Fedena

Styx : Fedena 3.5.3 Release Notes

March 9, 2017

What’s new in Fedena

Here is the list of new features included with this release of Fedena 3.5.3

Feature	Description	User Role	Module
Loss of Pay Calculation Mode	A new Loss of Pay (LOP) calculation mode – Deduct LOP from Payroll categories has been added to Payroll calculation. This mode allows to deduct LOP from one or more payroll categories instead of a direct deduction.	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Human Resources
Examination Student Sorting Control	This setting allows schools to fix the default sorting mechanism for students in the examination pages like mark entry, report cards etc.	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Examination
Feature access settings for parent account	A new feature access settings page allows to enable or disable new features from the parent accounts.	Administrator	General Settings
Notifications for timetable swap and cancel	Timetable swaps and cancels now have notifications that can be sent as Email, SMS and Internal Messages. Before confirming a swap or cancel you can.	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Timetable

What’s enhanced in Fedena

Here is the list of enhanced features included with this release of Fedena 3.5.3

Feature	Description	User Role	Module
Overall receipt for Pay all Fees	A new overall receipt PDF is available in Pay all Fees receipts. This single fee receipt is a summary of the fees that were collected during a single payment. For all fees collected, a single SMS is only sent.	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Finance
Online Fee payment settings to enable Partial Payment	This setting in Online Fee Payment allows school to enable or disable partial payment in a school.	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Online Payment
Pay all Fees enhancement	Pay all fees has a checkbox against each collection to have the amount pre filled or removed from it. Uncheck the checkbox to remove the prefilled amount and enter a partial amount.	Administrator, Privileged Employee, Student, Parent	Finance
Timetable PDF enhancement	Timetable PDF view now fits many subjects in a single page. This allows schools to print a timetable for the entire batch in a single page. PDF settings allows schools to control how the subject name is shown in the PDF.	Administrator, Privileged Employee, Student	Timetable
Library Export Books	Library books can be exported as CSV file along with the additional details of the book	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Library
Transport Reports	Transport module now has Batch, Department and Route wise reports	Administrator, Privileged Employee	Transport
Student Report Center UI enhancement	Student report center UI is improved to make it easier to understand and use.	Administrator, Privileged Employee, Student, Parent	Student

Issues Fixed

Here is the list of issues fixed in this release of Fedena 3.5.3

Applicant Registration

Fixed issue of duplicate transactions when approving applicants from multiple tabs

Examination

Batch transferred student shows marks from previous batch without grade
Permission issue in ICSE consolidated report when selecting the batch

Finance

CSV report of batchwise Transport Fee Defaulters shows students from all batches
Print summary not accessible from pay all fees of parent account

Library

Issue with book number increment when book number with spaces used

Timetable

Modal box throwing 500 error in the timetable summary page
Issue in year selection at class room allocation
Subject not loading in attendance register page

Settings

Message count calculation for Multipart Messages

Transport

Fee Due Amount incorrect displayed in the transport print receipt
Transport privileged employee is unable to print the payment receipts

How Smart Schools Can Help Increase Inclusion

March 7, 2017March 7, 2017

Classroom technology gives a voice to the ignored

A recent piece by Christina Thomas Dhanraj has reinvigorated the conversation around diversity in the workplace. Dhanraj speaks eloquently about the increasing presence of Dalit women in corporate spaces thanks to anti-discrimination laws and increasing awareness about corporate diversity and inclusion – largely a reflection of the policies of most multi-national offices.

The seeds of Dhanraj’s experience in corporate India are planted in our schools. Students from these communities are present, but that does not mean they are included.

In a previous blog ,we spoke about how increasing personalisation in curriculum leads to better learning for students. But what about diversity in the classroom? This continues to be a touchy subject, especially in a country like India, where increasing homogenisation is the preferred solution to differences. We are more focused on equal experiences rather than equitable experiences. This is a fallacy propagated by our desire to be fair and our solution to be as easy as it is quick. But a one size fits all solution rarely addresses the concerns of the most marginalised and seems to cater more to the majority, and often more privileged, group.

