IT in education: Back office systems

Imagine your school and you would imagine the classroom. That’s where student spends most of his time at the school. But behind the scenes there is a lot more to a school than classrooms. Apart from SMART board not much Information Technology (IT) has entered the classroom. But there is also a staffroom and admin room. IT has crept into those rooms since long and has shown considerable improvement in manpower productivity and improvements.

Take for instance mark sheets. Earlier the “report cards” were handwritten. Now CBSE schools have complex mark sheet which has a formula to derive annual marks based on the child’s performance in exams held during the year. Made manually these mark sheets would have a high chance of errors. It would take more time for marksheet preparation than paper correction if done manually. So IT has come to the rescue and most mark sheets of CBSE schools are generated by software.

Certain schools have automated the routine process of attendance taking to such a level that if the child is not present in the school the parent gets an SMS in 30 minutes of school getting started. This prevents school bunking and timely steps in case of an untoward incidence. Some schools give automated weekly reports over email about their child’s attendance in comparison with the class, for parents to evaluate how much the child is attending school.

Data gathered by such software can be subject to varied analysis. Like correlation of attendance to academic performance, if we just put the above mentioned data together. Software can used to track child’s height and weight increase as compared to the class. So in case the child is falling behind, parents can be alerted timely.  

An important use of IT is in evaluating answer sheets. OMR – Optical Mark Reader – is one such innovation which has helped evaluation of million plus candidates in matter of weeks, with much less errors than manual paper checking. Of course the next evolution in assessment is Online Testing where candidates give tests on computers and get assessed immediately. SAT, GMAT, GRE are examples of such tests for getting admissions to colleges in US. It is well accepted practice in developed countries since more than 2 decades.

Several schools have adopted various mediums to keep in touch with parents for day to day syllabus covered in the class. This helps students who are absent to catch up immediately and also helps inattentive students to stay on track. Some schools have adopted App based communication while others have created their own portals. From these communication mediums, additional worksheets, circulars and marks are also distributed.

Thus we can see that technology has started playing a vital role in school education even though it has limited application in the classroom.