Month: December 2014

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“132 school children massacred in terrorist attack”

The news would have horrified parents across the world. It scared the hell out of me too. I wondered, ‘what if this happened at my child’s school? The same sentiments would have run through the minds of millions of parents across the country. Does his school have the means to tackle similar incidents? I did a bit of research and my findings were surprising. Every parent should know about it.

Unlikely but Vulnerable

Schools are unlikely places for terror attacks but they remain vulnerable nevertheless. Why?

Lack of preparation

Be it our schools or our police force, they are simply not accustomed to such acts. The police are used to dealing with criminal activities, while terror attacks are of larger scale, and should be considered acts of war.

School personnel too don’t want to tackle active shootings. They are trained to nurture the nation’s future rather than dealing with such issues. Therefore they are hardly prepared mentally and physically to face such issues.

Attack on our Morale

We consider children to be divine or sacred. An attack on children would be considered a blow to the nation’s psyche. Terrorists would expect it to boost their own morale while shattering ours. They would think it gives them a psychological edge.

MHA’s Warning

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), India has already speculated that large scale terrorist attacks on places such as malls, schools, hostels, etc is a huge possibility. Main reasons as cited by the MHA is the wide spread social media reach and public attention such an attack might gather, and the minimum protection these places have. It serves as further reason to tighten security measures especially at schools.

A Welcome move by CBSE

On April 5, CBSE had sent a circular, which stressed on the importance of having a standard operating procedure (SOP) in case terrorist attacks happen. This circular dealt exclusively with terror attacks. Included with the circular was an SOP created by MHA to act as a guideline for schools to tackle terror attacks. The board has asked all school principals to read the SOP notice carefully and inform the teachers and students of the same. The schools have also been asked to prepare guidelines to deal with a terror attack and to assign tasks to different personnel to act in case an attack happens.

Police tightens security in schools

The Peshawar school attack was a horrible incident and no country can afford to let the tragedy to repeat. The police force in Goa and Hyderabad are hence taking security measures to provide safety to school goers. The Goa police plans to hold talks with school managements to work out drills in case of emergency and also, to increase the security around school campuses. The drive is a part of the initiative by Ministry of Home Affairs to keep schools safe from any kind of terror attacks. Meanwhile, the Hyderabad Police plans to set up guidelines to ensure the safety and security of the students. They plan to join hands with the Education Department to come up with the guidelines.

Students of today make good citizens of tomorrow. Therefore, it is important to impart education to them while providing them with safety and security. In the wake of the Peshawar school massacre, it is important for the schools to take drastic steps in ensuring the safety of students.

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Literacy indicates the social and economic development of a country. A literate person is someone above the age of 7 years who can read and write with understanding in any language. India has come a long way in educating its people and hence, the literacy rate in the country has been increasing with passing time. Here’s a fact check about literacy in India:

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Education is an enlightening experience. It is not simply teaching and learning from the text books and gathering certificates. As far as a child is concerned, this enlightenment first takes place from home, and then, from school. So, to mould a perfect human being, there must be cognition between parents and teachers.

A few centuries back, it was possible only by conducting an annual parent-teacher meeting. But, of course, it is not sufficient to have a better understanding of the students’ track.

Nowadays, circumstances have changed and we have more ways to keep in touch with the teachers or the schooled authorities. Phone calls, e-mails etc. are some of the best means of communication between teachers and parents. But, they too lack consistency.

At present, using software that connects teachers and parents in a short period of time, with accuracy can do wonders.

Why parent-teacher communication is said to be necessary?

We send our kids to schools for development in their career and in their personality. So, it is the responsibility of teachers to inform parents regarding group behavior, attendance and activities of each student.

If anything unusual happens, they must analyze it, discuss it with the parents and find a solution. Of course, parents should also inform teachers regarding the same. A proper interaction between parents and teachers is highly recommended for the progress of the child’s personality and for their safety. If problems are identified earlier, they can be solved easily and quickly.

But today, both parents and teachers are so caught up in their busy schedules to find enough time to discuss each and every happening in students’ routine. Edsys provides a platform for teachers and parents to solve this problem through the ‘Parent Portal’.

Parent Portal – software that connects parents and teachers in a touch

It is a useful software exclusively designed for parents to know what is happening in school, without any delay.

