Nigeria’s recession is becoming more evident as individuals and organisations continue to feel the pangs of an ailing economy, and even though education is considered “compulsory”, even schools are not left out of the financial crunch.
There are thousands of schools at all levels of education in Nigeria, but the tertiary ones are those where automation is usually found, from students’ registrations to even CBT exams among others. The primary and secondary schools which are more in number, smaller in size and capacity are however often burdened with managing school affairs with limited resources. They hardly embrace technology to run their schools, and this, experts says could actually help lower their overall expenses, even boost revenue (by developing new streams of income), and also enhancing productivity.
Experts have suggested that school management solution makes the work and functioning of school processes extremely easy to save time and cut down the administrative costs and focus on improving student success.
Ikem Bernard, client awareness and adoption personnel, with SchoolRun software explains that with the revolution of technology to education, it becomes inevitable for today’s schools to be part of the global village, hence, manage more information than ever before. Without a s olid internal infrastructure f or teachers, administrators and departments to share data, critical schoo l and student information can be lost- or worse still – communicated incorrectly – leading to a host of problems that can affect a schools image.
“It would not be wrong to say that the school management software serves as a backbone for any school. To streamline the functions of the school it is important to have school management software. It is one of the modern, customizable and integrated school management software. This basically makes work easier for everybody concerned in the management of a school. This software is one of the most important tools in managing the complexities of school operations. Therefore all processes and operations related to students, teachers, employees, management and courses have to be managed effectively,” said Neethi Srikumar of School Franchise India in a post on the significance of school management software.
Ikem also explains that “to remain competitive, school s needs a simple solution that c an run individual functions,co nnect their entire operation, use the web as a key communica tion tool and simplify day-to- day operationalresponsibilitie s, giving staff more time with students and routing good relationship and/or communication between parents and teachers.”
“More than 95% of the parents, staff, and students have mobile phones, this means that Schools and colleges can reach to parents and students instantly reliably and in a cost effective way. The SMS approach saves time and money for both parents and the management. School management uses this SMS to communicate information about their school as well as about the child to the parents.
“Use of this affordable communication medium requires no technical skills, the validity of the SMS is unlimited, student absent alerts can be triggered after daily attendance records have been made, others are exam/test results/fee details alerts, cost management (notably telephone bills), school circulars / special announcements, reaching each parent privately or collectively, festivals and birthday wishes In bulk or personalized messages, scheduled SMS campaigns at a future date & time, and also information regarding PTM (Parents Teacher Meetings),” explains Ikem.
SchoolRun which is one of numerous indigenous school management platforms in Nigeria, according to Ikem, offers an opportunity to generate revenue, at a guaranteed minimum of 10% additional revenue growth every term from little or no extra input.
“ Not leaving out the primary reason why the school was established, SchoolRun helps improve managerial efficiency and gives you more time to focus on what is really important – the student and their academics,” Ikem says.
He further explains that “As a school owner, we know you want to make money and you also want parents and/or guardians to be satisfied with your services, this is why we consider two options for school fee payment which has proven reliable from our clients testimonies – use of a customized school fee payment scratch card or parents make the payment from the comfort of their homes using their ATM cards, for these, the schools can request us to embed an API of a trusted payment gateway of their choice, one is more advantaged than the other, but they have both proven as reliable channels of revenue generation for the school owner.”
According to EdTechReview; Solutions of this sort, in turn, make it possible for them to cut down on operational expenses by almost 23 percent, followed by 22 percent on administration costs. This is exactly the kind of application schools and colleges can benefit from. A system that allows schools to integrate their financial, ecommerce, inventory management and more into one unified suite of applications succeeds in driving down costs because there’s no longer any need for separate and misaligned systems. Now every communication can happen in one channel.
For platforms such as School Run, other feature rich comparative advantage is the automated computation of marks to get students average and position in each subject undertaken, and also present you with overall average and position. With teachers remarks, when school resumes next and other details. Online Print report card with single click, viewing of marks by management, teachers, students and parents, term and yearly report sheet for students, and detailed report sheet of marks and full performance over the academic year for archival purposes.
CALEB OJEWALE
