school information system

Salient Features of School Information System – Scholastic Records

Let’s look at the Salient Features – Scholastic Records provide. School Information System is an important part of any educational institute. Not all School Information Systems are the same. So here are the most important features that every School Information system must have.

1. Cloud based: System is hosted in secure cloud environment. This ensures scalability with growth in school (in terms of students or classes), as well as availability.

2. Web and Mobile friendly Interface: Rich responsive UI that respects all form factors – browser, tablets or mobile phones and it’s streamlined UI makes navigation and learning easy.

3. Authentication: Every user accessing the system will have to authenticate with pre-provisioned username and password.

4. Role Based Access Control: Users can perform only the actions as predefined for each role. Management can relax without worrying about unscrupulous and irresponsible handling of important data.

5. Self-Serve: Empower Institutions and related users (students and staff) with services that they can use at their pace and time. Some self-serve activities that can be performed are:

Institution Registration: Institutions can register easily any number of schools under their umbrella.
Online Applications: Students can apply for admissions online with any institution registered with the system. Students can choose which class they want to apply for, fill in all relevant information like last mark sheets, documents, personal information, etc.
Track Application Status: Students and staff can login into the system any time and track status of application.

6. Offer Management: Once a student makes it into merit list, student can be informed via SMS about admission offer. In addition, the staff can review applications, documents re-verification, fee collection, etc.

7. Taylor-Fit process to your needs: Customize multiple stages in the admission process workflow to meet different needs. Set admission eligibility criteria and seats for different courses, grades and institution.

8. Manage Seats and Quota: Configure system with number of seats available for each class/course. Also, configure government imposed quota restrictions for reservations and funding status.

9. Manage Classes, Courses, Fields: Configure which classes and courses does institution support. The courses can be further configured with field/branch, etc. The admission system can then be enabled for specific classes/courses/Fields.

10. Document Management:

Automatically generate list of documents required for admissions
Mark and keep track of which documents received from students
Optionally store soft copy of documents on server.

11. Audit: Changes in configuration are tracked by recording which user made the change and when. This is immensely helpful in enforcing accountability and maintaining transparency.

12. Merit Lists and Waiting List: Merit lists can be generated at a click of a button, along with waiting list. Standard algorithm for Maharashtra Board admissions available.

13. Powerful Reporting: Generate powerful reports with charts that provide insights on the number of prospective students applying for programs, seat allocation and utilization to make informed decisions.

Candidate Report
Download applications anytime in PDF
Generate admission merit lists in PDF
Generate admission waiting lists in PDF
Admitted student list for Education Officer

14. Analytics:

Chart demonstrating percentage secured by admitted students
Chart demonstrating percentage secured by all students who applied for admission

15. Geo-Redundant backups: All data is stored in multiple secure servers that are spread across geographical region. This immensely helps in recovering from natural disaster.

16. Notifications: Students receive SMS notifications on their cell phones every time application status changes.

If you are an education institute looking for the school information system to manage all the school or college activities, write us at info@pinnove.com to get Scholastic Records in your school or college.

Manual System Vs Hassle Free Online Admission Process

Computers are not hard to find in administrative departments of today’s educational institutions. A lot of internal processes like fee collection, attendance, payroll, etc. have been automated. Obviously, this has helped the administrative staff immensely. However, there is still a very large population who are directly dealing with institutions, still with age old inefficient processes. The students and parent’s interaction with school’s processes is still rudimentary and paper based. One such area is admissions.

Admissions are still manual in most of the educational institutions. This goes from Kindergarten, all the way to several degree level courses. General admission process is:

Student/Parent buy prospectus from the school.
Student/Parent fill paper-based admission form.
Admission form submitted to school.
Administrative staff take over admission form – collect, organize and process.
Collect and verify related documents.
Shortlist students, invite them to accept admission.
Repeat the process until all seats are full.

The entire processes are laborious, inefficient, error prone and time consuming. long queues of students and parents under scorching sun is not uncommon. Students have to run from school to school, to submit forms in choice of their institution in time. A lot of resource are spent photocopying documents, printing forms, etc.

The cost incurred is not just for students but for institutions as well. Usually, admissions are time driven with a very short window. Schools has to have additional staff to help accept, review and organize documents. While students are queued up, staff also needs to be on the field, to manage queues and maintain order. Selection process is usually rushed and hence error prone. Add government regulations in admissions, the process becomes even more difficult. Being manual, it is hard to audit accountability and impose high standards. Needless to say, a perfect breeding ground for corruption as well.

Fortunately, the process is repeatable and pretty much standardized across institutions. Which means, automation can help here as well. it is high time for schools to adopt online admission processes. A typical online admission will be like following:

School publishes prospectus online.
Students review prospectus and make choices for subjects.
Student open online admission form from their home computer or mobile device, fill it up and submit the form.
Student takes pictures of relevant documents and upload them along with online form.
School can review all the forms along with documents at their office right away.
Smartness is built into Server to organize, sort, and verify information.
With a click of a button, online admission system run pre-configured algorithm to select students and order them in a prioritized list. Top students from this list can now be invited to join the school.
Invitation is sent via email/sms. A list is also published and printed on school premises.
Interested students visit the school with original documents. Verification is done, fee paid and Voila! Admissions done.

Some of the Education Institutes already follow the online admissions system, while most others are yet to set it up. A cloud based application doesn’t cost much but can make a huge impact on your admission process.

Challenges with Manual Enrollment

Student Information Systems have come a long way in helping traditional educational institutions get better in handling processes by simplifying them with technology.

Student admission and enrollment process is one of the trickiest of process for an educational institution. The larger the institution, the bigger the problem. The complexity also increases because of popularity, student/school proportion in an area, and such reasons. some of the factors that complicate this process are:

Time sensitive nature – As it requires lot of time to handle the applications received from the manual admission process and generate the results within the time constraints.
Need for co-ordination – Involves a lot of coordination between the individuals as well as teams to keep the proper process of the manual admission.
Keeping it cost effective – admission process is traditionally very laborious process as it requires resources to maintain and handle the large amount of admission applications. It is a challenge to keep manual process also cost-effective.
Error Prone – The process, being manual, is inherently error prone. Mistakes at this stage cause significant impact to the long term of schools’ success, especially if a deserving student is missed for some reason. Needless to say, students’ also miss the chance to be among the elite that institution offers.
Extremely Slow – Being manual process, the various layers of checks and data feeding involved, the process needs several resources deployed to be efficient. Unfortunately, this means more time in coordination and higher costs.
Tiring – Admissions usually happen in summers. Often students and parents have to stand in long queues in summer heat. Staff members also have to be on the field to manage queues and help prospective students and their care givers.
Eco-unfriendly – Lot of paper-work is required, resources to store and archive the papers which is not cost-effective as well as Eco-unfriendly.
Accountability – Manual admissions process does break inevitably as the institution grows and workload increases. It is also difficult to hold people responsible, thereby making it difficult to improve the system.
Vendors – Third party vendors might get involved in planning logistics. This adds to coordination which is usually not cheap.

To overcome the above problems and to cut down the cost, what educational institutes should prefer is to transform from the manual process to the automated system and adopt the technologies which can be cost effective as well as beneficial for the institutes. There are solutions available now that adopt latest technologies, processes and cloud based infrastructure to keep the process simple, light and gets the job done.