Topic 5: Organisations: School, home and environment

School registration systems

• Used to record attendance
• Used for health and safety- who is in the building and who is not
• Used to discourage truancy
• Used to provide statistics to be used in comparisons with other schools

Old paper-based system

• Used paper registers
• Teachers record marks next to students
• Recorded in morning and afternoon
• Marks added up manually

Disadvantages of manual method for registration

• Registers were often left unattended, which meant students could easily alter the register
• Mistakes in register entries meant registers were very hard to understand
• Teachers were responsible for the accuracy of the registers
• Students could register themselves and then play truant by not attending the lessons

Computer-based methods of registration

Features include:

• Capturing student attendance automatically
• Very fast recording of attendance details
• Avoiding the misuse of the system as far as possible
• Attendance at each lesson is recorded
• Relatively inexpensive
• Ability to work with other ICT systems used in the school, such as the system for recording student details

ICT methods available

Optical mark recognition

• Works by teachers shading in boxes on forms
• Forms are batched together
• Sent for reading by an optical mark reader
• Reports can be produced from the system

Smart cards

• Use a chip
• Chip is read by a reader to record attendance
• Are open to abuse by students (you can give your card to someone else)

Swipe cards

• Plastic cards like a credit card
• Contain a magnetic ***** with data on it
• Students swipe card through a reader
• Their attendance is recorded

Biometric methods

• Fingerprinting
• Retinal scanning

Advantages of biometric methods

• There is nothing, such as a card for a student to forget
• You have to be there to register so no one else can do it for you
• It cannot be altered by students
• Performed in real-time so the system knows exactly who has registered and when

Disadvantages of biometric methods

• Biometric systems are expensive
• There are privacy issues. Some people object to finger printing systems
• Total reliance on the ICT system

Management information systems in schools

An ICT system that supplies information that helps give managers and others the information they need for them to make effective decisions

• Supply information to managers and other staff
• To enable them to make effective decisions

Uses of MIS in schools

• Work out how many students will be in the new year seven and to allocate them into forms
• To decide whether a new teacher should be emplyed
• To work out the best way of allocating teachers and classrooms
• To decide on how best to spend the training budget to keep teachers up to date

Advantages of MIS in schools

• They reduce the workload for teachers in the classroom and in the school office
• They can provide up to date information for parents
• They can support decision making for school managers
• They can tackle truancy effectively
• They can be used to plan timetables

Disadvantages of MIS in schools

• The…