24 March 2023

With industries from marketing and digital through to healthcare and construction tapping into the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s not surprising that it’s set to play a huge role in the future of the education sector as well.

With the use of Artificial Intelligence more prevalent than ever, it’s becoming increasingly crucial for schools and universities to understand exactly how Artificial Intelligence can help them stay competitive and what the full benefit of AI can look like when it comes to business growth.

Artificial Intelligence in the education sector

There are many ways to apply AI within the education sector with the most common applications being:

• Personalised learning. With AI, learning can be tailored to specific student abilities, knowledge levels and interests, resulting in students feeling more comfortable, motivated and engaged.

• Content creation. AI can analyse one topic and then break that down into more bite-sized learning formats to accommodate different learning styles. It can also help with information visualisation through simulated content or even gamification, designed to suit many different learning preferences.

• Task automation and admin assistance. From lesson planning to grading homework and exams, AI can be harnessed to help teachers cut down on the time it takes them to complete tasks, so they have more time to spend with their students.

Artificial Intelligence in school management practices – an example

Outside of the classroom, AI can help inform school management decision making, paving the way for more structure and measured business growth. Here’s a real-life example of how Artificial Intelligence can streamline processes as well as boost the accuracy and efficiency of a school’s financial operations.

The Cathedral School of St Anne and St James

The Cathedral School of St Anne and St James is an independent Anglican co-educational school in Townsville suburb Mundingburra. With the school employing over 300 staff, they focus on best practice and working as a team to provide the best learning experience to all students. With this high engagement and attention expectations, the leadership team thrive to ensure administration efficiency and data analytical solutions to drive strategy.

For The Cathedral School, the management and analysis of school data was extremely time consuming and tended to require more technical expertise. While there are a few school management solutions available in the market, most lack the analytical capabilities required to truly streamline operations.

Recognising the value of AI in school management practices, Sonya Chun Tie, the school’s business manager, sought more information about how it could be used to modernise the school’s financial operations, which led her to our door.

How Findex helped

The Findex Data Science team had already developed an automated portal which manages and integrates school-related data. By tapping into the functionality of this portal, Findex was able to offer The Cathedral School a centralised system that provides real-time data visualisations, benchmarking and forecasting.

“We engaged the Findex team to implement the data science education solution into our school. Extending across curriculum, student enrolments, finance and reporting functions to the school board, this custom designed program has completely transformed the way we monitor administrative tasks. The API has streamlined our processes and made our decision making and financial management more efficient and accurate. With near real-time data integration, we can easily track our expenses and revenues, monitor budgets, and generate detailed financial reports.

Overall, the Findex data science tool has been a game changer for our independent school. It has helped us optimise our financial operations, reduce administrative workload, and improve our financial decision-making. I highly recommend this solution to any school looking to modernise their financial management practises.” - Sonya Chun Tie, Business Manager, The Cathedral School.

Data Science with Findex

Our in-house team has extensive experience in designing and constructing Analytical Data Models (ADM) from multiple, and often complex, data sources to support effective decision making and to deliver actionable insights on demand.

Our solutions not only leverage financial data but also integrate non-financial data inputs such as student academic performance and curriculum related data in combination with external metrics such as suburb profiles and demographic information, to give a full picture of what is happening, why it is happening and what this means for the future. Ultimately, we help our clients to enable fact-based decision making, in turn unlocking value back to the business.

If you’d like to find out more about how Findex can help your school streamline its processes and improve financial operations through the power of AI, you can request a portal demo today.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the thought or position of Findex.