We live in a society where the hardest challenge faced by people across classes is social mobility. Education is seen as one of the few methods by which people are able to change their circumstances. Are students from marginalised communities receiving the best quality of education they could possibly receive?

A seminal study by Myra and David Sadker demonstrated that from kindergarten to grade school, women were often sidelined in classroom discussions, and consequently classroom learning. Research demonstrates that this experience is shared by students from other marginalised groups – delineated by caste, class, ethnicity, race, etc. While India-specific data is not as robust experiences shared by marginalised students reflects this bias. Silencing and social exclusion in the classroom undoubtedly affects the future professional personalities of our students.

One cannot discount the pressure on teachers in such a scenario. The most well-meaning of teachers struggle with the paucity of time and resources. Not only is this heart-rending for a teacher deeply invested in her student’s success, but it is also draining and stressful to feel like you’re constantly fighting a losing battle. While capabilities and support might be perennially limited, no compromises can be made when it comes to our children’s future.

So how can teachers effectively address exclusion? To start with, the deliberate inclusion of students is vital. Calling on a reticent student while is not the most pleasant experience for them and can often make them feel like they are being called out or put on the spot. This is why teaching techniques like the jigsaw method or learning by teaching are becoming increasingly popular. These methods encourage students to support their own and each others’ learning in low-pressure environments – through discussion in smaller groups or by gently encouraging them to take on empathetic leadership roles.

Technology can also be a helpful tool when it comes to democratising classroom participation. Fedena (our student management system) allows teachers and students to set up discussion groups – large and small – for a variety of reasons. Whether it be discussing a problem set for a homework assignment, or delving deeper into a discussion that began in history class, the social pressure of participating in classrooms is reduced. Students have the opportunity to formulate their point of view before “speaking” – giving them an opportunity to contribute insights they might not have had a chance to otherwise.

It is important to start having honest discussions and make deliberate efforts to address these issues. Learning technology is only an enabler – ultimately it is the willpower of educators and parents that will carry a student through.

Opening up the power of the HR Module in Fedena

March 1, 2017

How to stop worrying and start managing your Payroll like a Pro

Hint : Use Fedena!

The value a school ERP provides for an institution is provided by the problems it is solving for process planning and execution. Managing employee payrolls, loss of pays, and leaves play a huge role in any institution and we have been continuously working towards providing the best solution for any and every school.

Softwares like Fedena or other school ERPs come with a huge bundle of modules and plugins, some of them which are essential for a school and some of them which serve a specific niche purpose. We have been working on the HR module in Fedena over the past few updates and we feel some of you might have missed these important changes we have added.

Creating a Canvas for your HR Problems

In the first phase, we built the HR module from the bottom up to bring in many new features. The two major changes we did were the addition of Payroll Groups and Loss of Pay calculation.

Payroll Groups allow institutions to configure different salary structures for different types of employees. For example, your administration staff and your academic staff may have different salary heads. With payroll groups, you can ensure your employee salaries remain distinct.

Leaves and Loss of Pay calculation have been a high-demand feature from institutions. The Loss of Pay formula given to a Payroll Group is used to calculate the Loss of Pay when additional leaves are taken. Loss of Pay being a management decision varies from institution to institution and hence the user has the option to apply & choose the Loss of Pay leaves. The admin staff also have freedom to configure the formula for the Loss of Pay calculation as these formulas differ from management to management.

Drawing out the solutions for your HR Problems

After completing the first phase of the revamp with Payroll Groups, Leaves and Loss of Pay changes, we set out to improve other features. Based on input from different types of institutions a new mode of salary calculation was added to the Payroll Groups. This new Custom Mode released in Fedena 3.5.3 (Nix), is beneficial for institutions (especially schools) who calculate the salary from a single payroll category like Basic Salary. With Fedena 3.5.4 we are also bringing a new prorated Loss of Pay calculation mode to give more options to calculate the Loss of Pay.

In this new mode, the Loss of Pay (LOP) can be pro-rated across multiple payroll categories. This allows more flexibility for institutions where Loss of Pay means the other categories are also pro-rated accordingly.

