"99 percent in mathematics, 98 percent in chemistry, and 93 percent in physics" These marks and percentages reflect excellence in academics and are the benchmark for the best scores in examinations. In fact, the 90 percent margin is the ideal score bracket that most students strive to attain.
But is scoring high marks the ultimate goal of education? The answer is obvious and lies in moving beyond the traditional exam-centric academic system. Opting for a comprehensive approach through modern tools like student information systems is the need of the hour.
But how can student information systems help track and ensure students’ success? Let us take a look:
Attendance Management
There is an undeniable connection between students’ attendance and their progress, and teachers are well aware of it. Besides, they are responsible for recording the attendance and maintaining the students’ records accurately.
By the end of each month, they tally the number of present and absent days for individual students and make an elaborate report. Therefore, it takes a considerable amount of time to carry out attendance-related activities.
However, with the help of the student information system (SIS), teachers can automate most of such activities and do the following:
- Automate attendance tracking.
- Secure student data in a central location.
- Provide easy access to attendance records.
- Teachers can monitor student attendance patterns.
- Generate automated attendance reports.
Teachers and administrators get a detailed view of the attendance pattern of individual students, helping to identify frequent absentees. Therefore, they can take appropriate measures to manage absences.
Parent-Teacher Communication
Parents-teacher meetings are key events through which the teachers can meet and interact with the parents. But at times, when parents fail to make it to the meetings, they miss out on getting key information about their child or children.
On the other hand, when teachers ask the students to relay a message regarding any disciplinary action, they may or may not relay it. Thankfully, they do not need to rely on the traditional mechanism to communicate with students’ parents anymore.
In fact, that is where adopting modern tools like school management software provides essential benefits. The software provides a variety of communication mechanisms, enabling teachers to send important messages and notifications to parents directly.
For instance, they can send messages regarding the upcoming parent-teacher conferences and students' performance progress reports. Furthermore, it helps to maintain smooth communication between teachers, administrators, and students.
School Management Software - A Complete Guide
Streamlined data management
One folder for attendance, one folder for examination questionnaires, and another folder for grades and scores The file and folder system has been the primary and crucial method of organising institutional documents.
Nonetheless, it is a manual process that requires regular admin intervention to ensure proper upkeep. Besides, when a stakeholder or an admin requires a particular file, one may need to sort through many folders to get the right one.
Teachers and institute team members can save time and effort if institutes adopt SIS in their systems, which helps streamline data. For instance, they can store and manage all student-related data, including grades, attendance, exam schedules, performance reports, etc.
Advanced Data Analysis
What are the underlying reasons behind the continuous underperformance of particular students? What are the essential factors that led to the improvement of students within a certain period of time?
These are some examples of queries that teachers can find the answers to with the help of SIS. The software has a built-in mechanism that provides vital data insights to teachers, helping them discover trends and make decisions accordingly.
Furthermore, the student information systems generate reports on varied critical academic areas; hence, the teachers analyse the student performances. Consequently, they can assess the effectiveness of the instructional methodologies and take strategic actions.
For example, they can implement appropriate teaching and learning styles based on student data analysis. Therefore, they can improve the individual students' performance.
Monitoring student progress
Traditional methods provide a limited scope for assessing students' progress; on the other hand, the modern tech-based approach provides a data-backed method to monitor their progress or decline.
For instance, the tool facilitates efficient student data management and provides a convenient platform to track student progress. In fact, teachers can identify the particular weak and strong areas through the data analytic dashboard.
Also, they can send individualised feedback, allowing students to get insight into their performance in real-time instead of waiting for results months after the examination.
Simplifying Student Data Management: The Role of Student Information Systems
Grade Tracking and Analysis
The post-examination process is just as important as the pre-exam one, and it includes elaborate methods of evaluation. In fact, teachers spent additional time and effort evaluating the answer sheets, calculating the marks, and preparing report cards.
Thankfully, such manually intensive and time-consuming tasks are no longer the only option, as SIS simplifies the evaluation and grading process conveniently. In fact, the software comes with customizable grading scales, helping to calculate GPA.
Also, it allows the teachers to streamline and record the grades and scores of various assessments accordingly. In addition, it provides other features, such as:
- It helps generate report cards and progress reports depending on the grading data.
- Teachers can obtain a summary of student performance and gain insight into areas for improvement.
- The software also helps to create official transcripts, providing details of students’ academic history, students’ courses, and the grades that they earned.
- The software provides an easy-to-navigate platform through which teachers can track the learner's academic journey through grades, performance decline, and progress.
Data Security
Security concerns are critical aspects of online data storage and technological solutions, especially because both are essential to function efficiently. Therefore, compromise in any of the areas leads to the exposure of crucial information.
However, with the student information systems, one can be stress-free, as they provide advanced security features through the following:
- Restricted access to institutional data.
- Role-based access to student data, including attendance, performance, and academic reports.
- The data encryption mechanism prevents security risks such as data breaches.
- Data backup and disaster recovery enable institutes to avoid data loss.