How Does School Management Software Improve Productivity?

School management is one of the hardest things ranking second to teaching on a Saturday afternoon of course. However, to someone who has never done it before, management is like astronautical engineering, it looks and sounds cool but is very hard to complete successfully. Managing a school is a very difficult job and principals, VCs, directors would completely agree with this. From admissions to attendance, assignments to assistance, fees to fines, transport to time, everything has so many sub-aspect that it gets overwhelming at times. But should it be that way? Should you keep worrying about two different things while your hands are already full with the third? No, there’s a solution and it can take away all the stress and improve productivity as well. We’ll show you how school management can improve productivity as well.

Like Steve Jobs once said, “If you define the problem correctly, you almost have a solution.” So, let’s get started with the problem, and then we’ll move to the solution.

The biggest problem in School Management: Paperwork

It might not come off as a big problem when you read the headline, but when you’re actually out there sorting out paperwork for a complete year, it gets to you. School means paperwork and we get it but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in management. What makes paperwork the biggest problem is not just the management, it’s the cost and resources too. Let’s just take an example, your school has classes from kids group to junior secondary. Each class has 2 sections and 20 students (we know that’s too low). Now, for each class let’s calculate the paperwork.

1. Attendance

You need to manage separate registers for each class, section, so that’s a total of 10*2=20 Attendance registers. Plus of course a staff register.

2. Details

All schools have at least excel level data storage software, let’s assume you have that still most schools ask students to fill up their contact details in certain forms. So, the total number of contact forms will be 20*20 = 400.

3. Assignments

Let’s be honest, some teachers tend to send in a lot of assignments just to make sure the student is up on his feet and learning. Even 2 assignments 5 pages long per year, per subject, per student, would mean 200*8*5*2=16000 sheets of paper. (Assuming you’re giving assignments to classes 5-10, with 20 students per section, total 200 students. Eight subjects are standard so that’s there and 5 pages per assignment. You can look at the total, it’s a huge number.

4. Exam Sheets

Considering you conduct just 2 exams a year, for students from class 5-10. Eight Subjects*200 Students*Standard 10 page answer sheets*2 = 32000.

5. Miscellaneous

There is a lot of miscellaneous paperwork related to the staff, report cards, health cards, library management, stock management, transport registers, we’re not even getting into that.

Now, you have a fair idea of how much paperwork goes down every year. You also know that the metrics we took for example are on the minimum side. So, here’s our biggest problem in school management: paperwork, which can be solved by school management software. Whoa! Where did that come from? Let’s discuss how school management software can solve the first and foremost problem.

School Management Software to reduce paperwork and improve productivity.

We know we took you by surprise when we mentioned school management software. But, if you think about it, that does the trick. The software will essentially solve all your school management problems related to paperwork. Some might consider excel sheets to be an effective solution too, but that can only cover so much and at the end of the day there’ll be too many excel sheets to handle. A school management software like Schoolzpro ERP can solve many problems (we’ll talk about them later) and the first is paperwork. Here’s how.

1. Attendance

Remember how we mentioned you would be using 20+ registers for attendance? Well, here you won’t. You can either link it to get data from biometric or manually enter attendance data within the software. Here you’ll even be able to get the number of leaves taken by both students & employees in a month/year within a single click.

2. Details

You’ll no longer need contact forms, since Schoolzpro ERP is available as a mobile app too, you can’t store student data, on the go. The software will automatically assign, class, section, house, fees, transport, and more to the student’s profile.

3. Assignments

The ERP also boasts a feature to help you conduct online assessments, examinations as well. You can conduct both objective & subjective types of exams using the system. So the paperwork is essentially gone. The best part is you can pull up any student’s any test’s answer sheet within seconds, which is practically impossible in regular exams.

4. Exam Sheets

The same goes for exam sheets. When you can manage assessments and exams using the software you wouldn’t have to manage answer sheets as well.

5. Miscellaneous

A school management software like Schoolzpro ERP has different modules that can fulfill all your management needs. Be it transport, inventory management, report cards, performance tracking, etc. this ERP has got it all.

But, that’s all about the solution to the biggest problem, how does it improve productivity?

Well, if you look at it from a broader perspective, you’ll have a decent amount of time on your hands to handle admissions and focus on results. When the paperwork is the bare minimum, you won’t have to dedicate staff that handles paperwork specifically, rather you can use them on more important matters. Your teachers too will be less burdened in handling those answer sheets, registers, and more focused on teaching students. When teachers will spend the most time in Q&A and teaching, students will get the maximum knowledge and deliver better results. Better results for your school will mean, the reputation and admission base of your school will grow significantly, thus giving a sales boost as well. 