An Illustration

Let’s consider a simple salary structure. The Basic Salary is 10,000 and Tax is 20% of Basic Salary. If the total working days are 20 and the employee having no leave takes 2 LOP days. The LOP can be configured in two ways now:

As a direct deduction
LOP is 1000
Basic Salary = 10,000
Tax = 2000
Loss of Pay = 1000
Net Salary = 7000

As a deduction from Payroll Categories
LOP = 1000
New Basic = 10000-1000 = 9000
Tax = 1,800
Net Salary = 7,200

Adding a few final strokes

We are bringing further changes in the HR module in the coming weeks. With more options in leave management, you will be able to configure different leaves for different employees.

Being hosted in servers with latest security measures ensures your payroll and payslip data is safe in Fedena and only accessible to whom you give privilege.

For any further assistance in figuring out the new Human Resources Features, do get in touch with our support team. So what are you waiting for? Get started with Leave and Payroll management with your favourite school management system.

The Missing Link: Building & Nurturing Teacher-Parent Relationships

February 27, 2017

Join forces with classroom technology to empower your student

Indian parents tend to view education as their child’s job. This makes sense – their generation was often the first one to experience significant social mobility, with access to more luxuries like FMCG goods and westernised modes of living in urban centres. It’s no wonder that these amenities seem fleeting to them. It must feel like they could so easily lose it all. Education is the one aspect under their control that will ensure that their children will continue to at least maintain the standard of living they grew up in, if not reach new heights.

This is likely why Indian culture tends to place such a high value on education. From working long hours to save for higher education to actively monitoring their child’s performance in school, Indian parents are very highly involved in their child’s schooling and committed to ensuring they have the best possible options for a bright future.

An interesting point to note here, however, is that this drive seems to be confined to the two-way street of a parent-child relationship. Beyond trying their hardest to ensure that their child gets into a school that is ranked well and has a history of producing successful students, parents don’t seem to prioritise forging a relationship between themselves and the educators working with their children. Students build a learning and mentoring relationship with their teachers and dealing with the day to day in the institutional structure of a school teaches them discipline and organisation. Parents teach their children how to plan for their professional futures and take an active, one-on-one interest in their progress. So why don’t teachers and parents work together to achieve a common goal – the child’s success?

For a parent, dealing with the institution educating their child might seem daunting. For overworked educators, the task of maintaining a continuous feedback loop with the parents of each individual child seems overwhelming on top of all their other responsibilities. How do we make this simpler for both parties?

Ditch the Parent Teacher Conference

Oftentimes, the first meeting between a parent and teacher occurs well into the school year. A teacher is asked to meet and share feedback and concern for anywhere between 30 to 60 (if not more!) students in a day or two. A parent is left thwarted after only getting a few minutes to discuss their child’s future. There exists a better way of doing things – Fedena school ERP allows parents and teachers to communicate quickly and easily through their messaging system. The time investment is negligible, but the resulting rewards are anything but.

Share Student Success – Not Just Problems

Establish communication the first day of school, instead of waiting for an issue to crop up. Building a relationship with a parent where both successes and opportunities for improvement are shared allows educators and parents to work as a team. Classroom technology like Fedena allows parents to track their children’s assignments, grades, and in-school activities remotely. It empowers parents to have a more comprehensive view of their child’s day, rather than having to settle for a lackluster “Fine” when a child is asked how their day was.

Establish Community

“It takes a village to raise a child” might seem an outmoded adage in these modern times, but no parent or teacher is going to turn away from a helping hand. A lack of time and resources should not be a deterrent. School ERPs like Fedena allow teachers, administrators, and parents to work together in real-time to ensure every student stays on track at school. With features that allow administrators to communicate events and fees to parents and parents being able to monitor whether their child got on the school bus, education technology is forging a strong community for schools and colleges alike.

7 Life saving tips for your Fedena account

February 24, 2017

Every school ERP implementation boils down to the same old thing- “The correctness of the data”. The more concise the data in the ERP the better it performs. And just like the way the human brain implements knowledge acquired from vicarious training, school ERPs take data and give you insights you need the most.

