference in the quality of their schedules though, as there was a dramatic improvement over the earlier manual methods.

 

The school conducted a survey of both teachers and parents, asking for comments on the move to school-led scheduling. This survey was conducted after the school initially moved to this approach but via manual construction, and also after the subsequent event that was scheduled internally via EdvalPTN.

 

The vast magority of parents were mildly pleased with the move to (manual) school-led scheduling, saying it was simple, easier, and they were able to organise all their interviews at the one time.

 

Teachers where slightly less impressed as they did not benefit much in their schedules with respect to reduced time waste, but did benefit from the removal of their own administration effort of scheduling interviews.

 

There was at least one double booking which occured at this event due to the manual system being unable to prevent this occuring or flag such issues.

 

 

The school reported that the vast magority of parents were ecstatic with their interview schedules, and that they noticed a huge improvement, with very little time waste. Also the process of organising their interviews was much faster as the office staff did not have to manually process schedules since it was done instantly via EdvalPTN Immediate. This solved another problem for the school being telephone congestion.

 

Parents had earlier complained that it was extremely difficult to contact the school when the interview bookings commenced as a large number of parents were phoning in at the same time, and each was taking several minutes to process by the school. Under the new system powered by EdvalPTN though, the average time to process each parent dropped dramatically - and this resulted in it being far easier to be connected by phone to the school.

 

Teachers were also generally supportive of the change, as it benefited them in several ways such as clearly printed schedules, and slightly more time efficient schedules. Some lightly loaded teachers still complained that they were unable to leave the event early and had several long waits between interviews, though this issue can be easily addressed under the batch mode scheduling which the school has now adopted as their preferred method for all subsequent events.