As the second term started, Malvern Prep’s middle school students were left with the question, “What Happened with SchoolPass?” 

When school first began in late August, students were welcomed with a new attendance system known as SchoolPass. SchoolPass was implemented because last year, students would skip class or ask to go into the bathroom and not come back. SchoolPass acts as a self attendance system in which kids enter a certain pin and it checks them in for class. If students need to go to the bathroom or nurse, they can check themselves out. 

As SchoolPass seemed to be a reliable source for taking attendance, students came back for Term 2, when SchoolPass was unexpectedly gone. Malvern Prep middle school student George Irish was asked about his opinion on this subject:

“Personally I thought School Pass was an unnecessary way of taking attendance and was a struggle to take attendance versus a teacher just taking attendance from their computers,” Irish said. “It was difficult for kids to remember to sign in each day. Many kids would forget to sign in and it was becoming a problem. During fire drills and lockdowns, it was extremely dangerous because teachers had to keep track of where kids [were] at all times.”

In an interview with seventh grader Arman Patel about SchoolPass, he said, “School Pass was a distraction and almost every class someone did not sign in.”

He continued, “For me personally, it didn’t help because we had to go from class to class bunching up and all trying to sign in. I know of a couple cases where we couldn’t see the iPad we were signing in on.”

Earlier today, Middle School faculty member Mrs. Reynolds was asked about her experience with SchoolPass, and here’s what she had to say:

“SchoolPass was something very frustrating to deal with as a teacher because a lot of times students [would] choose not to sign in.It would constantly disrupt class with having to get a call from the administration office telling me that someone did not sign in or sometimes it would say a student was signed in but continuously mark the student absent. I think SchoolPass was discontinued because when there would be a fire drill, it became a mess for teachers, and to limit calls from the office. I liked that SchoolPass would give independence to students signing in by themselves.”

With mixed feelings throughout Malvern Prep about SchoolPass and its efficiency, it became discontinued and unwanted by faculty and students. It seems as though SchoolPass was not a bad thing, and with a little more time and thinking, it could have been even better. After stopping the use of SchoolPass, the Malvern community is doing just fine with the old version of taking attendance.