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SCHOOL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM SOFTWARE GUIDE

The school management buyer’s guide that we have provided is intended to deliver you a profound knowledge and understanding regarding how exactly to manage your day-to-day school operations effectively and efficiently. This guide on school management system software will allow you to increase the management efficiency of your school administration impeccably. In addition to that, this detailed buyer’s guide on school management software will help school businesses as well as organizations to get acquainted with the latest trends in the school management system. This guide will provide you with everything you need to know to get started on it.

What is School Management?

In simple terms, school management means managing the affairs of a school. School management is basically running the school along the desired educational policies. It takes into account various aspects of the school such as policies, material and human resources, programmes, activities, and much more. It integrates them into a fruitful whole and a good school management motives the best efforts of the teachers and students together. For those interested in administration and management in educational or IT sectors, resources like ISACA CISM exam dumps can be useful for understanding management principles in specific domains.

7 Importance of Social Management Strategies and why do schools need to work on School Management Strategies

A strategic plan is very important as it helps a school immensely in defining what it intends to achieve when it comes to their students' success objectives and their own organizational goals. Good planning and effective communication will make sure that all the stakeholders including parents, teachers, administrators, principal, board members and society are all striving for the similar goals. Here are some top reasons why strategic planning in education is so important in today's time:

1) A strategic plan articulates a shared vision, mission and values and strives to achieve the desired results.

2) A strategic plan keeps everyone together in a school right from teachers to administrators and staff.

3) A strategic plan helps in knowing how success is measured in various aspects.

4) A strategic plan effectively organizes schools along with its staff and all important data.

5) A strategic plan largely enhances communication and engagement.

6) The best reason of all for the strategic planning comes back to each and every great school’s number one priority that is their students.

7) A strategic plan aids a school’s board with the governance decisions and shows direction for the future.

What is the purpose of efficient school management?

The main purpose of efficient school management is to have well laid students intakes, curriculum installation, financial management and relationship management, along with its non teaching staff management. School management software can literally enable schools to achieve all of this.

What is the school management software?

School Management Software is an administration tool for educational institutions and this classification comes from the fact that this type of software serves the purpose of helping educational organizations in their day to day routine, by automating all the administrative tasks. School management software is also called as a School management system and this system provides us with the functionality right from applications and class enrollment to performance monitoring and financial management.

What are the school management software modules?

Listed below are the top school management software modules that are widely adopted by many institutes:

• Student module

As the name itself suggests, student module helps educational institutes to manage all the data about the students at one, single place. It also includes all the details about a student's admission, general, demographic, family, health, documents as well as all images from the period the child enrolled in school till the date he passes out.

• HR module

HR module is specifically designed to maintain all the important records of the employees and staff of the school. It includes everyone right from principal and teachers to watchman and peon. In this particular module, the general information records are managed just like that of student records. Attendance is also maintained and recorded. Additionally, leave adjustments can also be carried out from this module itself.

• Resource module

Resource module manages the stock inventory of the organization, asset management of the institutes and it can be anything right from stationary containing chalk and the marker to lab instruments of the campus. Apart from that, library is also well managed by maintaining the records of each and every book and folder in the library from its condition to the student who it is issued to. Although many school software provider do not have canteen management facility with them, but that can be a plus factor for your campus, so consider that too as it can make you stand out.

• School timetable module

This type of school management system software module helps in creating and maintaining the timetable of the students and teachers of various classes. If the subject limit exceeds, then this module sends an alert right then which helps to carry out lectures on time.

• Finance module

In the finance module, educational institutes can manage all the activities regarding fees, deposits, scholarship, accounts and any other financial transaction which is executed. School can assign fees to the students and generate fee receipt according to it, so that the schools can manage deposit made by the students and adjust it.

What are the benefits of implementing school management software in the schools and similar institutions?

The benefits of the school ERP are mentioned as follows:

• Enhances Productivity

The management system enhances the productivity of any institute and the reason of the increase in productivity is the reduce in time to maintain the track records and increased accuracy in organizing the data. Reduce in time leads to keep the institute focused entirely on the productivity of the school.

• Staff Satisfaction

Online school management software allows for easy management and the teachers and school administrators can smartly manage timetables and study material with the help of the school software. As a result, the satisfaction level of the staff in the school is automatically raised.

