Nu 6 by CTG, Unified School System

NU6 Paper 3:

UNIFIED SCHOOL SYSTEM:

Bridging Students - School - Parents

By: R090205 (CTG)

Working as a School Administrator at the same time as an instructor needs a lot of patience and perseverance to overcome pressure not only from the students but most especially from the parents. Most if not all parents would want to know (a) the whereabouts of their sons/daughters, (b) if their sons/daughters were able to pay the school fees with the money they gave and (c) the academic status and grades of their sons/daughters to verify if they are studying or not. Parents being involved in the studies of their sons/daughters are common to all levels of education from preschool to high school and even on tertiary level. However, parents with sons/daughters studying on tertiary levels, such as in Colleges or Universities, are letting their sons/daughters to owe their responsibilities and obligations when it comes to their studies. The level of maturity and thinking of all high school graduates are expected to be ready to take the commitment as responsible individual. However, this is not the case in our school. Even our school, as Technical and Vocational Institute (TVI), is considered a tertiary level; we often experience parents who eagerly want to be involved in the studies of their sons/daughters.

Every now and then parents/guardians would call or even visit our school just to check or monitor their sons/daughters. They would even want to know if the student is already in the school or if classes are already dismissed. When it comes to school fees, there were also cases that parents would insist or even willing to argue with the accounting department that they already paid their obligations by giving the money to their sons/daughters but the truth is that the student did not settle the payment obligations and maybe even spent the money on other things. It is just natural for parents to know if sons/daughters are truly studying by knowing their grades which most of the students are keeping their grades from their parents.

These things might sound a little exaggerated, but believe me, these things happen in our school a lot.

With these, we are thinking of putting up a Unified School System, which is not in use in any school that we know of. In this kind of system, all of the above concerns will be addressed.

Below are the following features that our new school system can offer:

1.     STUDENTS' DAILY ENTRY and EXIT MONITORING (Real Time Email and/or SMS Notifications with Pictures)

·        Bona fide students will be allowed to enter the schools not only by using their respective ID's but also using biometric authentication. Through this way, only bona fide students and legitimate visitors will be allowed to enter the school, thus, securing the school premise from any unwanted visitors.

·        All students will be securely monitored using CCTV cameras and they will be taken pictures to be stored in the database upon they enter and exit the school. Parents will be notified, in real time through email and/or SMS, of the daily entry and exit of their sons/daughters from the school. In this way, parents will be at ease to know that their sons/daughters arrived safely to the school and they will be able to know that their sons/daughters already left the school.

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2.     SCHOOL PAYMENT MONITORING (Real Time Email and/or SMS Notifications)

·        Parents will be notified of any payment transactions. In this way, parents will know if their sons/daughters were able to settle their accounts from the money that they gave.

·        Parents will be notified as well of their outstanding payment obligations so for them to be aware and eventually prepare to pay on time.

3.     STUDENTS' GRADES MONITORING (Email and/or SMS Notifications)

·        Upon the submission of final grades of the instructors every after semester, parents will be given a copy of grades of sons/daughters through email and/or SMS. In this way, parents will always be aware of all the grades that their sons/daughters got from their subjects. Students will be restricted from keeping secret of their grades to their parents.4

In this system, parents will be given their respective user account for them to be able to log in and check the different features of the system online. If the parents are not used to operate a computer, they will still be notified through SMS. However, the use of these features of the system is optional. Parents may still opt not to use the system if they are not willing to.

We hope and pray that this Unified School System will be a viable solution to address the concerns of most parents.