Having understood the relation between ERP and data, the school admins try a lot of different things to get the best out of ERPs used in schools. If you are the school admin, you never know which report you may be asked in the next meeting with your school management. So here at the support wing of Fedena, we make things simpler by giving our users tips and tricks for a successful implementation in all of our customer interactions.

Here are 7 such life-saving Fedena hacks which go unnoticed at times, but can really help you in making your job easier

Imagine a Scenario, when you are asked to re-assign user Privileges of all your employees at a go in the next hour. All you need to do is make use of the Bulk edit feature of Fedena by merely entering the employee usernames and entering NULL for the respective privileges in your CSV file before clicking Bulk edit next to your Export in the Custom Import module.

It is often observed that while printing the Fee receipts in the Schools, the schools spend a hefty amount on A4 size papers. Needless to say, Fedena offers an A5 mode to print these Fee receipts. And how do you get an A5 size paper? Just cut your Regular A4 size paper into two equally sizes while in portrait mode. Since A5 size is exactly the half of that of A4, this can cut the cost of printing Fee Receipts by half. Stop wasting paper and start saving trees (and money).

In an Institution with a healthy number of students and elective subjects, it becomes difficult to track students who have opted for a particular elective subject. In such a case, the subject details in Data and Reports from Home > Reports > Subject comes to the rescue. The user can select the batch and proceed to check the option elective subjects to get the exact number of students enrolled in the subject.

We all know, how the allocation of Labs are managed in our Institutions. For instance, when group A has Physics lab on Tuesday, group B of the same batch can have Chemistry for the same period and vice versa on some other day of the week. In such cases, the elective group options help you in managing this while setting up timetables for the batch. Please follow our detailed article on this to know more.

The Fees counter of the schools have always been on the radar of the finance department in the institution from the beginning. It is one of the daily chores of the cashier to let the department know the total cash collected for the day. In such cases, the cashier can opt to use the Finance receipts option from Home > Finance > Finance Reports > Fee Receipts > Advanced Search and select the relevant cashier name to extract the CSV file containing the payments receipts generated for the day. Can it get any simpler?

The Teachers often ask the students to visit a particular website of educational significance for a detailed research. Just consider how easy it would be for the users, if students visit Fedena and the website of the day is already on the Appframe section from Home > App Frames. Click here to set it up for your students.

Now comes the uber-hack among the ones mentioned above- the Advanced payslip reports. The Finance Department asks you a report of the total money outflow towards employee Payslips. We do understand searching each and every individual employee records for the Payslips can be a really tough task and hence, we have included the exhaustive Payslip reports in our latest release which is accessible from Home > HR > Payroll and Payslip Management > Advanced Payslip Reports

So, Sign up for a quick Fedena demo here to see how this happens in real time scenarios. You can thank us later.

Worried About Artificial Intelligence Replacing You?

February 20, 2017

Personalised technology in the classroom will ensure you come out on top

Some of you might be intimately familiar with the terrifying experience of waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, worrying that you’re late for an exam that you completely forgot to study for. Except you’re an adult, well past the age of being forced to down your itchy uniform every single day, and haven’t had to sit for an exam in ages. This is all just a bad dream.

Exam anxiety seems to last well into adulthood. And why not? Studying for them seemed to be the pinnacle of your existence for a good chunk of your childhood – especially having to study about things you weren’t the least bit interested in. That night-before-exam anxiety involved consuming copious amounts of snacks and coffee to stay awake, frantic comparisons with your best friend about how much of the portion you had left, and existential crises largely centered around the question, “Why must I know when the Battle of Plassey was fought? Will I ever even use any of this stuff after I grow up?”

That last question is one that educators and education researchers have been tackling for a while now. Do future engineers need to know how to make papier mache mask? Why must the authors of tomorrow learn probability today? We seem to be personalising everything, so why not our learning in school? Surely focusing on what interests us and what we’re good at would be a more fruitful use of our time.

