Compare doing your essay or project on paper versus doing it on the computer. Thinking of it first gives you a headache, while you do not even give a thought about the latter. Digital devices have given us the power to do tedious & difficult tasks in a matter of a few clicks & taps. Like individuals use personal computers to manage their daily tasks, schools should use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to organize & maintain all records & resources in their system.
How Time Table Management System Helps Schools?
Timetable creation and management are some of the most hectic jobs that a teacher must undertake as a new school year starts. It requires immense hard work, demands oodles of patience and coordination skills, wads of wasted paper and hours and a timetable that, and even after all that effort, still has high chances of error.
Since the timetable of each class made by the teacher of that class, the different headteachers must get together and tally the tables with each other to make sure nothing overlaps. We can well imagine how the session will not be without its fair share of arguments. And of course, we have to consider unforeseen circumstances too. Someone might be absent, someone may need to shift or there could be something else.
Readjusting the whole timetable afterward is a hassle no one wants. So, the best way to avoid all such trouble is to assign the work to a timetable management software in the school ERP. This will coordinate the schedules of teachers as well as the school calendar to draw up the coordinated timetable for the year, and also readjust in case any changes needed.
Paperless – Productivity of Organization
A look at the waste paper basket after a conventional timetable-making session gives us an idea of how much paper is wasted in the process. Teachers keep drawing and scraping early drafts, rudimentary versions and tens of models that people think is the final one until it fails to pass the verification stage. It is wasteful and unwanted, especially in an age where usage, not even wastage, of paper, is being looked down upon.
It does all these steps within the processor without wasting an inch of paper. Not only that, but the computer does it in a matter of seconds, or at the most minutes, compared to the hours of haggling teachers have to tolerate. This saves all those precious hours that they can now use in doing something productive and directed towards the actual improvement of the institution and its students.
Error Free Management
Timetables created manually are bound to have errors and overlaps. It so often happens that according to the timetable, two teachers get assigned to the same class or a single teacher to two classes. Or a teacher gets assigned a class on his or her off-day. And once again, class time consumed trying to coordinate and decide what to do. After all, to err is human and no matter how much they try, some error or the other is bound to crop up midway. That is why, to avoid this kind of mishap, timetable management software is so important.
These software can use several data at the same time, like, number of teachers per subject, their availability, number of subjects in each class, number of classes of a subject needed based on curriculum, number of available classrooms, holidays and school program days, and coordinate them with each other to create the perfect timetable with zero errors.
Change In Schedule
Teachers are also human. They may get sick, have emergencies, requiring them to take leave of one or more days. Or a drill might be conduct during a class that will need to be adjust by issuing an extra period. While this sounds like a pretty small asks, it really is not. Allocating a different teacher, especially if for several days or accommodating an extra class is not something you can do thinking only about that teacher or class. You will have to make major adjustments with all other teachers and classes to make sure nothing is miss.
Assigning a new teacher requires you to do so without hampering their original classes. While inserting a new class, one must not overlap it with another, keep it within school timings. Getting timetable management software to do it based on an updated database of all these factors is far easier than a person doing it by asking everyone.
Resource Allocation
As we said before, teachers can be absent for various reasons. But that does not allow the precious time of the students must be loss. If a teacher is absent for a long time, the students end up several steps behind in their syllabus. The curriculum might not even be completed before an important exam or before the academic year ends. This will create a permanent gap in the grades or knowledge of the students, which is definitely not wanted or desirable by any means.
So an adjustment must be made to assign a different teacher to it. But a lot of factors must be considered while doing so, which might be overwhelming to a human. One must make sure that the usual classes and schedule of that teacher is kept as little changed as possible, and adjust his or her time with all the teachers teaching the classes he or she teaches. But with a timetable management software, doing this becomes possible with only one command.
Notification
When an adjustment is made, it is easy to see that several people must be notified about the changes, how it affects their schedule and what changes they have to make in their personal chart to incorporate this change. This applies not to the teachers but to the students and guardians too.
After all, students also need to make adjustments in their transportation, timings and the books and notebooks they need to bring according to this. A parent will also need to know the timings to pick up their kids on time. Using timetable management software will end the need to make many phone calls and announcements. This software will send an instant notification to everyone affected by the database of attendance registers it maintains.
Easy to Calculate Payroll
Since the timetable management software maintains a register of attendances, classes, absences, and leaves of all faculty members, payroll calculation becomes a cakewalk. The software itself will use the data for the number of classes taught that month, any extra classes, leaves, usual working hours and other parameters and apply the salary formula used by the institution to calculate the pays of every teacher for the month.
This way, errors in calculations are reduce and every teacher gets exactly what he or she worked for. The chances of both overpay & underpay are eliminated, and since the records are store, no one can tamper with it or claim otherwise.
There are too many advantages of using a timetable management software for your school to give it up for the traditional, frustrating and error-prone approach. Some schools may be apprehensive about implementing this new technology and giving up control, but at this age, if we deny ourselves these facilities, we will end up five steps behind everybody else. It makes sense to incorporate a school ERP software along with a timetable management application to ease the lives of school staff, faculty and students alike.
Leave A Comment