U.K. trust boosts security and learning time for students with Clever Badges

Tyne Coast Academy Trust, located in northeast England serving 5 schools and 3,000 students, transformed classroom efficiency and security by addressing a critical login challenge with innovative technology.

The challenge: Students struggle to safely login and learn when typing usernames and passwords

The IT department at Tyne Coast Academy Trust has been centralizing IT over the past few years and simplifying access was a key need across their schools. They found primary students lose up to 10 minutes per class trying to type their usernames and passwords into Chromebooks. Students used simple, easy passwords to ease the login barrier, which didn’t meet best practices for strong, secure passwords. Steve Downing, the Director of IT and Learning Services, wanted a solution that would save classroom time while keeping account access secure.

The solution: Integration with Salamander Soft powers up-to-date SSO with Clever Badges

To address the challenge, Steve compared potential solutions and selected Clever Badges, a secure physical passcode resembling a QR code. Tyne Coast chose Clever because automated syncs, especially for when new students joined the trust, aligned the most with their centralization goals. C-Learning, Tyne Coast’s reseller partner, recommended Clever as an ideal solution due to automated integrations with major MISes like Salamander Soft and Arbor. Clever’s direct integration with Salamander Soft enabled automatic account creation for new students at Tyne Coast so they could access devices and edtech applications via Clever Badges the next day. 

Clever Badges help us save a massive amount of learning time – up to 10 minutes per class every day throughout the academic year.

Steve Downing

Director of IT and Learning Services, Tyne Coast Academy Trust

The impact: Students immediately jump into learning, eliminating login tickets

Steve’s implementation of Clever Badges completely eliminated login-related tickets and reduced incoming IT support tickets by half. Steve launched a pilot of Clever Badges in one classroom, and teachers’ overwhelmingly positive feedback spread across the trust. Now, two academies and 700 primary students use Clever Badges with the plan to implement it across the other three academies. Furthermore, Steve was able to create secure, complex passwords for all students, ensuring compliance with Department for Education standards and satisfying the requirements of their UK cyberinsurance provider, RPA.

On the first day of school, a student will receive a Clever Badge and that’s all they’ll need. No usernames or passwords, which has been great. Plus, we haven’t had anyone querying, ‘How do I get little Jimmy logged on?

Steve Downing

Director of IT and Learning Services, Tyne Coast Academy Trust