New B.C. school enrolment software causing major headaches

The turmoil around the start of a new year is usually starting to settle down bythe second week of schoolas students and teachers settle into a routine.

But at some B.C. schools the opposite is happeningasteachers and students grapple with the problematicnewBC Education enrolment software that's messing up timetables and failing at some of the most basic classroom tasks.

David McCristall, a computer teacher at Terry Fox Secondary School in Port Coquitlam,told CBC, "As of (Wednesday) a significant percentage of our staff still didn't have access to their class lists. That's not really acceptable."

Still no class lists

"Imagine you have a class full of students," said McCristall in a phone interview, "but you can't even guess what their names are because you don't even have alist of the students that are supposed to be there."

"Itseems to not work at all," he added.

The new software,knownas MyEdBC,has also been criticized as too slow, impractical,and has crashed on numerous occasions.

Itwaspurchasedby the B.C.Education Ministryto replace the notoriously unreliableenrolment software calledBCeSIS.

BCeSIScost almost $100 million dollars over its five-year lifespan, the price tag for MyEdBC is $95million.

"Awkward" design

Fred Rogger, a teacher at CorrelieuSecondary in Quesnel,says even when the new MyEdBC program works, its design iseven more awkwardthan BCeSIS.

"I want to be able to see all my students at once on one page," said the 29-year Humanities instructor. "I want to be able to print off their student number and names on one page where I can easily register their marks. Believeit or not, we can't even do that right now."

Scheduling gridlock

At Nelson's L.V. Rogers Secondary, an emergency meeting Monday nightled to an immediateinfusion of extra funding to help sort out scheduling gridlock caused by a largenumber of students who couldn't getthecore courses needed to graduate or advance through their grade.

MyEdBC, which schedules students and courses,was flagged as the primary cause of the chaos.

When asked about the problems, Craig Sorochan, Public Affairs Officer for theMinistry of Education sent thisstatement, "While MyEdBC performance was slow initially, it has been functional and speeds are improving."

McCristall wonders how some schools are going to work their way out of the quagmire.

"To fix (it) you need to get us the information we need, and the kids need to get the courses they need," he said. "But how that happens in the state we're currently in is a bit of a challenge because we can't just go back to the old system."

"It's only data," marvels McCristal. "Data is so easy and cheap to move around on theInternetthese days, honestly I can'tbelievewe're having the same problems we had when we startedBCeSIS."