School information system

Schools must collect and analyse the information they have, to support meaningful decision making and collaboration. Today, information is collected by schools, but large part of this is only for reporting to the supervisory authorities. If a BEO asks for a report, the school will collate this information and share. This perspective is also the cause for centralised school information systems that have been designed, the UDISE system is intended for use by authorities at national levels, and not intended for local use. Here the school's role is to collect and supply, not to process and locally use. To collect and process large volumes of information from thousands of schools, complex applications are designed and implemented. These are not accessible to the schools.

School data for school's use

However, the most useful place for the school's information is the school itself, where granular/detailed data can be used, whereas at higher levels, data tends to be aggregated for macro decision making support. Collecting and analysing information is an important responsibility of school leadership.Often schools do not have information about their own working in an accessible form for supporting their decisions. In such a situation, decision making can tend to be ad-hoc and even arbitrary. However, school related information can be collected by the teachers and school staff using simple methods, analysed and reflected on, for supporting evolving shared understanding of the school and also for local decision making. The aims of such local/bottom-up approach to information management can include

1. Becoming more aware and informed about school processes, as well as perspectives of different actors - teachers, students, parents etc
2. Using the information to evolve shared understanding amongst actors. Many times the actors in the school may work at cross purposes if they have a different/divergent sense of the school contexts. Providing all actors a coherent set of information can allow for differences of views to reduce / support greater cohesion of perspectives. Also the data can be challenged by actors who have a different 'sense' and such a process of reconciling diverse perspectives can also improve the quality of information collected.
3. decision making on school priorities with respect to infrastructure
4. decision making on school priorities with respect to academic approaches/processes. Teachers can discuss amongst themselves their ideas of educational aims and processes, when they collectively review the work of their students. This process can support peer learning and evolution of shared understanding (of course this process needs to be facilitated well to get this benefit)

Centralised decision support v/s participatory bottom-up decision support

ICTs can be seen as 'pipes' through which information can be sucked easily to support centralised oversight and control. This 'ICTs as pipe' is also the basis for academic programs which 'supply' content to schools for use. A contrary perspective on ICT use, looks at ICTs as methods for promoting participation and local processes.

Looking at data collection and information analyses for local use is a completely different bottom-up perspective. The difference between the two perspectives (information collected for upward transmission v/s information for local use) can be summarised below:

1. Top down v/s bottom-up
2. Complex design v/s simple design
3. Schools as collectors and suppliers v/s schools as participants

The capacities of teachers to collect, analyse and use the information, as well as designing very simple applications needs to be the focus here. Such an approach is discussed here.

School Information

The possibilities of analysing data for local decision making as well as supporting collaboration can be as follows

School Infrastructure management

Information about school infrastructure can be maintained and shared through the school wiki. Actual information of the school assets can be maintained in a spreadsheet. This can easily provide information about cost and age of asset, provider, custodian, location etc which can help in maintenance and replacement.

School Academic Process support

CCE is mandated in schools and teachers record student wise academic performance for computing grades. However, this need not be an administrative activity. This information can be recorded in granular manner for each student and analysed by teachers in the school to get a better idea of the student academic profile. The teachers teaching a particular section can look at the student CCE information across subjects together, to share their views on each student, to both understand each student from multiple perspectives and also to understand one another better. Such common reviews can be used to build a shared understanding amongst teachers not only about student profiles and achievements, but also what the school's perspective and thinking needs to be about the aims and processes of education.

The CCE record can be maintained simply in a spreadsheet. One book for each section, with one sheet for each subject can be maintained. The student name, roll number can be maintained once and linked to all sheets. The student assignment, comments on student performance and marks/grade information can be maintained in the book. Using spread sheet features, the simplest and most obvious possibility is to automate grade computation from marks. However, much more than this, reports on student performance across subjects can be obtained for providing inputs to teacher discussions and reviews. Reports required by supervisory authorities can also be obtained.

School Community relationship support

Information about parents is part of the student register. Information about SDMC members can also be maintained in a spreadsheet. Reports of parent teacher interactions can be maintained and shared through the school wiki