Waltham Forest College has announced that Capita Further and Higher Education
has been awarded the contract to supply the college with its UNIT-e Student Record
and Tracking System.
The college has chosen the software to simplify the management of student data and
give its leadership team better access to reports that will help improve decision
making.
Martin Moore, director of systems and planning, Waltham Forest College, said: “The
software we had been using did not perform as we needed it to. We created a
number of databases to ensure we could get to the information we wanted and so it
was necessary to have four or five people working to keep these systems updated.
With UNIT-e, all the functions will be available within a single database and we
predict that we will reduce the time we spend accessing the information we need by
50%.”
Through the reports generated, the college will gain further understanding of student
attendance, performance and enrolment, as well as data on which courses are under
or over performing. This information can then be used to make sound academic and
business decisions.
Chris Cooper, director of Capita Further and Higher Education, said: “UNIT-e will
simplify the management of many college processes, such as course payments,
Education Maintenance Allowance management, student course transfers and
reporting on student performance. After years of having to work hard to get
technology to support their processes, the team at Waltham Forest College will now
be able to manage and access the information they need instantly.”
The college plans to make use of UNIT-e’s more innovative features such as the
online enrolment facilities to help automate this process and improve tracking of
course enquiries.
Before going to tender, Waltham Forest College consulted with the Association of
Colleges, Becta and a variety of educational establishments to learn from others’
experiences and to define their criteria for the system. “We chose UNIT-e based on
its usability, its flexibility to make future changes and the fact that it did what Capita
FHE said it would do out of the box,” added Martin Moore.
Waltham Forest College has 10,000 students enrolled.