However, the key aspect here is the teaching part. When teachers have more time at hand, they can conduct classes more effectively. They can even hold student engagement activities which at the end of the day will make students get involved more actively. Practical exams/tests can be given more importance as well.

The second biggest problem: Handling different sections of the school.

If you thought the problem was resolved after handling paperwork, think again. Paperwork is just another problem when it comes to looking at managerial tasks in the school as a whole. When you consider giving everything a thought at once, the job suddenly looks too difficult. All the aspects that we talked about in handling paperwork apply in managing too but from a very broad perspective.

Take attendance as an example, the problem that we first talked about was setting up different registers for each class and maintaining them. But is that the only thing we do to manage attendance? No. Besides checking who’s present, the teachers have to complete headcounts, take notes of students absent on exam days, the number of absent students, and more. Similarly, if a teacher is absent, you have to find out which teacher can substitute him/her during different lectures in multiple classes.

When it comes to admissions, we talked about how difficult it is to fill up multiple contact forms, with details and then manage them. But admissions are more than just contact forms. You have to be in constant touch with the prospects, follow up with them, keep a tab on the count of admissions, run marketing campaigns, modify campaigns based on performance, and more. Someone also has to take the responsibility of allotting a section, a house, a transport medium for each new student.

Assessments

Similarly, when we talk about assessments or exams, you know how long it takes to connect with every teacher and then fix a timetable. Once that is done, each teacher has to create multiple sets of question papers. Once the question papers are set, blank answer sheets are either brought or printed. The principal again has to make sure if the course for the exam is complete for all classes. Then you can go ahead with conducting the exam, which is half of the overall job. Next comes the time spent in paper checking, creating report cards, showing the answer sheets to students. All the steps involved in this process are being done manually in schools as of today.

Fees and payments

Collecting fees from students is no easy job! Teachers have to constantly remind students & their parents to pay up fees that too on time. When there’s an activity fee, the process gets even more complicated. You need more than 2 people to constantly check for fee payments. Cheque clearance, dd clearance, updating the status of payment, sending receipts is just too cumbersome and requires a lot of manual effort.

Transport

Assigning the right bus or auto to a new student is a challenging task. At present, the managerial staff just asks the drivers if the child’s home lies on their route and assign the bus. This can be very challenging when you have over 100 new students and you have to allot school buses to each of them.

The solution to Increase Productivity: Different Modules of School Management Software

Imagine the amount of time you, the staff, and teachers will save if they are able to manage all the above-mentioned subsections of a school effectively. The productivity of the school in terms of results will grow exponentially. Once you’re free from the stress of managing so many things at once, you can focus more on putting your teachers on the front line and pushing them to get results. Practical exams, activities, seminars will increase and overall student participation will increase as well. Here’s how a school management software like Schoolzpro ERP can resolve the above managerial problems.

The ERP boasts an online examination module that can help teachers create question banks for each subject. Teachers can pick questions from the question bank at any point in time in the future. Moreover, they simply have to notify the students about the time and date of the exam. They can conduct both subjective and objective exams within the app itself. No need to print question papers and no need to print answer sheets. For objective exams the system even supports auto-checking, so the students will get results instantly. The data from the exam will also automatically be saved under each student’s profile which will further ease out the process of making a student’s report card.

For fees, you can send in timely reminders to parents and also give them an easier option to pay that’s trending. With payment gateway integration, the software will allow the user to generate payment links, that a parent can follow to make payment directly. The status will be automatically updated under the respective student’s profile, again reducing a lot of manual work.

With the transport module of the Schoolzpro ERP, teachers and parents both are relieved. Transport is assigned to the student at the time of admission itself and it is done automatically by the system. With GPS enabled transport, teachers and parents can even track the live location of a student’s transport medium from their app.

Conclusion

By now you know school management software can help save a lot of time and ease out a lot of things. If you use software like Schoolzpro ERP, you will have everything under your fingertips and you wouldn’t have to assign tasks to different people. This at the end of the day will improve the productivity of everyone within the premises. Teachers will have less to worry about, students will have everything at their disposal, and parents will be notified of every ongoing activity. To check out our full list of features either visit our website here or connect with us for a quick demo of the application.