• Transparency

The class management software allows complete transparency because it is impossible to hide any critical information from the users. On the portal, the exam reports and program fee information can be seen directly by both the parties so that there is no trust issues or misconception.

• Student Teacher Collaboration

Using the cloud based ERP leads to a great student teacher collaboration beyond the classroom walls. This in turn increases the interaction between the staff and the students which leads to better environment and better learning. The interaction happens over the application through online medium where the teacher will be available to answer all the queries of the students. It also facilitates a very friendly atmosphere in the academics which is a win win for everyone.

• Complaints registration system

The web based school management software has an in built complaint registration system which manages the feedback of the parents and the students.

• User Friendly

The online school management software can effectively engage teachers, parents, and students with the help of simple to use user interface. It is easy for the teachers and parents to use a hassle free user interface which provides a great environment of communication.

• Access From Anywhere

This particular software can be accessed from anywhere and at anytime. A record of everything can be securely kept due to its easy accessibility and it also facilitates providing immediate information in the time of need.

14 Other major benefits of school information management system are as follows:

1) Operational efficiency in the organisation's daily works

2) Easy customizations as per the requirements of school

3) Online testing in case offline tests cannot be taken in certain circumstances

4) Increase in enrollment due to the well maintained system and administration

5) Automation encourages smart and error free decision

6) Highly reliable as system barely makes any mistake

7) Improves the accuracy of accounts and avoids any human calculative errors

8) Updates of school activities all on a single platform

9) Keeps tracks of bulk data and has filters to find required data quickly

10) Reduces manual and redundant work of the staff

11) No additional investments for the hardware or even server

12) Easy to monitor individual modules and nothing gets messy and tedious

13) Secured architecture as well as role based access right restriction

14) No significant IT knowledge required to operate the system activities

What are the typical features of School Management software system?

• Align teacher schedules

Most of the school management software will have a separate login for the teachers, where they can easily manage their timetables and submitted assignments from the students. This not only helps teachers plan their class routines with greater ease, but also helps a school’s admin staff to make the required changes in teacher's timetables. Teachers can also schedule class activities and deadlines on the school management software in order to get a notification whenever something is due.

• Automatically generates report cards

Compiling a student’s report card at the end of the year can be quite a time consuming and a tedious process. A student’s grades throughout the year have to be taken into consideration, the correct weightage has to be assigned to each and everyone and then the final grade is to be calculated. A school management software can really simplify the entire process and save huge time. Since grades are automatically recorded on it and kept safe for future reference, it will be able to assign the final grade for each and every student instantaneously within a few clicks. The auto generated report cards can also be sent in no time to the parents and students.

• Homework tracker

A school management software can be used to both, assign homework to students and track the homework that has been received by them. Parents will receive a notification each and every time the homework has been assigned to their child by the teacher. This can give them a clearer view of what exactly their child is learning and how they can support their child in the entire process. Hence, it is very important that the system the school installs, provides this feature.

• Management of libraries

One of the traits of successful and top schools is the extent to which their libraries are in use by the students. Library management software module is a separate suite of services by itself but many types of school management software also come with integrated one. This particular feature allows school libraries to track what all books are checked out, which ones are available in the library, which student has checked out the books, whether the due date has been passed and a lot more within a few clicks.

• Track attendance records

Tracking a student’s attendance is literally one of the most important features of a school management software and a parent or student can apply for a leave directly with the help of the dashboard. This will notify the teacher immediately. Parents and teachers can also keep a track of the attendance record of the students through the software. This can be a huge time saver for the teachers as they will no longer have to actively maintain and update the student attendance records on the attendance file. It also ensures greater accuracy in the data as the whole process is automated and no human input is further required.

• Student profile builder

A good school management software can really give you all the critical information about any student within the institution in a few clicks. Typically, each and every student will have a profile, in which their grades, attendance and all the vital information such as the emergency contact, address, blood group and family details is tracked. This helps the school and parents access information about a student whenever required in no time.

• Send mass notifications

Generally, whenever an imperative announcement has to be made to the students or parents, a school’s administration staff needs to personally call each and every individual or send emails to them. However, with a school management software, this is no longer necessary as now, a school’s admin department simply needs to select the group that they want to send a notification to and just hit the send button. School software also allows the users to send notifications to specific grades within a school, parent groups, as it comes with a lot of filter options for ease in operations.

