ERA Award Winners – 2016

“I’m really pleased to say that we are the 2016 ERA award winners for ‘ICT Tools for Leadership, Management & Assessment’ for primary schools. We have made loads of changes to OTrack and its suite of tools since the removal of levels. We now know that we have a pupil tracking system that will help schools, its’ nice that ERA think so too.”

– Tom Parkinson, Director

Read on to find out more about the ERA awards and who we were up against.

What are the ERA awards?

The Education Resources Awards (ERA) are organised by BESA and have been running for 18 years. The awards are well known as the main annual event to celebrate successes for education suppliers and teaching professionals.

ERA state that “The awards highlight and reward the quality and diversity of educational products, resources, services and people… The ERAs aims to encourage the raising of educational services and product standards throughout the industry and is recognised throughout the sector as the Accolade of excellence“.

To see the full list of winners, please go here.

We’ve made changes

Since the removal of levels, everyone here at OTrack has been working extremely hard with schools, we have also spent vasts amount of time with numerous education consultants and advisors. The aim for the entire team has been get an understanding of what schools need and want when tracking pupils’ attainment and progress. At times, the needs of schools have been confusing to us and the schools alike. School management and teaching staff have had to deal with a lot recently; a new curriculum and also the removal of standardised tracking methods. We decided to positively contribute by simplifying pupil tracking at such a stressful and difficult time. We changed OTrack to ensure that, in this time of confusion, our users could have a system that is simple to use and customised to meet their requirements.

Thank you – the hard work has paid off

All our staff have inspired each other through the last 18 months – during this time they have been dedicated to helping schools by listening and feeding back what schools need. Some of the requirements from our users have often been on a tangent to what we had envisaged. Our staff have made it very clear what OTrack, and all its tools, need to do to enable schools can track in a way that suits their needs. The honesty, hard work, determination and dynamic approach has paid off – OTrack is now a completely customisable system that will allow schools to track how they want – this redevelopment has come about because of our customers and staff being forward thinking, determined and, at times, forthright. It was needed!

I am so happy that their dedication has been recognised by an independent organisation and making us the 2016 ERA award winners. Being the 2016 winner of the ‘ICT Tools for Leadership, Management & Assessment’ for primary schools category, it is a great honor and well deserved.

ERA award winners ceremony

Andy Coy and Matt Bramley

Matt Bramley and Andy Coy were at the The National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham on Friday 18th March. They were in their best (and only) tux’s and ready to enjoy the night. We had no high expectations due to some of the names that we were up against, we had tough competition to say the least. The likes of CAPITA SIMS, EducationCity, GL Assessment, Oxford University, RM and Scholastic were nominated for the same award.

It was a huge shock and great delight when it was announced that we had won – Andy and Matt went on to have a great night!

Messages from OTrack

Matt Bramley, Director of Sales and Training:

“Three and a half years ago I took a leap of faith, leaving a relatively safe job in the public sector to join Tom, Dave and Andy at OTrack. The LA that I worked for had used OTrack for a couple of years so I knew how good the product was, but another thing that convinced me was their desire to help schools and potentially change lives. I feel immensely proud to be involved with the company and this award; a culmination of all our staff’s early mornings, late nights and thousands of miles travelling to school has been a big contributing factor to us being ERA Award winners. It’s been hard work but I’ve enjoyed it and I know our staff feel immensely proud!”

Andy Coy, Director of Customer Support:

“I started working with Tom and Dave at OTrack eight years ago, back then there was only the three of us. After two years of laying solid foundations, we started to experience significant growth in schools using OTrack. Since then we have gone from strength to strength. We have grown at a rapid pace and have been joined by various members of the team, ranging from very experienced staff to apprentices. All of these guys have contributed immensely, and played very valuable roles that have helped us win this award.

In a time of change for schools, we have all worked extremely well together to provide support services and a software package to be proud of. To add to this, by winning the ERA award, we now have the recognition from other education professionals who also believe OTrack is invaluable to the schools. I am extremely proud of the team and expect them to keep pushing forward together to continue to help schools with their pupil tracking needs. We have some exciting features coming in the next academic year. Watch this space!”

Find out more

If you would like to find out how OTrack can be customised to suit your needs please get in touch or have a look at our features page.