Do you plan to invest in new Student Information Software for your school, in the near future? If so, you need to make sure the solution you’ll finally go with will have a good return on your investment. And this means that your choice will help improve efficiency, will increase productivity and will satisfy the needs of all stakeholders; teachers, students and guardians included. So, how do you get there?
Let’s start with the basics. Let’s have a look at the reasons that make you buy a new Student Information Software for your school.
What makes you buy a new Student Information Software for your school?
The decision to purchase a new Student Information Software usually stems from the following two scenarios:
You either:
- don’t have an alternative solution in place or
- the system you’ve been using up till now is no longer adequate
To further explain, with no specialized system in place, you’ll sooner or later realize that paperwork and any DIY solutions you may have been using up till now are not enough. And by DIY solutions we mean combinations of generic tools; such as Excel spreadsheets and other tools you may have employed to automate and improve your work. Such solutions are not designed for school management and, as such, they won’t improve your school administrative workflows.
An obsolete system, on the other hand, will gradually fall short in offering the functionality you need to run your school smoothly. And that’s because things change over time. Systems that once seemed to be useful and efficient, become increasingly inadequate in meeting your school’s needs, as workload increases over time.
Now, regardless of whether that decision is exclusively yours to make – i.e., you’re the head of the school or the academy – or not, you first need to evaluate whether the functionality offered within such a system is adequate.
So, if you’re tasked with compiling your infrastructure with independent parts or you just got the approval from your department to proceed with the purchase of a Student Information Software, read on!
Features to look for in a Student Information Software
There is no doubt that a Student Information Software can be a value-for-money choice only if it comes with a list of features that help improve fundamental administrative tasks and processes. However, an important point often overlooked, is that software solutions of this type need not only support administrators’ work routines; but also smooth out the path for all the members of the school community.
If the above is something you need to have for your school, let us introduce you to the world of Student Information Software. We’ve built our own solution, DreamClass, with these aforementioned goals in mind. In particular, we tried to get into an administrator’s, a teacher’s and a student’s shoes; and that helped us develop a list of features that will address all of their needs.
The feature set in DreamClass
So, here’s what you’ll find in DreamClass — or in decent Student Information Software, in general:
Student information management
You get to have all student data gathered in one place. Personal information, contact details and everything you need to know about your students is only a few clicks away.
Admissions management
You can create school periods in seconds, register new students from scratch — or add existing students — with only a few clicks.
Curriculum or Program management
You can create classes, courses, subjects and everything you need to represent the structure of your curriculum. Once you do so, you’ll be able to enroll students into classes, courses and subjects; and build other components on that, such as timetables. This structure will, inherently, help run your school efficiently.
Teacher information management
You can create teacher profiles in seconds, keeping all the information you need in one place. You can also assign teachers to classes; exactly the way you would on paper; but, this time, you get to manage the relevant processes dynamically.
Attendance management
You can track attendance online, produce attendance reports and make attendance records available — if needed — to all interested parties.
Gradebook management
You get all the flexibility you need to create your gradebooks online; and shape them
in such a way that will serve your school needs. You can also create groups of grades and have averages and weighted averages automatically calculated for you.
Tuition fees management
Once you’ve created your classes, you can assign recurring or one-off fees for all enrolled parties. Students enrolled in a class can be assigned said fees; you may, as well, create special fees for each one of your students, as needed.
Invoice management
Apart from fees management, with our Student Information software you can also create and issue tuition invoices. This way you can keep track of all the pending and resolved payments regarding any and all tuition fees.
Teacher’s, Student’s and Guardian’s portal
These types of access to our system will help manage and distribute information among all interested parties. More specifically:
- Teachers are able to create gradebooks, prepare assessments and manage their classes on the whole
- Students, on the other hand, are able to view everything they need regarding their studies, such as timetables, assignments, fees etc.
- Guardians can be involved in their children’s studies, viewing attendance records, performance data and tuition fees.
This way you can get everyone involved in the educational process.
Online payments
Last but not least, both Students and Guardians are able to proceed with tuition fee payments, directly from their profiles, using a secure online payments gateway.
Do it with DreamClass
Now, all these are only some of the features you’ll find in our own Student Information Software. We keep working on new ways to improve your experience, having all school members in mind. This, of course, doesn’t mean that our effort is based on assumptions. Quite the opposite. The feedback we get from our customers works as a compass for us, and helps us make meaningful improvements. And we can do that by focusing our efforts on different aspects of our solution, performing short and swift cycles of development.
Starting your new school period with a new Student Information Software? Try DreamClass!
If you’re one step away from selecting the right type of Student Information Software for your school, we’ve got a suggestion to make: Why not book a demo and resolve all of your questions as to how our solution can be of help for your school? We’d be happy to give you a call!
Alternatively you may give it a try, for free, and see it in action for yourself. That ought to clear things out! If it’s a good fit for your use case, you’ll know!