Other imperative features of the school management system are mentioned as follows:

Profile Management – The software helps manage the information related to parents, staff and teachers.

Fundraising – Schools can easily raise funds for education by connecting with the community and the world through their portal.

Sign-in and sign-out- This feature simplifies the process of sign-in and sign-out with the applications of the school.

Library management- This feature helps in finding, searching, issuing, as well as returning books in the library.

Homework- Students can quickly get the classroom homework assignments daily just by looking at their portal where the teacher has updated the homework details.

Transport Management- It helps in tracking the student’s route change history if any.

What are the latest trends in school management system software?

• Interactive learning

In order to bridge the gap between the students and teachers, school management software companies have come up with a stunning feature called ‘Interactive Learning’. The components of this tool include blogs, social media tools, chapter videos, subject-related games as well as group discussions on the online forums. All of this helps students to understand and retain the subjects in a better manner without getting bored.

• Online payment

With the advent of the internet technology and computers, people now greatly prefer to do their payments online from their place of comfort at any time. Keeping in line with this very trend, school management software companies are now offering online payment feature by using the debit cards, credit cards, net banking as well as mobile wallets along with the standard features offered by the software to provide ease to the parents.

• Mobile App

Mobile phones have literally taken the world by storm and nowadays, adults and children alike have access to mobile phones and their related apps. School ERP software companies are hence gearing up to provide their software in the form of school software mobile app which can be accessed through their smart phones. This has resulted in the many modules and stunning features of school ERP software becoming accessible anytime and anywhere providing comfort to all the respective stakeholders.

• Analytics

Analytics is used by almost each and every industry for operating in a much more effective and efficient manner, because it uses data from different sources and gives brief information in a statistical format for the purpose of organizational decision making process. For this very reason, school management software companies are striving hard to bring analytics into the fore in modules such as examination results, attendance, payroll, finance transactions, etc.

• Handling large data

With institutions expanding day by the day as a result of more number of students getting enrolled in the schools, there comes this main issue of handling large volumes of data of everyone including teachers, students and parents. School management software companies are now ensuring that they develop their software by using cloud storage, in such a way that the software would have the ability to handle large amounts of data effectively, without any technical glitches making it reliable.

• Integration with existing systems

Schools sometimes get their routine administrative activities such as finance, communication, attendance, etc. managed using varied kinds of software. In such situations, school ERP software companies should be able to deliver easy integrations with software that are already being used by the schools instead of completely replacing them altogether and starting with the new one from scratch.

How does a school management system help in managing financial operations executed in school?

Generation of the financial report – It is very important to have safety and financial regularity in the school management system and so, the online school management system allows keeping the record of all the financial transactions pertaining to the school. The financial reports smartly indicate the financial health of the school at any particular point of time and are useful for the management as well as administration of the school.

Performance of Management – The school management system helps you to monitor the attainment of the school objectives and goals in the school administration system. With the help of the school management system, it is quite easy to know how much progress is achieved in dealing with the daily school activities.

Seamless fee segregation – The school administration software greatly helps in keeping track of all information related to the fees of each and every student. The school software can effortlessly show all the information regarding how much a student owes to the school in a few clicks. The school management system also manages all the issues related to student’s scholarships, fines, loans and waivers.

Simple fee receipt generation – The school management solutions in today's time can generate the automatic fee receipt at the time of fee payment to the parents. Such a facility can really help parents to keep this fee receipt to maintain their financial records with them.

Automated fee reminders – The school administration software has made the parents really aware of their dues in the real time and the parents get automated reminders about their dues frequently. They can pay fees on the device of their choice from anywhere and at any time as per their convenience. 

What are the advantages of cloud-based school management software for any institution?

• 24*7 Role Based Access To Avoid Fraudulent Activities

The biggest advantage of a cloud school ERP is that it offers 24*7 role based access to the school institutes which directly signifies that there is no chance of any data theft or misuse. With the cloud, educators can easily and safely allow access to sensitive and critical data to their trust worthy staff members.

