Why A School Management System Is The Need Of The Hour?
The advent of technology in the classroom is great, enabling personalized, mastery-based learning. Technology saves teacher’s time and equips students with the digital skills needed for 21st-century careers. During the time of school shutdowns and remote learning, education technology like school management systems has become a lifeline for the continuation of learning.
As of April 15, 191 governments closed K-12 schools in response to the global pandemic outbreak, affecting almost 1.6 billion students. However, school management applications and controlled pilot studies have shown very meaningful improvements in student outcomes through personalized and blended learning.
As school authorities begin to prepare for a return to the classrooms, decision-makers and parents are worried if the education technology like a school application should play a greater role in student learning even beyond the immediate crisis, and how can the future be carved. To help answer the question and shed some light on the topic, the article analyzes the importance of education technology like school management systems in 2020 and beyond.
Apart from the educational areas, education technology plays a pervasive role in handling administrative tasks using advanced organizational and centralized software assistance provided by the school ERPs. The ERP software is a set of tools developed to carry fluid undertaking of the daily administrative processes, thus offering easier, faster, and efficient technical assistance to store, manage, and update data.
And that’s where the world leveraged technology to build school management systems to get over the traditional methods of teaching and implement contemporary learning experiences by bringing the 4 Cs together, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Critical Thinking. Of course, as students, you could enjoy the 4 Cs if the world was pandemic free, but now the teachers and educators must find ways to make it happen and give students the experiences they deserve.
What are the Features of a School Management Application that Enable Proper Functioning of the School System Amid the Pandemic?
There are 10 features of school ERPs that help to ease and streamline the administrative processes in a school system.
Flexibility and Customizability
School ERPs have the biggest advantage as their functionalities can be customized to facilitate smoother task management of all the working members of the institution. As every member of the institution gets an individual login credential, they can function independently to fulfill all important and administrative requirements easily.
The school applications enable you with a live update of data at a centralized location and modify data immediately when required. Moreover, a school management software provides data security features like automatic data backup, thus minimizing institution’s investments related to storing data and purchase of storage equipment.
Ease of Functioning with Cloud Technology
With cloud computing in place, school ERPs can facilitate multiple administrators with individual login credentials to use the system simultaneously at once. Let be a teacher, or an administrative staff, both can login to the application at once and perform their duties with no obstruction or harming the application.
With the latest cloud technology, nobody from the institution has to delay their responsibilities or postpone their work. Everybody can work from their respective homes, with respective credentials, and with respective interfaces.
As the system is designed to handle multiple verticals of an institution, the flow between the segments ensures seamless integration with smoother and easy-to-understand transitions, thus needing less technical assistance.
Proper Maintenance of Database and Records
When you implement an application to your existing business model, the first question that worries the decision-makers is the database and record management process. As data is the new oil, every business wants to maintain best in-class technology to protect and maintain the data.
With a school ERP you can easily accumulate data, store, and maintain them. Any information related to the student like the age, class, gender, attendance, can be stored, organized, and modified for later use. With the cloud technology integrated with the school applications, data can be securely stored and managed without the worry of an attack.
Feature of the school application that sends automatic reminders to the parents when the students are absent maintains transparency of information between the stakeholders, thus assuring the users of its capabilities.
Equipments and Formats
With a school ERP software in place, it is easier for the institutions to store, maintain, access, export, and transfer the student files. The cloud-based school management system is agile in nature and can be used in its most effective way possible. It needs very less equipment support for its functioning, thus simplifying the entire process of modifications when needed.
Seamless Homework Management
School management applications are a great way to not just carry on the learning environment, but to process the post learning environment as well. No more manual process of assigning homeworks, tasks, or evaluation. With a school app, teachers can assign tasks through the application, check them online, record the outcome for academic progress and provide feedback. Since most of the responsibility is stored, initiated, and accessed from a centralized location, supervision becomes easy.
No Hassle Exams and Report Management
During the pandemic outbreak, this feature of the school applications has become righteously advantageous. After the knowledge is delegated online, examinations can be conducted using the internet. The student answers can be either manually reviewed by the teachers or delegated to the computers for automatic grading. After the review, the system can generate report cards depending on certain criteria or calculations that you feed into the system.
The report cards can be easily viewed by the students and parents and conduct online meetings with the teachers to discuss further courses of action for progress and performance.
Ability to Keep all Parties Connected
One of the best features of the school ERP is their ability to keep all stakeholders connected. The institution, students, and parents are all on the same page with the application’s notification feature. No information goes out of the radar when passed using the school application.
As the application keeps all stakeholders united, it stores all the data in a centralized location, thus smoothing the flow of information and reducing chances of error or delay.
Easy Payment Management
While it was chaotic in the past to contact the institution for payment details, the school management system makes it easy for the parents to track the payment details by not making a move out of the home. Parents can easily make online payments, track dues, and other payment related information from the notification or the payments section. Also, the application provides the brilliant feature of follow-up, thus making it easier for the students and parents to make timely payments. Being a centralized application, school ERPs securely store the payment details and makes the process easier.
Simplified Inventory Record
Inventory of data is the most crucial for any business, and its management is the toughest job. Institutions house varieties of data ranging from student details, academic records, payment history, purchase files, book inventory, and many more. As the list gets longer, the management of the data seems tedious.
With school application software, you can maintain an up-to-date inventory for all your working associates, students, and parents. Since the system is automated, it requires less human intervention and is error-free, thus giving a transparent picture to its viewers. With the data fed, institutions can track the stock and enable auto-purchase or auto-renewal features.
Streamlined Staff Management
Institutions are not just responsible to maintain student details like their attendance, payment, personal details, etc., but they also maintain details about their teachers and staff for better transparency on their workforce productivity and management.
School ERP facilitates smooth supervision of the teachers and the staff members. With an automated system in place, there is no manual intervention of human activities and every instance of the teacher presence or absence is automatically recorded. Apart from this, every other details regarding leave, salary, arrears, lesson plans, student analysis report, etc. are maintained and recorded. With a school application, as an institution you can track, manage, and modify any details that you want.
Is the School Management System Important in 2020?
Absolutely yes!
School management software existed since 1984, but it took a pandemic outbreak for the entire world to realize its benefits after 35 years. The software is a very necessary tool to revamp the obsolete practices at educational institutions to improve the overall performance in every aspect.
One such school ERP is the Campus On Click that’s striving to provide a seamless education experience to staff, students, and parents, and making the model beneficial for all the parties to ascertain efficiency.