Connect@BETT 2023
We’re delighted to participate in Connect@BETT 2023.
SchoolScreener® is essential for schools to deliver improved welfare, learning and behaviour. How? By enabling any member of staff (teacher, TA, SEND) to identify which children have vision, hearing or health issues affecting their learning or behaviour.
SchoolScreener® doesn’t fit into the standard classifications of school software, so on this page please take a few moments to understand:
- What is SchoolScreener®?
- An enlightening case study and video of SchoolScreener® Vision produced by The Fischer Family Trust (FFT), a leading UK education charity.
- Why it’s valuable to schools and groups of schools, such as MATs.
- Who we would like to meet at the show.
What is SchoolScreener®?
SchoolScreener® from Thomson Screening is software used to check a child’s health. It’s quick and easy to use.
Let’s start with vision. In 2 or 3 minutes you’ll know if that child needs an optometrist eye test or not. It doesn’t diagnose, you won’t be prescribing glasses, that’s for the clinicians. But understanding the child’s needs can help teaching staff to accommodate that child better in class. Alert the parents with a referral letter, automatically produced. Help that child achieve more.
It doesn’t stop there, with SchoolScreener® you can check hearing and growth, too. Also, overall health and wellbeing status with age-appropriate online assessments. Ask for details when you meet us.
SchoolScreener® enables school budgets go further, by isolating health issues before expensive SEND interventions may be required.
Case Study: Fisher Family Foundation
In 2022, The Fischer Family Foundation assessed use of SchoolScreener® in four schools, as part of their Apex Project to ‘eliminate avoidable literacy failure‘. This is what they found:
- ‘Over 20% of children had a potential sight problem, not previously known about.’ This was despite most of them having been checked by school nurses at Reception age school entry.
- Over 75% of those recommended to see an optometrist in the above pilot study did attend. Of those, 64% needed an intervention, usually glasses.
This video includes interviews with the head teacher and key staff involved at one of those schools. It’s illuminating and worth watching. A little over 8 minutes long, it shows how they achieved these results and how they feel about it.
SchoolScreener® Should be Used by All Schools
Undiagnosed vision or hearing deficiencies can be a barrier to learning. They can affect behaviour and development of the child, too. Also, they can impose considerable, avoidable burdens on school budgets.
There’s a wealth of independent, academic research to back this up. We’ve listed some, here.
There are also discussion documents. One example is from the National Literary Trust, when they looked at the role of literacy in offending behaviour. They concluded that,
‘The outcomes in adult life are often the product of educational and social processes comprising a combination of influences in which literacy plays a part. This is particularly true for offenders. Literacy problems in the prison population are often compounded by a wide range of emotional, learning and/or attentional deficits, including, child abuse and neglect, linguistic impoverishment in the childhood home, low verbal ability, uncorrected visual and hearing impairments in childhood..’
Not being able to see properly can impact on attention, reading, participation in class activities, social interaction and behaviour.
While teachers are aware of the importance of good eyesight to learning and emotional wellbeing, until now, they’ve not had the tools to do anything about it.
And even when children have had their eyesight screened at Reception age, children’s eyesight can change as they grow.
That’s where SchoolScreener® comes in for any school, primary or secondary.
The same goes for hearing, too. We have a version of SchoolScreener® Hearing available for schools to check hearing themselves, for children aged 7-18. Ask for details when you meet us.
At the Show, We Would Like to Meet:
- School leaders and SEND representatives from any school:
- Primary, middle, secondary, all-through, sixth form
- State schools or independent schools
- Individual schools or groups of schools
- UK or international
- Government officials concerned with ways to improve learning outcomes, improve children’s welfare, anywhere in the world (SchoolScreener is designed for use online and offline).
- Software resellers with strong track records of selling to schools, UK or anywhere in the world.