Silicon Valley seems to agree. EdTech innovations that have been on the rise, with the market growth projected to hit $252 billion by 2020.This is unsurprising with increasing demand for quality higher education. Physical universities can no longer keep up and specialisation is imperative with artificial intelligence already taking over process-oriented jobs. Simply put, to ensure we are the ones who run the machines, and not vice versa, we must innovate education.

Alternative smart schools have already broken ground with implementing this thinking, allowing students to work how our most agile start-ups do. Students design projects with goals that take into desired learning outcomes and their own personal interests and then set metrics for success. They think about how they could solve real-world problems using the latest classroom technology at their disposal. These students seem future ready.

India is still far away from this seemingly utopian model of schooling. Our system is still built extremely on exam-driven and marks orientations.It certainly seems to have worked for us so far, especially in STEM focused fields, where our ability to quickly parse large quantities of information and use them to generate effective results have stood us in good stead.

Perhaps there exists a middle ground between being an all-rounder and a specialist. As we continue to work with our exam oriented model of schooling, we must leverage all tools that empower young learners to create a more personalised system of learning – whether it be individualised assignments for each student tailored to their abilities, group discussions that delve more deeply into the nitty gritties that interest a learner, or personalised, yet comprehensive feedback from teachers, platforms like Fedena allow a level of personalisation that can be customised to whatever education board the school falls under, learning model one believes in, or personal learning goals a parent and child have set for themselves. A happy byproduct of this customised schooling would be the sharp reduction in those persistent “I failed every exam and have brought dishonor to my family” nightmares, replaced by the eager excitement one experiences when embarking on something new.

The Fedena Audit Plugin : Your secret to success

February 17, 2017

The tracking of every activity in schools or institutions is not an easy task especially when it’s done manually. All activities that are associated with the school should be tracked and logs need to be maintained as it helps in understanding how the school can optimize and grow.

Especially when the school management moves to an internet platform, the manual intervention of activities gets heavily restricted. A track of all log activities needs to be maintained, to check how the users are performing in different departments like finance activities, managing user accounts and scheduling or deleting activities.

The Fedena audit plugin helps in logging all activities your users (employees, students, parents) perform, what time they are performed, and what data they have accessed or tried accessing.

The audit plugin tracks the following activities in three different categories:

Activity Audit:

Data Audit:

User Audit:

There are various scenarios where the Audit plugin has helped us in sorting confusions on data discrepancy.

Once such scenario was when one of the school was worried about the student information been changed without being notified to the admin. Since these days most of the software runs under a SAAS platform, they do not get the access to the log at their side.

However, with the introduction of the audit plugin, the user activities can be tracked and we were able to find out the reason how the changes was reflected in the student profile.

The main advantage of the audit plugin is highlighted when it comes to managing financial transactions. Most schools and institutions face a discrepancy while collecting various fees from their students and find it incredibly difficult to keep a track of which student has paid which fees. With student numbers only increasing in schools, it is also becoming increasingly difficult to maintain these records physically or using financial tools like Tally since they do not involve tracking payments to specific users in your system.

As Fedena allows fees to be tracked to specific student profiles as well as teacher profiles. The audit plugin clearly tracks all activities each user performs when it comes to transactions. The information on scheduling fee collection, collecting fees and reverting the fee collected is listed in log. Our customers have come back to us and have always expressed the immense amount of value the audit plugin has brought to them purely because it maintains a log of all actions being performed in Fedena and because of this very simple but powerful feature of Fedena, our customers have always located and removed mismatched fee collections and had a clean financial record to save up to 56% of their finances year on year.

Fedena is a powerful school ERP which puts the user first. What are you waiting for? Stop losing money because of bad records and mismanaged documents.

Classroom Technologies Enable Better Testing

February 13, 2017

Smart schools help minimise disruption caused by the new CBSE assessment structure

Last week, the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) announced a change in the assessment structure for Class X students in CBSE schools, effective for the 2017-2018 school year. Currently, students in Class X follow a dual-scheme system, where schools conduct exams internally, and allow students to study limited portions of the curriculum for the exam. The Board has now revised this structure, to enable students to have a more continual learning experience.

