With these smart report cards, teachers won't have to worry about manually entering data anymore

If you’re a teacher who has spent sleepless nights trying to grade your students and enter the data manually, then you’re in for some good news. Report Bee has just made things simpler
At present, there are about 7,000 teachers who use the platform
At present, there are about 7,000 teachers who use the platform

If you’re a teacher who has spent sleepless nights trying to grade your students and enter the data manually, then you’re in for some good news. A web-based platform called Report Bee has simplified the age-old tradition of report cards with the help of data visualisation.

Thirty-three-year-old Bala Ganesh and his partners Ananthraman Mani and Anjan T had some experience in tech and business, but deep down, their love for data and data visualisation always remained. So when they got together, they spent the first year figuring out how to use data visualisation to help people. They visited a school in Chennai and found a lot of documents lying there in a dump. On asking the authorities what they were, they were told that they were report cards. 

Smart card: Report Bee records students' data in an organised manner

Soon, they started asking the management and school teachers about the challenges they faced, but the authorities couldn’t put a finger on it. Their next step was to gather information and present them with data of their own students. The teachers were thrilled because they were able to identify things quickly with complete information on the performance of students. “A lot of the software or tech intellect we have doesn’t work much in the education sector. It is still very nascent in schools. That’s why we started going to schools and companies that work with schools like Pearson or Oxford,” says Bala.  

The first service offered was to record students’ data in an organised manner so that it can be accessed easily. The next step was to get insights out of the data. “Insights could come in the form of report cards. We also have internal reports of parent-teacher meetings. Since we have data on students, we started predicting things like steps to be taken as well. Apart from this, there are a lot of features on the site like online assessment,” adds Bala.  

Report Bee has digitised the learning records of over 7 lakh students and its analytics platform is improving learning outcomes in education. We’re also assisting stakeholders to measure the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process

Bala Ganesh, Co-founder, Report Bee

Report Bee has two kinds of users. The teachers who log into the app and feed information, including the management who use it occasionally, and parents. At present, there are about 7,000 teachers who use the platform. Predominantly, their growth has been through internal referrals. It was only through publishing agencies and other educational organisations who use Report Bee as their analytics platform that schools got to know about it. Since they had already established a good network within the industry and with government entities, they managed to raise funds quite easily. This was also aided by the fact that most investors saw it as contributing directly to education, thereby making it a social impact fund. 

Report Bee worked with a range of schools, some, where teachers don’t even know how to use computers, some, where teachers don’t have the time to use the facilities, and international schools where they have all the facilities. “The feedback we get at first is usually of scepticism. Teachers usually say ‘well, here’s a system where I need to spend extra time to enter data as a teacher.’ But once they start using it, their perspective completely changes. We also have an app for parents to check their ward’s performance,” says Bala.   

They harness data to help learners and educators

They measure and improve learning

They make insightful and beautiful Report Bee cards 

They use data analytics platforms for the educational ecosystem

They capture and report health information of a student
 


While the platform may be a life-saver for teachers and parents, there have been incidents where the students weren’t too happy about their information reaching their parents. “We have had cases where we receive emails from students saying they don’t want their marks to be shared. We’ve even gotten emails from parents who ask us why their kids should be compared with others. So we take those complaints into consideration,” says Bala, and adds, “The report which goes to the parents is completely controlled by the school. We don’t share any data which the school doesn’t want to share.”
 

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