English Language Partners New Zealand (ELPNZ) is a highly-regarded and successful English Language institution operating with 22 centres across New Zealand. Its vision is to support former refugees and migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds to participate in all aspects of life in New Zealand through the provision of English language learning programmes.
Approximately 6,500 learners are involved in the language programmes each year. These are delivered by more than 300 paid staff and 1,000 trained volunteers.
Prior to the pandemic shaking up the way education is delivered across the globe, ELPNZ had adopted Tribal Cloud Services as part of its student management system (Tribal ebs) delivery. This enabled the language school’s small team to rely on a dedicated team of technical experts to help them with monitoring, upgrading, and patching the system.
As Jordi Cordwell, ELPNZ Business Analyst, explains, “ELP doesn’t have a dedicated IT team in the way that some other institutions have. Pre-pandemic, ELPNZ did not offer any online classes to learners across our different centres. Then COVID-19 hit the world, and everything changed, including the way in which education is delivered and managed.
“Having ebs in the cloud was a godsend during the pandemic. We transitioned to online classes very quickly and also changed some business processes which necessitated some adjustments within ebs. These changes were able to be rapidly implemented and facilitated the management of our business through this changing environment. Tribal ebs has been very adaptable and flexible during the pandemic which we’ve been super grateful for. I believe it would have been very difficult to achieve the same results with our old system.”
With a sudden shift from face-to-face to online learning globally, a negative impact to the education market was bound to happen but surprisingly not for ELPNZ. With their system already set up in the cloud, they were in a good position.
“I don’t think we would’ve considered online classes before the pandemic. We now have some learners who have only ever attended classes online,” says Cordwell.
The combination of Tribal Cloud Services and Tribal ebs provided several benefits, including:
As an organisation in the education sector, ELPNZ was well equipped to handle the challenges brought about by the pandemic, and the organisation is now future-ready. ebs delivered in the cloud provides the flexibility, agility and technological advances that has allowed a small team and no dedicated IT department to quickly adapt to the changing landscape.
“I feel that whatever the future brings we’re ready with the Tribal products that we’ve got,” says Cordwell.
Tribal Cloud Services enables you to move your Student Management System to a managed service. Our expert team can take care of the day-to-day running of your system to handle all the demands of the modern institution, freeing you and your team to focus on strategic projects and the things that matter most.
Our Cloud Delivery solution reduces any security, availability or peak usage concerns thanks to an architecture purpose-built for your student information system, allowing teams to work remotely and still deliver exceptional education experiences.