The scholastic assessment portion of the revised assessment structure consists of two sections: Internal Assessment, conducted by schools, and External Assessment, conducted by the Board.

Internal Assessment will comprise 20% of the scholastic assessment portion of the structure and will focus on periodic testing (10 marks), notebook submission (5 marks), and subject enrichment activities like lab work and speaking and listening skills (5 marks). Schedule and syllabi being tested have been left up to the discretion of individual schools. The Board will then conduct External Assessments, which will make up the remaining 80% of the scholastic assessment portion of the structure. For both internal and external assessments, the student must score over 33% in each subject in order to pass. Along with the external assessment score, the average of a student’s two best scores will be considered towards the final score.

In addition to the scholastic portion, provisions have also been made for co-scholastic activities like art, physical health, and work education or vocational training and disciplinary goals like attendance, sincerity, behaviour, and values. Teachers will grade students on these areas on a 5 point grading scale, from A to E.

What This Means for Students

Periodic internal testing gives students a chance to learn their curriculum in a staggered fashion and assess where they stand throughout the year. The likelihood of a student being unpleasantly surprised by a poor score is minimised, since students will repeatedly be tested on smaller sections of the subject before an external assessment is conducted. This gives students the opportunity to revise subjects in manageable amounts resulting in better learning and recall.

Technology in the classroom also helps keep better track of learning at an individual level. Fedena allows students to communicate with teachers, form study groups with their peers, and submit coursework and tests easily, allowing them to stay focused on learning, rather than the intricacies of testing.

What This Means for Teachers

Teachers will benefit from the amount of data they will have one each system. If efficiently implemented, a teacher will be able to have a real-time understanding of the student’s comprehension and recall of the subject matter being taught. While continual assessment might seem like extra paperwork for the teacher, use of tools like Fedena makes things a breeze. Fedena allows teachers to test, post grades, and give personalised feedback to students easily and efficiently.

What This Means For Administrators

In States like Maharashtra, the previous CBSE rule of awarding grades instead of scores resulted in an overwhelming amount of paperwork for administrators who had to reissue separate marks cards in addition to grade sheets for students apply for Class XI or Junior College after Class X. With the new assessment structure, both grades and marks will be awarded, making the process easier. Administrators can also use tools like Fedena to track student performance and issue grade reports in real time for every student.

Changes in how we teach and assess learners are inevitable as we learn how to more effectively educate our students. However, the worry that structural disruption derails learning is a valid one. How do we ensure that the impact of change remains positive?

The use of smart school tools like Fedena allow schools to rapidly deploy changing rules with minimal damage to a student’s learning. A student’s test scores is just a representation of all that they have learned over the course of a year. It is vital to remember that the process must reflect their potential, not hinder it.

Fedena 3.5.3 : Styx – What to expect from your favorite school management system

February 10, 2017

Just like how restrictions are important for creativity, hurdles are important in giving us directions in where to go and what to jump over.

The very first update to Fedena in 2017 is almost ready to ship out. We’ve been busy making important changes to Fedena and making things easier for your school management. With Fedena 3.5.3 we are bringing small but important changes requested by you. The updates are centered around reports from various modules, outward communications for schools as well as a few new exporting options along with notifications which matter.

Fedena 3.5.3 – Styx: Preview

Here’s a sneak preview of what’s upcoming in the latest update

Styx will be out in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for further updates from your favorite school management system, Fedena.

Fedena school management system blog image

India Budget 2017: Smart Schools are The Way of the Future

February 6, 2017February 6, 2017

Leveraging technology in the classroom will enable scaling up

Budget announcements for 2017 have been dominating the headlines for the last week or so, with policymakers, thinkers, and the common man all chipping in their opinions on how these proclamations will affect their industry of interest and their daily lives.

One of the key changes with regards to education policy has been the shift from the centers of excellence model to an increased focus on improving general educational outcomes across the board. This is apparent from some of the proposed initiatives announced during the budget detailed below, specifically the plan to systematically measure annual learning outcomes in schools.

