Automation has transformed our lives for the better.
It began with the industrial revolution where machines took over the bulk of the work, minimizing human involvement in industrial processes. This was a step forward as far as modernisation was concerned. As a result, we saw many disruptive innovations in different sectors.
The Third Industrial Revolution or the Digital Revolution as we now call it combines new-age technology with industry models to further enhance the efficiency and quality of human life. Across organizational and industry levels, we are witnessing a phenomenal leap in digitization, and education is no exception. We see a lot of educational institutions warming up to the idea of digitally enhancing and automating their operations owing to the numerous benefits it offers educators and students. However, some institutions continue to take a one-size-that-fits-all approach to impart learning. In this blog, we outline the host of automation benefits that you can tap into with a school management system. But before that let’s understand why automation is necessary for education.
Why is workflow automation the need of the hour in education?
While educational institutions focus on offering excellence in education, administrative responsibilities tend to take a toll on educators. A recent McKinsey survey has revealed that teachers work an average of 50 hours a week but spend less than half of their time in student interactions. They are boggled down by unavoidable tasks such as filling out paperwork or marking papers that take away their time from engaging with students and identifying gaps in learning. Automation software can easily take over these tasks.
An educational institution has many departments that work together to offer a holistic learning experience. There is an enormous amount of data that each of these departments collates, manages and works with. This could range from recording student information to tracking attendance, scheduling meetings, managing fee payments and communicating student progress to parents.
The need of the hour is an efficient school management system that can take over the bulk of the administrative tasks freeing up time for teachers to focus on learning and development.
The adoption of automation in education is likely to reduce the time teachers spend on managerial responsibilities from 5 to 3 hours per week. A centralized LMS is a boon for educators as it streamlines day to day activities of school administration. By digitizing the workflows and automating manual repetitive tasks, educators can focus on creating learning opportunities that boost student performance.
6 Ways automation can benefit school administration
To put things in perspective, a school management system is an all-in-one solution designed to streamline school administration. You can leave the mundane tasks to the software to perform and shift your attention to the quality of education being offered. Investing in such a tool will improve the operational agility you need to support a diverse set of learners with varied learning styles.
We’ll now unpack the top benefits of embracing automation in the field of education:
1. Ensures utmost data security and free flow of communication among all stakeholders
School management software is cloud-based where the data is stored in a highly encrypted form. It not only makes student data accessible but ensures it is secure and protected from breach, theft or loss. It also offers a safe space for teachers to communicate with parents.
Parents can be kept in the loop on their child’s progress and all the happenings at the school. You can send alerts on upcoming events, or important notifications involving their child’s performance. Instant communication helps build trust. Automation in education ensures that information flows freely, safely and in a timely manner between teachers, students, and parents.
2. Streamlines fee management
Typically, fee management involves keeping a track of who has paid the fees, how much they have paid, who hasn’t paid, and how much is due, and maintaining this update manually on a ledger – be it offline or online. Handling the fees of a large number of students becomes tedious and complex.
Shifting this entire process to a centralized school management system and automating the tasks associated with it, will drastically reduce the workload related to fee collection, scholarship applications and grievance addresses, etc.
3. Tracks attendance of staff and students
Whether students attend the course online or in class, attendance tracking is an unavoidable activity for teachers. Teachers must maintain attendance records on a daily basis. Apart from tracking student attendance, an institution must keep an accurate record of teachers and administrators to ensure fair compensation for every employee.
Setting up a school management software automates this process, and tracks the log-in and log-out times of students, teachers and non-teaching staff. You can easily export attendance reports on employee log-ins with details on the paid and unpaid leaves taken by them. This transition gives room for fair evaluation and positions every employee for the right compensation that’s due to them.
4. Prepares progress reports to monitor student success
In addition to overseeing examinations, most teachers have to prepare the progress report of every student in their class. This is a time-consuming activity, to say the least. Automation can make a huge difference here.
Student management systems can not only store student grades digitally but also prepare progress reports based on the student’s performance in the examination. What’s more, is that these systems can even share the report with parents on the channel of their choice. The system evaluates student performance in academic and co-curricular activities and highlights the areas that need improvement. This saves teachers a lot of time from paperwork allowing them to redirect their energies to more important tasks.
5. Simplifies the enrolment and admission process
The student enrolment process is one of the most tedious tasks that educational institutions have to perform. It involves a great deal of paperwork which are at times prone to errors. Manually screening student application forms, validating documents, and checking eligibility for the course applied is tiresome.
Automation is the best way to relieve your staff of repetitive and cumbersome tasks that they are burdened with. With automation, collecting completed forms and other documents can be done remotely. This gives time to the faculty to validate the documents and evaluate eligibility.
6. Boosts productivity of the faculty
One of the biggest perks of adopting automation is improving efficiency. When menial repetitive tasks are automated, your employees have more time at hand to focus on high-value tasks. Much of the time saved can be allocated to improving education through direct coaching and personalized learning mechanisms. Some of the time can be given back to the teachers to spend with their families and friends, which will make teaching more attractive to those considering a hand at this profession. Moreover, this will boost teacher morale and have a positive impact on the learning outcomes and overall well-being of the educational institution.
Final thoughts
Leveraging school management software is an extremely rewarding option to fuel your educational institution’s ability to achieve its teaching goals and steer it toward greater success.
Automation in education works as a binding agent holding your educational ecosystem intact. With EdTech platforms like Classe365, you will have the ability to digitize workflows and streamline operations. Transform every aspect of school management and redefine engagement throughout the student lifecycle right from enrollment to graduation, alumni relations, and beyond. Book your demo today