From whatever angle one looks at it, school records as documented evidence of what a school does is quite imperative in setting educational agenda.

These records contain valuable data and information about various aspects of a school’s operations, including data about its students, teachers, classes, facilities and finances.

 The main purpose of typical schools records management system (SRMS) is to systematically record, store and update the school’s records.

The place of this process in governance can never be over emphasized because government functionalities, the legislature or donor agencies who are responsible for making education policy and for planning and managing the education system have come to understand that both the quantity and quality of data needed to support evidence-based decisions improve when schools systematically maintain and use school records.

For the schools involved, improving data and information management is crucial for decentralized management and accountability in the system.

Advertisement

 And the implementation of a SRMS can help to distribute accountability throughout the school system, propelling the schools to better inform and cooperate with their local communities.

However, with the adoption of information communications technologies (ICT) as panacea in our daily living, ProSkool Communication’s complete school management software that helps schools take the tedium in managing records is worthy of our attention.

Result focused schools have seen it as a necessity. Afolabi Temilola, proprietress, High Gate School, Oshodi, had at a time attested that this software makes work efficient and helps teachers who are not computer literate to become literate.

What then is ProSkool? Ifeanyi Edward, managing director, Proxynet Communications, explained thus, “Our Software –

The ProSkool is complete school management software that has changed the DNA of many schools. It is a prescription that manages both students and staff records seamlessly, thus simplifying school management procedures”.

Advertisement

Beauty of this resource lies in its ability to simplify task and make records useful.

Having won rave reviews, and attention primarily due to its simplicity of use, scalability, customizability and variety of features and benefits it offers, ProSkool features searching or traversing of records by name, which is a partial listing of the users version.

The developers stated that it has been equipped with the facility for processing records by name rather than students or staff ID.

The software contains sections that can be traversed by name such as student’s data, billing, staff records, and staff payroll.

On child vaccination schedule, Proxynet made us to understand that this feature “enables the school management to ascertain how many students in the school that falls into one vaccination schedule or the other.

Advertisement

With this information, school management can easily follow-up each parents to know their children’s protection status against infections common to their age group”. It is very ideal for schools that have a Crèche to adopt this medium

Furthermore, it has an improved Billing System; through the fee configuration tab new fees can easily be added or removed at volition.

 Confirming a student for billing will load all fees and the amount will automatically be indicated after specifying the fees as part of the bill payable by a student. Subsequent billing for students in the same class can therefore be achieved by loading and editing as appropriate.

Just like a pocket diary, Proxynet’s school records management board integration offers a centralized approach to meeting notices, happenings in the school, upcoming events and so forth and also allows for comments where necessary.

In a networked environment, each staff will obviously see all these on the Proskool notice board and track events without having to wait for any meeting time which is latitude to enhance productivity.

Advertisement

With Proskool V1.1 solution is even convenient to pre-format mails before sending them either over the intranet or internet. Some of these editing features are font name and style, font style, alignment, among others.

Again, Edward confirmed thus, “This ensures that all mails sent out are professionally done as the people’s perception of a school is very important. Internal Messaging (Chat): For real time sharing of information between staff, an internal messaging system has been included in this version. This further enhances work output as urgent information can be easily shared between staff. For instance, the Proskool administrator for each school can easily give support to new staff in the school on usage of modules in the Proskool software or any other form of support as might be needed by staff in an online realtime manner all geared towards enhancing productivity”.

Internally, there is also a mailing system added to provide off-line sending of mails within the school.

With this, sending mails between staff without the availability of internet access is achieved. Ultimately, it reduces the cost of printing and internet access subscriptions while ensuring that information is timely disseminated.

Time table generator appears to be one of the nucleuses because as the instructor section of Proskool it includes days and period an instructor will be handling or taking a particular subject.

Advertisement

This is done when allocating courses to instructor.

All the information provided here are then used by Proskool to auto-generate time table for the school.

This has the advantage of helping to know the instructors taking a class at a mouse click, irrespective of the staff force strength, course period and day or courses offered in the school.

The appealing display also contains a coinage Integrated Administrative Expenses. Under the arrangement the daily expenses provides means of keeping track of various school expenses on a daily basis.

The school expenses are categorized into five basic different sections which include transportation, entertainment, salary/wages, general office and others. In processing these expenses, a column is provided for extra details for description of expenses and amount spent.

Advertisement

Proskool was developed using PHP server-side scripting, MySQL and Apache web server and compliant with all web browser.

Of course, this will be critical in achieving the following eight activities sine qua non in records and information: records creation, storage, retrieval, usage, appraisal and retention archiving and disposal of records.

Its uniqueness lies in its ability to simplify task and make records more useful. If all school managers in your local area, district, province, or country are serious about their practices in school records management, and then supervisors from the States or Federal Ministry of Education up and doing, then what we have as mountain of paperwork must turn to molehills, hence education remains the only currency to buy a lucrative tomorrow.