The budget also establishes the bringing together of all assessment under one roof. This is to be accomplished through the establishment of a National Testing Agency and will be the final authority conducting all academic entrance exams. The latter move would allow boards like the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to focus on achieving academic excellence rather than get bogged down in the bureaucracy of testing.

But how will this dramatic shift in scale be accomplished?

Taking a leaf out of the private sector, the government plans to heavily rely on technology to ensure more democratic access to quality education for all Indians.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-enabled education will be leveraged to reach students that might not have had access to the best teachers, modern curriculum or the courses that pique their interest otherwise. The government’s proposed SWAYAM platform will offer 350 online courses, to start with. This online classroom solution should ensure that geographical remoteness or a lack of financial resources, the most common setbacks students (especially those from semi-urban and rural areas) face, are no longer deterrents.

An innovation fund for secondary education has also been announced. The goal of this fund is to enable universal access to education for students, improve gender parity, and to achieve overall improvement of secondary education. The government has given local bodies a fair amount of leeway on how they wish to deploy these funds, allowing for more contextualised solutions to be innovated for local problems.

The focus remains on a 3500 backward block of schools, whose issues are oftentimes infrastructural rather than a one-off. Problems like absenteeism, administrative duties overwhelming teachers, and lack of personalised attention can take away the focus from learning.

The scale of these issues can seem too massive to address. School teachers and community leaders play David to the Goliath of “the system” and change seems impossible. However, with the establishment of such funding allowing for individuals to innovate local solutions for local problems might make all the difference. The key is to use these funds intelligently. Tech solutions like the Fedena school ERP system help manage students more effectively. This allows a variety of stakeholders to work seamlessly with each other to ensure a superior learning experience for the student. Investing in building smart schools is not just low-hanging fruit to aim for, but the logical next step.

We are not shy about adopting tech solutions, especially in the space of education. For instance, Massive Open Online Courses have found so much traction amongst traditional and nontraditional students, that one of the biggest MOOC platforms, Coursera is massively increasing investment in its Indian audience. The focus on technology in the Budget for 2017 demonstrates that the government has recognised that innovation in the classroom is the key to future success and that India is one of the most receptive markets when it comes to successful implementation of teaching technology.

Why having a Discussion Module is important for a School ERP

February 3, 2017February 3, 2017

Community building is a very important aspect of schools in every society. Back in the day, when computers and smartphones weren’t available students, teachers and staff held discussions in classrooms, the school hallways, and whenever you would come across the right person to express your ideas, problems and solutions to. The introduction of the internet, computers, and smartphones has completely changed this landscape.

Now students, teachers, and staff use social media, messengers and various other online platforms to engage and find community. Making it very important for a school to build a community for their staff, teachers, parents and students. Building an online portal just for building a community, having a discussion board also involves a lot of technical development and investment.

But, what if you didn’t need to build anything or invest extra in a software which helps you maintain your school’s community?

School ERPs with a Discussion module

Online discussion forums continue to provide an ideal place for expressing ideas and understanding problems. A controlled discussion forum in a school ERP helps schools in opening new spaces for students and teachers to share their suggestions, knowledge and build a thriving school community.

The Discussion module should provide a platform which enables students, teachers, and staff to interact and exchange ideas, discuss grievances.
Admins should be able to decide who takes part in which discussion.
When a staff/teacher gets the privilege to be a part of the discussion he/she can view the post and comments. Post comments to continue the discussion.

There are many advantages which accompany an online forum or discussion module,

Advantages of having an online discussion platform.

Can reduce the amount of time taken by the teacher while taking initiatives for a meeting
- For example, when a teacher is planning to arrange a meeting for discussing the upcoming sports meet, he/she has to undertake the cumbersome effort of informing all participants, arrange a room, fix a timing that is suitable for all the participants etc. If the school ERP comes with a discussion module, all of these can be done by just logging in and creating a discussion in the ERP and the participants will be notified and an event will be created as well.

Shy students get more of a chance to raise their suggestions in discussions.
- In most offline meetings and discussions the number of participants is only limited to students who are comfortable addressing a crowd. To bring in everybody’s opinion online discussions help students with coming forward and sharing ideas and problems.