• Dashboard Analytics For Smart Decision Making

To picture a pile of scholastic details which needs to be analyzed in order to make informed decisions seems really daunting, isn't it? Cloud hosted school ERP embedded with an analytics dashboard could really be instrumental in helping out the staff of the school and faculty to evaluate the student related with reports which can be generated within a few clicks in no time. You not just need to analyze the performance, but also need to figure out the problematic areas where students need improvement and hardwork. It can really be a boon for strengthening students' academics and getting positive outcomes eventually.

• Unified Platform For Student Data Security

Educators do not need multiple educational ERP solutions as just one school information management system is enough for the institution in today's technologically advanced world. Department wise ERP solutions may become a havoc for student data security and hence, cloud ERP is an apt answer for all the data security issues and drawbacks. This one key innovation ERP saves, stores, as well as compiles the complete data at a centralized location on a single platform. The stakeholders just need to log in through their portal to get access to the required data in no time.

• Easier and Faster Data Management

According to statistics, on an average, around 70% of the time of school staff and faculty members goes into executing non teaching activities. Those activities include manual data management and preparing administrative documents. Even with diligent data entry, the accuracy of data remains a big question as it is something that comes from humans. Cloud software for schools is literally the best in the industry when it comes to error free, easier and faster management of student data. Being a simple to use software, it streamlines all the activities and makes it much more easier for the staff to perform non productive tasks saving a lot of time.

Important Things to consider while purchasing the school management software system

Let us now explore the aspects that need to be considered while purchasing the school software system:

Parent Communication – The school information management system must be able to offer a sound and straightforward communication aspect between the parents of the students and school authorities. There should be a good facility to have a proper as well as efficient communication system with the parents and stakeholders.

Future proofing of the education system – Make sure that your school information management system is well advanced with the automated processes which help in eliminating the paper based processes. Make sure that your school software system is capable of enhancing the efficiency of the teachers and the students in a cost effective manner and can a lot of valuable time.

Goals and Objectives – Before finalizing the school management system software, make sure to consider whether the school software covers each and every aspect of educational institution. Also check whether the online school management system is able to manage the entities such as staff, parents, library, teachers, and students in the organization. Finally, make sure that you achieve your enrollment target by implementing the school administration software in your system.

Remote access and Networking capabilities - Make sure that your school administration software is able to provide remote access to the administrators, teachers, and also to the students with the help of internet connection. The remote access would allow users to complete their work even when they are offsite making then convenient to do so.

Backup and security functions- Your school management system should be able to safely store and protect your valuable data from hackers. The online school management software that you get should have an excellent record of firewall and antivirus protection. The data of your web based school management software should be protected from all the unwanted intrusions and theft with the help and guidance of the active vendor services.

Support and Training – Your school management application should be able to offer a clear and consistent support structure. The support and training team will always be ready to offer quick solutions to the problem that might arise while handling all the educational activities.

Other points to be considered when one is choosing a school management system software for their organization:

1) Properly check if the school management software fits well within your budget and does not compromise on the quality as well.

2) Check the type of school software that is web-based school management software and installation based school management system and accordingly, choose the perfect one.

3) Analyse the size of the school in terms of number of students for which you will need an effective management system.

4) Check who is purchasing the school administration software that is the management, principal, administrators or IT in-charge of the school?

5) Make sure that the school administration software is very reliable and flexible to meet all your demands and working style.

6) Make sure that the school information management system is quite scalable to meet your future requirements and goals of the organization.

7) The student information system has to be easy to use and should be user friendly as well.

8) Check whether the features of the school management software can solve the problems of school management or not.

9) Consider the size of the student and faculty in your school set up and ensure that the school management app offers full transparency to the users.

10) Make sure that your school software impacts on the learning process competently.

11) Make sure that the online school management system offers you timely updates that help in experiencing the latest features of the software.

What is the average cost of school management software?

There are lots of factors to know the average cost of school management software and the cost of educational software depends mainly on the size of the institution or business and the number of features that it offers along with the quality of elements in it.

The institutions which run small businesses prefer basic, ground level features of the school management software and hence, their prices are much more affordable. On the other hand, big scale organizations believe in investing in the advanced plans so that they can experience more advanced features. The small scale organizations and startups can marvelously make use of open source and free school management software to benefit their administration.