  • Any parent can login to the software application through their smart phones, laptops or desktops.
  • The software always notifies updates and news from the school about the child’s performance.
  • It facilitates constant communication between parents and teachers through the communication centre. Both parents and teachers can monitor the student’s performance and take necessary actions as the situation demands.
  • Moreover, Edsys connects Parent Portal with School Bus Tracking System and this enables both parents and school authorities to track the real-time location of school bus with their electronic gadgets.
  • Through Parent Portal, parents can make online payments such as school tuition fee and vehicle fees. They don’t have to take the risk of sending money with children.
  • Academic progress, attendance, results etc. can also be analyzed with the Parent Portal.

What difference do these software make?

Parents and teachers are busy with their jobs. Therefore, it is not possible for them to watch each and every movement of students. Since parents can get the attendance report, activity records, time tables, calendars, school bus time and progress reports at their fingertips at any moment, there is no need to disturb the teacher by calling them every now and then. Parents and teachers need to call each other only when they find anything troublesome in the students’ track record. Then, they can discuss the matter and check previous records for verification purpose. Moreover, there is no need to spy your kid 24/7 about their expenses and whereabouts!

Smart Cards

Smart cards for schools is an important tool which helps the parents to have an eye on the complete record of a students’ activity. Smart cards provide identification, authentication, data storage and application processing. They complement parent-teacher communication software.

Edsys provides smart cards for schools with which the students can make purchases from school canteen and book store. Parents will get SMS alerts regarding the purchases the students make. Smart cards can also be used to borrow books from the school library.

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Schools not only impart knowledge, but also play a major role in shaping the personality of an individual. What a student learns in school is not just confined to the four walls of a classroom but the whole school environment is a source of knowledge. Apart from knowledge, a student learns lessons of discipline, honesty and cleanliness from school and therefore, it is important for a school to maintain a hygienic atmosphere.

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Hygiene challenges faced by students

There are a lot of issues related to hygiene that school goers have to face every day. Most of those can even harm them for life:

Food poisoning

In August 2014, 88 students in India fell ill and were admitted to hospitals after eating lunch provided by a school. This is not a rare case, the same has been repeating for years. In 2013, poisoned school lunch in another school in India left 23 children dead while 47 children fell seriously ill. Most of the government-run schools and some private schools in India provide lunch to the students. Is the food worth eating? Nobody checks!

Unclean drinking water

In India, 1 out of 10 schools lack drinking water facilities. And among those who provide the facility, no one checks if the water is safe to drink. It was just a few months ago that at least 20 students fell ill after drinking water supplied at school. For students who spend most of their time at school, drinking water is a necessity and it’s important to see if the water is safe enough or they end up being ill.

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Unhygienic toilets

Students learn lessons of personal hygiene from schools. But, what if the school fails to provide a hygienic environment? 40% of schools in India do not have toilets. Amongst those schools which have toilets, majority of the toilets are not in usable condition. The result? Health issues in students.

The solution!

There’s a lot that can be done by the school authorities and government to ensure a healthy environment for students. The authorities, especially those of the school must take initiatives to spread awareness about hygiene.

How to do that?

You can achieve a hygienic school environment in 5 simple steps:

Clean toilets

Ensure the cleanliness and availability of water in the toilets on a daily basis. Also, provide facilities for students and staff to wash hands after using toilets.

Also Read:- 12 Cyber security Tips for Students at Home & in School

Appoint supervisors

Appoint staff to take care of hygiene issues in school.  The staff should ensure that the school surroundings are kept clean and the water and food provided to students are safe.

Launch health programs

Integrate the local health department with the school in conducting talks and seminars to make the students and staff aware of various health issues that can arise from unhygienic conditions and about various health practices to be implemented.

Introduce garbage pits

Create a garbage pit in school where all the waste from class rooms and the school premises can be disposed and burnt once in a week.

A lesson in personal hygiene

A person is always judged by his looks even before his actions are taken into consideration. Therefore, teach your students about the importance of personal hygiene and how remaining clean can keep them away from deadly diseases.

Involve parents

Mostly in rural areas, personal hygiene is not given much importance. Therefore, it is important for the school authorities to involve parents while conducting talks on hygiene.

Celebrate cleanliness week

Encourage staff and students to celebrate cleanliness week at least twice a year by cleaning the classrooms and school premises, thus making them aware of the importance of hygiene.

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Managing timetables, plotting school bus route plans, calculating payroll and evaluating teacher performance adds to the tedious tasks of school management. Education software has been helping schools to manage these activities effectively by lessening the day-to-day time and effort put to complete them.

For instance, managing timetables is a difficult task for many school authorities. It involves continuous updating based on the availability of teachers, time required for each subjects, etc. So what can school authorities do to ease the tension associated with setting and managing timetables?

