Running a school is both rewarding and overwhelming. The things that have to be done in order to manage a school is a long list. From managing students and teachers, fees, admissions, report cards…the list goes on. This is why having school management system software that can help aid the school is important. 

What is School Management System?

A school management system (SMS), also known as student information system (SIS), has become an important tool for schools. Purely web-based, it helps to ensure that school management is running smoothly and enables collaborations to be done easier. Since most SMS’s are centralized and online, this helps the faculty members to communicate better with each other and with students and their parents. 

With schools having to worry about budget costs, new students, and staff shortages, having a student management system helps to lessen the burden. An effective SMS can lower overhead costs, improve campus experience, and overall boost students’ education experience causing them to be more satisfied. 

How SMS can help schools?

There are a number of advantages when having an SMS for a k-12 school. The main one being that it doesn’t matter what type of school you have, the correct SMS can help you.

Since the SMS can handle administrative and organizational tasks, such as attendance, payment collections, and student admission, easier staff management, and better communication with the parents. With everything in one place, not only does this allow easier access for everyone that needs access, it streamlines your whole record system. 

1. Stay organized

The key for any school to function smoothly is by staying organized. This can definitely be done with the help of a school management system. 

A key feature is how the system can help teachers is by having an interactive teacher database. This allows teachers to easily enter important information that administrators will need. The ability to file reports, create reports and transcripts, view the class schedule, or create new classes is now easier and more efficient for them. 

Even conducting exams online can now be done effortlessly. Teachers can upload exams, homework, and create the quiz or exams and the system can ensure that the students don’t cheat. Students can even edit their answers before submitting the exam. 

Which showcases how an SMS can help create things more simple for students as well. Getting information from teachers, uploading assignments and exams, and downloading teachers’ notes, all of these are now part of e-learning. With all the assets now online, accessing them is now straightforward. 

2. Quick to take school attendance

Taking attendance may feel like an easy task to do, but for teachers, it can be time-consuming. Plus with software helping to take attendance, teachers can add this to the reports quickly as well. 

Teachers are also able to enquire about their students to the parents, informing them that they are absent. Parents can then let the parents know that they have sick leave or there’s another reason the parent has let the child not go to school.

Parents can also quickly find out if their child has actually skipped school.

This can then be recorded in the disciplinary feature of the SMS. All this can be done in real-time whilst saving time. 

Some SMS’s also allow a feature whereby parents can take the attendance of their kids. This is especially helpful for schools that are offering virtual classes or hybrid options. 

Having a school management system showcases how it can help schools to offer more options and flexibility to their students with a simple attendance feature. 

3. Effortless Payment for Fees

Managing school fees has always been a time-consuming process for schools. Yet it is extremely important and hence an efficient SMS needs to be able to handle fee payments. Keeping track of school fees, applying them to the correct students, managing incoming payments and receipts, making invoices to send to parents when they are due, this is some of the tasks an SMS handles. 

It is important that your software helps you to streamline this whole process. With an effective software, this will not only keep you organized for fee payments but also save your staff time. 

Plus with online payment, parents are able to safely and quickly make payments at the comfort of their home. Gone are the days when schools would have to physically go to the bank or the school. 

4. Open communication with all stakeholders

With a school management system, your school faculty will be able to have a more open communication with students and parents. Your whole school can communicate easily with each other through the different portals this software can offer you. Special student and parent apps are usually available, especially a mobile app.

All the communication can be done straight-away from your phone. Any questions or concerns anyone has can be done right away, even if it is school administration to parents. Whether it is by text, voice message or email, these types of blasts can be done in a shorter amount of time. Less delays will also occur with messages being sent out instantly. 

For example, if there is a sudden storm near the school, the principal can notify parents that school is closed for the day. 

Being able to have good communication within the school helps the school environment to be healthy and transparent. Feedback is also communicated better to the school faculty. If there is anything that needs to be address or changed urgently, it can be done once the staff know what the problem is. 

5. Easier student admissions

With everything online, if a new student needs to transfer to a new school, all the information can be sent to the school easily. Handling student admissions become simpler. The school has all the important information they need about the student, such as previous grades, any misdemeanors, classes they are interested in, and even any questions they or their parents may have, all online.

The school’s admissions office can now manage a large amount of information required in an extremely convenient way. Any chaos that used to happen before term starts will now be solved with this online software. Human error will also be minimized with an online system. 

Once the student has been accepted into the school, enrolling them into classes is also easier with students being able to do course requests online or the admissions office being able to get the software’s help to allocate these new students into a class. 

6. Effortless Scheduling

This leads into our next important reason; scheduling. For schools, especially a high school or college, the school schedule can be extremely daunting. Add in a last minute new student could often cause a huge problem for the schedule. 

However, with an online scheduling system, this now becomes a breeze. By simply uploading your teachers and students course requests, let the software create your school schedule for you. Plus, most management systems will also allow you to make some manual changes if needed. 

With this sort of system, having new students at any time of the school year is now possible and much easier to manage. Especially if you have a school master schedule software. 

7. Gateway for parents

For any school, it is extremely important that you have a good relationships with the parents. After all, they are the ones deciding on whether their child goes to your school. Connecting your school to them directly and instantly helps to form better relationships. 

Parents are able to be informed about their child’s progress instantly.

It also helps their child’s relationship better too. Knowing which class they had or helping with homework. They know which subjects were discussed that day simply by looking at their phone on the parent portal app.

Parent-teacher conferences are still important but instead of the parent only learning about their child at the middle of the term, they will know at every step. This helps if there is a problem going on and parents can act accordingly in a quicker manner, enabling to help their child before things could get worse. 

8. Effective school staff management

A school management system has shown to help teachers, parents and students, but it not only benefits them. It can also benefits your other school faculty. Administrators and principals are able to track staff’s and teacher’s attendance and performance better.

This can help school leaders to make better decisions on hiring or training staff in order to improve staff performance, which would hence also improve student performance. 

Having a good success rate in different departments is good for the school. They will be seen in a better light, helping to attract more families.

Will an SMS be good for your school?

We may have peaked your interest in learning more about a school management system and whether your school should make the switch to an online software. With these important reasons, we hope we have helped you in realizing how this software will definitely help our school in more ways than one. 

From completing daily management tasks in a shorter amount of time, to automating and streamlining tasks such as scheduling, and helping to form better communications with the whole school community, a school management system will make things so much more easier. 

But you don’t need to truly believe us. How about trying a free trial with QuickSchools and see exactly how it can help! Sign up today!