10 Things a School Management Software System Should Have

Over the past few years, School managements and teachers around the world have got very excited by web based school management software. Basically, web based school management software allows to have access to any administrative information about the educational institutions. For example, student’s attendance records, school policies and contact details of parents can be easily accessed with a click or two of a button. In this article, I look at the ten things which every school management software should have.

1. Electronic Roll book
This is the major reason that I have decided to get web based school management software for my school despite the fact that we still have to fill out the traditional attendance register. A good and quality electronic roll book will balance the numbers at the end of each term to save teacher’s hours of frustration. Good roll book will take very little extra time to fill out if everyone is deemed to be automatically present initially. However, a teacher can simply mark the absentees.

2. Electronic Notice Board
We don’t use the blackboard or whiteboard in the staffroom for messages and notices. Some Web based school management software contains electronic noticeboard. This means that any staff and any teacher can post a notice up about anything. Another big advantage is that people can response to notices if they feel like. School ERP system use this to do anything posting up web links of interest to organizing staffs and teachers night out. I also find that it cuts out the invisible hierarchy that traditional whiteboards or a blackboard seems to create.

3. Integration with Google Calendar
Personally, I feel, Google do the best calendar. If one can share their educational institute calendar with any other calendar in their lives and allow it to appear on web based school management software, then it’s a win-win for me. A stand alone calendar is acceptable.

4. Web-Based
If I want to access information about any particular thing of my school, I’m not necessarily in the school when I want it. Web based school management software allows me to access the information anywhere including my smart phone. Those who don’t sell web based school management software will argue that it is not secure. I believe this argument to be dated as web based solutions are now recognized as being extremely secure.

5. Easy Printing of Class Lists
There may come a time where school asks to send lists of pupils to different agencies. A quality school erp system will allow you to create lists on the fly whenever you need it, for example: anyone who goes on the bus, any child under the age of 8, etc. It is also a good idea if only that particular information that is needed can be filtered rather than having to print each and every details of every child.

6. Search Function
This is probably more applicable to bigger institutions but if young Sachin Tendulkar has smashed his head open, the quickest way to get his father’s number would be to simply use Google-style search function for his name. Other useful search ideas would be for any keyword in documents, policies, etc.

7. Document Storage
Being able to store documents in web based school management software is a handy feature. Instance, I can store all the school’s policies in a single place for teacher to look at. Google Docs is an even more powerful solution, so integration with that would be more beneficial. Therefore, even better again would be the ability to store assessment results, for example MIIST, Sigma-T etc. Better again would be comparison lists results of these assessments. Another important document to store might be student’s results each year. A report generator would be a welcome addition as these takes ages.

8. Social Bookmarking
I don’t think any web based school management software has this feature but teachers love sharing links to informative websites. Through tagging Bookmarks, a nice list for any school could be very useful. If this was shared amongst the whole community of other schools, a huge databank of informative links to web sites could grow extremely quickly. Right now, I use a link to Google Bookmarks.

9. Money Collection
There was a time that student give teacher money. It is very effective to have a list of your class online where you can update what they have paid you and on which day. Again clever use of lists can make this appreciable.

10. Yard Duty Timetable
I feel every educational institutions does yard duty so why not have it on a web based school management software. It would be even better; the web based school management software could automatically generate a fair timetable for all teachers and even analyze the number of hours completed.

There are plenty other things web based school management software offers and these are just some of the many features that they generally have. Therefore, I think it the best that web based school management software stick to management options and should not try to do too much, for example lesson planning.
As tradition with these top 10 lists, I have to put in a bonus list, so here I go:

Bonus List: Parent Teacher Meeting Timetable Generator
Trying to inform parent about the parent teacher meeting is one of the nightmare. One has to fit siblings together. One also has to make sure that support staff gets to talk to parent after or before the teacher. It takes long time to get it manually, even that there is tons of mistakes. As a web based school management software will have access to each student and their relationship to their siblings in the school as well as support every single information, a computer program might have more luck.

I hope this article proves to be useful in choosing right web based school management software for your educational institutions. If you have got any queries, please comment below.