They can now depend on the timetable management software from Edsys to help the overall administrative functions of a school.

Let’s see what the advantages of using a Timetable management system in schools are.

Reducing paperwork

With an endless list of paperwork, manual school management is always tough and troublesome. But Timetable management software makes it easy for school authorities to manage the school affairs very effectively.

Less confusion

While creating timetables many things have to be taken into consideration like availability of teachers, number of classrooms, allotted time etc. It’s so confusing that errors may occur while setting it. Generating timetables automatically is the best way to avoid this and for that you can use timetable management software which provides a feasible solution.

Generating timetables automatically

Automatic timetable generation will help ease the disorder associated with manual timetable management. One special feature is the facility to generate timetables interactively. This will help in reducing the limitations of manual timetable management.

No more errors

Timetable management software is helpful in reducing manual errors. Sometimes, manual timetables can create confusion among teachers. So using timetable management software can help school management to effectively allot class hours to available teachers accurately.

Substitution management

Managing substitutions in the absence of a particular teacher is quiet troublesome where you need to check the availability and class timings of other teachers separately. But timetable management software can make it easier and hassle-free by providing the accurate results regarding substitution management.

Generating records

School management is not an easy job. The details regarding leaves, performance, classroom activities etc. need to be noted in order to manage and improve it. Timetable management software can be a great help for school management to take care of all the activities of employees. The benefit of generating records on a monthly basis helps school authorities to monitor the data regarding teachers and non-teaching staff in an easy manner.

Pay scales

Preparing pay scales is a tiresome job where leaves of each employee have to be taken separately. Confusion and chaos regarding pay scale can be avoided if timetable management software is used. It prepares pay scales very easily and accurately.

Not just for a single class!

Creating timetables for class itself is a hard thing. So how will school authorities manage to prepare timetable for the whole school? They can seek the help of Timetable management software which help in creating timetable for the whole school. It also helps us in saving our energy, time and money!

Manually managing the affairs of a school is not as easy as you think. So in order to keep up with the changing educational system, you need to make use of technology which will help you attain efficient results. Timetable management software is one such change which you can make in order to make things move faster. This not only helps in effective school management but also contribute significantly to the overall learning atmosphere of the school.

 

Related posts

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Benefits Of Replacing Your Manual School Management With Time Table Management Software

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School management is not an easy task. A person doing it single-handedly deserves much appreciation. Majority of the schools have tried many alternatives to reduce the efforts and they were successful only to some extent. But there is one thing that they can do for better school management-to have an HR department!

You might have seen an HR department in almost every office. The HR is responsible for the creation of a work force and its management in a company. Then why not have one in school? No one has really thought about this so far, may be because you are not sure how having an HR department can make school management an easy affair.

Here’s how an HR department can help in an effective school management:

Recruit employees

Identifying skills of the candidates and hiring them to work for an organization is indeed a very tough process. In most schools, those who interview the candidates may not have received any training in recruitment and therefore, they fail to understand the potential of the candidate and may end up hiring the wrong person for the job.  An HR department can save you from this dilemma. They are professionally trained to recruit an employee and therefore, capable of choosing the right candidate for the job, keeping in mind the long-term goals of the school.

Manage student related tasks

Managing student details is no child’s play; same applies to the management of admission procedures. Student management as a whole requires taking care of the admission procedures of a student, documenting all data related to the student and analyzing their performance and identifying their skills. It is not an easy task since an average school would have more than 1000 students. Who else could take care of things better when it comes to student management, other than HR personnel?

Payroll management and calculation

To calculate the payroll of the employees of a school, it is necessary to calculate the number of leaves taken, number of working hours and many other details of that sort. Recording all these details is indeed a laborious task and you, having other duties in the school, may find it difficult to do. Having the HR department to manage payrolls can be of great advantage since they will update all the necessary details, with less paper work while providing accurate reports.