Encourages reflection and deeper thinking.
- Since online discussion forums provide enough time for understanding the opinion of different participants, discussions are done more effectively.

Posts and comments will be available for all participants.
- If we plan to conduct discussions within certain participants, there is a chance that some of the employees will not be able to participate in the discussion in the given time. In the case of an online discussion, contents of the discussion will be available all the time.

Documentation of discussions.
- It is very common to forget what was discussed in a meeting if you weren’t making a note of it. A discussion plugin/platform helps with that too, once the discussion is being done online, every little detail is documented to the last dot.

Easily Avoid ‘No time’ problem.
- Since discussions can be done using a PC or your mobile on the school ERP, participants can post their inputs at any time. This helps in having multiple discussions on multiple topics over everybody’s free time, which in turn keeps the school connected.

Community Building
- Forums provide a very good space to create a meaningful relationship among students and teachers. Students get motivated when their ideas are accepted among peers as well as teachers and vice versa.

Online Discussions in schools are offering all the students and teachers to get to know each other without conducting a face to face meeting. Even though social media platforms provides space for discussing, it is not suitable for an educational environment. Educational communities need centrally controlled discussions and have to make sure that there are no unwanted comments.

Does your ERP come with a discussion module? If it doesn’t, it’s time to change to Fedena.

School ERPs Make Education Spending Smarter

January 31, 2017

Why Smart Schools are no longer an option, but a necessity.

Education policy is an issue that is as divisive as it is important. Nothing has exemplified this more than the recent nomination of Betsy DeVos, a controversial figure in education, for the position of US Secretary of Education under the Trump administration. In addition to her seeming lack of knowledge about polarising positions in education, one of the issues DeVos was raked over the coals for her support of increased privatisation of public education.

This would strike a chord with parents in India. It seems obvious that for their child to achieve success, a private school education is not an added advantage, but a necessity. Even those from economically weak backgrounds prefer to send their children to private schools over government schools. This, despite the fact that over the years, between 2006 and 2013, we have enhanced spending on government school education from 2.2% to 2.68% of the GDP.

But has this increased spending resulted in better learning outcomes? A 2016 Annual Status of Education Report says no. The percentage of children able to perform division has nearly halved, and only 25% of standard five students are able to read English sentences. These statistics are dismal, to say the least, and it goes to show that funding is not the only factor that contributes to a child’s success in school.

Private schools are increasingly popular due to better student teacher ratios, enhanced learning environments, and increase quality of education. Even in rural areas, parents prefer to send their children to private schools – totalling up to nearly a quarter of rural students being enrolled in one. But what does this mean for the remaining 75% who don’t have access to or are unable to afford them?

Complete privatisation of education is an exclusionary solution. Instead, we must focus on replicating the enhanced learning infrastructure and hospitable environment that private school students enjoy. Until this happens, learning outcomes become a secondary priority when faced with the overwhelming task if keeping your head above water in any government school.

Education technology can help bridge this gap. From online classrooms eliminating the need for long treks to an overcrowded school or providing reusable electronic materials reducing our dependence on paper resource s, these innovative ideas help all our students achieve their potential – not just the privileged few.

But let’s get realistic – in a country like India, scaling up solutions quickly enough to address present day, on-the-ground needs can feel like one is forever playing catch up. A perennially overworked government school teacher wears many hats; they are counsellors for parents, caregivers for students, and often the only educated person making decisions in the local government. Tracking the progress of every child and empowering them to achieve their learning outcomes in such a scenario becomes a Sisyphean task.

School management software is a low-cost solution. It allows people to work remotely on a safe and secure platform. School ERPs allow students, teachers, and administrators to stay on track through automation of repetitive tasks like coursework submission, grade assignment, and fee collection. Individualised attention for every student through the online messaging system, study groups, and library management system allows teachers to aid students every step of the way.

Smart school solutions are thus vital for the underprivileged and under-resourced, and it is high time that we leverage this technology to also get smart with our spending – the children need it.