Managing Student Information

Student Management Systems are the biggest things to hit schools since Interactive Whiteboards. This article, the fourth one in my series, focuses on how Student Management Systems can be used for storing important information about students. Obviously, when it comes to choosing your system, you have to be sure that the information stored on it is completely secure. Our school uses Aladdin, which is built upon Google Apps so it’s difficult to get much more secure than that. However, most Student Management Systems are extremely secure so you shouldn’t have any problems which ever one you use.

[label style=”info”]Basic Information[/label]

One of the most important things we need as teachers is to find our pupils’ basic information, for example, their names, addresses, contact numbers , etc. It’s also useful to have information on their siblings in the school. Once we have all this basic information on the system, it can be tied to more complex data like behaviour records, academic reports, test results, special educational needs, if applicable, etc. Aladdin, the system we use, stores further information such as: roll number, medical information, religion (where it’s given), emergency contacts, day by day records of behaviour, attendance, etc., any notes written about the child, any text messages sent to the child’s family, test scores and any money that has been given to the school for the child. We’ll go through some of these in more detail now.

[label style=”info”]Money[/label]

One thing that schools have to take in from families is money. Although primary education is supposed to be free, it is far from it. Families have to buy books, pay insurance, rent supplies, etc. Schools have to co-ordinate this and it can be very difficult using pen and paper. Having a place to store receipts of money is very useful and a resource that we use in our school to help co-ordinate finances. This has a number of advantages. For example, at a click, we can see who hasn’t paid for materials and send out reminders. We can also help families who need to pay for their books, etc. in installments. Whenever they pay, it is recorded on our system. Often there are a few things to pay for, such as swimming lessons and school trips. These can be set separately and can be marked off as required.

[label style=”info”]Reports[/label]

Every year, schools are required to send out an end of year report for children. At certain age levels, they have to perform standardised assessments in English and Maths. Throughout the year other tests may be administered. How can we bring these altogether? Our Aladdin system makes it easy and we can even see their progress tracked over a number of years. This way we can track how children are doing as they progress through the school and pinpoint any problems they may be having.

[label style=”info”]Special Education Needs[/label]

As well as simply labeling children that have special educational needs on a Student Management System, our system allows us to display the intervantions that are being utilised. For example, every child’s IEP (Individual Education Programme) is uploaded to Aladdin so support teachers and mainstream teachers can follow their programme. We also have the ability to store the individual tests that are completed and their progression through the years.

Image from Daily Telegraph
[label style=”info”]Texting[/label]

Having a full list of children and their contact numbers allows much easier management of texting services. This saves us lots of time whenever we need to get a quick message out to families.

[label style=”info”]Lists[/label]

When you have every child inputted into the system, sometimes there’s a need to print out class lists or a full list of the students. With our system, we can choose criteria and print out customised lists of pupils. For example, we might want to print out the names and dates of births of boys under the age of 8 and this is possible. A practical example might be to print out all the children who have identified themselves as Catholic so we can send information about sacraments to them. We can also print out a list of children who might belong to a particular group, e.g. an after school club. There are loads of different criteria and this function is highly useful.

In my last article on Student Management Systems, I’m going to explore some of the bonus features that seem to appear to compliment the administration such as Learning Management Systems, Library Management and Web Sites.

Last Update: August 17, 2017  

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