Information or data stored by St George’s school are:
Pupil data for example their name, age, address, religion, D.O.B,
Employee Data for example this could include all employee information about the staff ie. Their name, address, NI number, rate of pay, tax etc.
Accounts, Finance, Human Resources this would include all data to do with the schools budget and accounts and also information on human resources.
Student Reports
There is no current online system for filling out students reports as they are all done manually by their class teachers the reason why they haven’t yet computerised this part of the businesses functions is because they don’t have the available funds for purchasing computer software to allow them write reports nor do they have many pupils to write reports for, compared to a secondary school where they have 2500 pupils so the school has been happy with manually writing reports.
Letters
Any letters sent from the school are word processed on the computer system and they are printed onto a letterhead that the school has printed for them from a local printing firm, one solution that I would suggest to improve this would be to get the school to print their own letterheads saving money which could be better spent. However if the letter is to a parent of the school the name of the child it is concerning is written on manually.
School News Letter
The schools newsletter is published every month and given to every pupil in the school – however some pupils may have brothers and sisters in the school as well would it be more efficient and save money if only one was given to one family? As the school has many young pupils they may loose them or leave them on the bus or even drop them on the playground.
Attendance Register
The school uses both electronic and paper based registers to analyse and report on attendance this seems to be a waist of resources to the school and a waste of time for the secretary as the teaching staff will mark the register on paper and then the schools secretary enters this data into a database. Perhaps this could be changed so that the school can computerise all there attendance data which could save time so that the administrative staff can work on something more important.
Outputs
When all of the information is stored or processed the output can be in a form of an email, letter, phone call, report, memo, fax or student assessment report.
Problems with current system
Problems associated with the schools current IT infrastructure are that it frequently crashes hence why the school wants a quick upgrade or implementation of a new system.
There are also many other problems with the current system which I have listed below with a description on why this is a problem to the users or for the system in general
- The first computer in the system was introduced back in the 1990’s and so it doesn’t have the more up to date features as the other computers Operating systems and cant benefit from the technology the other computers can because of its compatibility.
- Incompatibility of specialist software used by the organisation for tasks that could be computerised and which are having to be done manually because of the incompatibility with the version of Operating Systems on the computers that they have
- Users don’t have the knowledge of using older versions of windows which is primarily in operation among the network
- With the network operating pre-2000 their isn’t much in the way of file security which their should be in any organisation like this for example any student could gain access to confidential information on the network and this shouldn’t be allowed full stop.
3 REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION
To provide pupils with the best possible education in order to fulfil their potential to the maximum
- Manual & Computerised Attendance Company
- Manual Written Reports
- Manual Written letters
- Computerised Individual Learning Plan
- Computerised Student Assessment Trackers
Processing Needs
The school has to be able to process information that it receives in the forms that have been identified in the report and fairly fast. They process the information that is collected in the form of phone, letter, email, invoices, etc. They also need to process this information some by entering information into their current system in the way of word processing or working out costs in a spreadsheet package.
Output Needs
Output needs of the organisation are that they need to output relevant information to paper, or to email, memo etc. The organisations major output need is information being printed on paper and distributing this to either employees internally or externally to parents, the public requiring information about the school, or to the pupils themselves via test results or equivalent.
Storage Needs
The organisation also has storage needs by this the school has keep copies of all its financial, administration, educational documentation in a manual filing system, this could be implemented onto hard disk which would take up less space and provide more efficiency on more complex tasks the organisation needs to carry out. However this data would have to be backed up encase of any problems that may cause the data to be lost. At present the school keeps all their paperwork in a conventional filing cabinets which takes up a lot of room in there only one office and are looking for ways to reduce this problem.
Communication Needs
The organisation still communicates with pupils, parents and their members of staff via any of the following methods. Telephone, verbally and Memo’s. However parents and some teaching staff have expressed an interest in communicating more efficiently by via Email and the mobile telephone SMS this would be used for monitoring attendance levels at the school
4 POTENTIAL SOLUTION USING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
I will now identify and list potential solutions using software and hardware in information technology.
I would suggest to the school that they would invest in the following software for the reasons listed
From analysing the system in place at the school I’m going to recommend the following hardware devices in order for the system to work cooperatively with each other among the network.
As well as the hardware & software that school will need to purchase, they also need to consider the costs of buying consumables e.g. Printer Ink Cartridges/Toners and how much it will cost the school to maintain the system and installing the system and also for extra furniture they may require and training needed by the users of the system.
5 SYSTEM BENEFITS
Based on my advice for selecting option 3 for implementing a system, I have created a System Benefits cost spreadsheet, attached to this page – the spreadsheet shows the total cost of the system and is broken down into hardware/software/consumables and other costs that would have to be paid if the school introduced this system.
I have calculated the spreadsheet over a three year period and at the end of this 3 years, the school would stand to gain over £3000 which could be spent on the schools facilities or improving learning resources.
If the spreadsheet were to be over say a five year period then the school more than likely would probably have saved around £8000 so after the 3 year period the school will still continue to save money, time and effort which was at a premium with the old system.
6 CONCLUSION
In conclusion the IT system that is already in place at St Georges Primary school is basic to their needs there could be a lot done with the system to make it more user friendly and to provide more of a basis of it being more practical for the users.
In my opinion I would recommend the school to take the third solution that I have proposed there are several reasons for me coming to this conclusion they are that the school may not have the available funds to go with my second solution, the school may also have not the time to train somebody to maintain all of the system and also they may prefer to see how well the system that they do decide to go with adapts to their user requirements.
However the school may decide not to implement any of my proposed solutions and therefore they may wish to implement their own.
7 BIBLIOGRAPHY
When providing the three different solutions for a system for St Georges school I have chosen all the hardware and Software from a highly reputable online retailer Ebuyer UK () all prices and information was taken from their on site on 12/12/05
I have included printouts of individual hardware/software solutions to provide consistency with the prices that I have totalled from the three solutions.