Performance analysis of teachers

In most schools, contribution by teachers go unnoted mainly because the school authorities are not aware of how the teachers perform in various areas, apart from teaching. If you have an HR department in your school, they will assess the teachers’ performances and bring the best out of them. The HR department can do that in the following ways:

  • Evaluate the performance of teachers based on performance of students, professional knowledge and commitment towards work.
  • Assess the performance of teachers based on certain criteria and then, record the details, which can be used to improve the performance of teachers.
  • Help the teachers in recognizing their potential and help them improve their performance and thereby, enhance their professional qualities
  • Identify the areas where teachers need to improve and train them to perform better in those areas

Secure school environment

News of student abductions, student bullying, harassment of students by teachers and the sort fill newspaper columns every day. This has led to the assumptions that school is no longer a safe place for children. As a school authority, you may not be able to keep a complete check on the security arrangements in school. Having an HR department is a boon then. HR department can play a major role in ensuring safety to students and employees of a school. They are capable of keeping every member of the school united, thereby, providing a harmonious school environment. HR department can ensure a peaceful environment by making necessary security arrangements, thus ensuring the safety of students and employees of a school.

HR department, like they contribute to the working of any other organization in a well integrated manner, can help in the working of schools as well. Therefore, yes! School management can definitely be made much easier by HR recruitment.

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Rima was a smart girl equally loved by everyone at home and school. She was a grade 3 student of one of the famous schools in the city. It was another evening after school hours. Rima waited by the school gate for her father to come and pick her up. The security guard, whom Rima was talking to, had gone to fetch water and when he returned, Rima was nowhere to be seen. Thinking that her father might have come to pick her up, the security guard resumed his work. But the security guard was shocked a few minutes later when he saw Rima’s father, Rajiv, stopping the car by the school gate and walking towards him. An argument followed when they realized that the girl was missing. In between Rajiv’s mobile phone rang. He was shocked to know that his daughter was kidnapped and the kidnappers had asked for a ransom of Rs. 25 lakh.

This is not a rare incident these days.

Children being kidnapped from their school premises have become quite common and their family has to bear with the trauma while it affects the reputation of the school as well.

In most cases, the whereabouts of the missing child remains unknown forever while some of them fall prey to the greedy motives of the kidnappers.

One of the most recent cases is the kidnap of a KG-I student from Maharashtra.

The child was kidnapped from her school premises. But the police was quick enough to trace the culprits thus saving the life of the 5 year old girl.

But not every child is lucky like her. It is a fact that at least 1 child goes missing every 8 minutes in India and unfortunately, about 40% of them have not been found.

The most recent incident that was reported few days ago is another example. A 4 year old girl was kidnapped from the school premises as she was waiting for her father to come and pick her up. The victim’s father got a call from the kidnappers, seeking Rs. 8 lakh ransom, while they were still searching for the child. What the girl’s fate will be is yet to be known.

Why are schools chosen to be the hotspots of kidnap?

Most of the child abductions reported in majority of countries, especially those in India has been from schools.

It is mainly because most Indian schools lack proper security arrangements and they fail to provide proper security to their students. This is not a secret fact and therefore, schools remain the favourite locations of kidnappers to fulfill their motives.

How can we make school a safer place for students?

Student abductions can be prevented at least to some extent if you, as a school authority, attempt to take necessary measures.

Teach them safety habits

In most of the child kidnap cases ever recorded, the kidnappers were people the children knew very well. Therefore, preaching the children of stranger safety is not fully effective. But, still, let them know that every stranger is not bad while every acquaintance is not good. Give them lessons on safety habits so that they can be careful around both strangers and acquaintances.

Let them talk and listen to them

Let the children talk to you freely if they sense anything is not safe. Help them to build the habit of talking to you in times of need so that you can intervene and help them at the right time, thus keeping them safe.

Teach them to seek help

Tell your students to go and talk to an adult they feel they can rely on at the moment, in case they feel unsafe when left alone. It can be the school security guard, some shopkeeper or a librarian. Teach them to deal unsafe conditions with confidence.

Teach them about personal information

Most of the children have the habit of giving away their personal information to anyone. Teach your students not to give any personal information about them, be it their name or details about their family or may be their parents’ phone number to any strangers without consulting with an adult who is responsible for their safety. Teach them to walk away with confidence if a stranger tries to indulge in a conversation with them asking for their personal information.

Teach them to think first

Ask the students to think first before answering to strangers. The best practice would be them avoiding strangers especially if they are alone. And if they choose to talk to the stranger, ask them to keep their answers short without giving away personal information.

Teach them to yell and run

Teach students to yell and run away if they feel that they are in danger. Yelling can grab attention and save them from unwanted danger.

Teach them self-defense techniques

Teach students to resist and stand up for themselves at times of danger. If possible implement activities that teach self-defense in accordance to the age group. This can help to build their confidence.

Apart from all these, check for latest technology that can ensure safety of students in a school and install that in your school too. Let them learn and grow in a safe environment for they are the future of our country!