Schools should be provided with management information systems

Each passing day, Rwanda’s global reputation in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) advancement is soaring and it is high time the achievements of this life transforming technological advancement are passed on to school management. While students have continued to benefit from programmes like the ‘One Laptop Per Child,’ many school administrators continue to grapple with the agonies of the traditional hard copies and files that are always threatened by theft or bizarre fire accidents. It is of no shock that the details of a student who left a school the previous year are unavailable or cannot be obtained instantly because someone has to fumble through piles of disorganized files to retrieve these documents. Parents or guardians who at one point or another want to take their children abroad for further studies, find themselves unable to because of missing documents and other details that schools or universities abroad require. Neither the school administrators nor the government is to blame. But there is one thing we are all compelled to agree to –the vital need to computerize school management. ICT provides school managers with a range of specifications that simplify the day-to-day operations of the school while ensuring that all school data is well stored and easily accessible in the event that it is needed. Some of the school management programmes I have seen, give a variety of specifications ranging from students’ information database, parents’ information and contacts, timetables, mark entry, generation of report forms and mark sheets, past student database, future enrolment and an accounting system. For instance, the students’ information database may have features like the subjects each student is given in a year, the marks for each subject, allergies and immunization, discipline records, attendance, registration and graduation details and much more that may not be easy to keep that accurately in the manual systems. Working manually consumes a lot of time that can be utilized to do other constructive school activities. ICT is the way to go in this era as ignoring it will ostracize the rest of the school management community from the fast moving and highly dynamic technological world. znyamosi@yahoo.com