The Design and Automation of Web Based School Management Portal for Primary and Secondary Schools in Nigeria

Abstract

Many renowned primary and secondary schools in Nigeria are still dwindling in the use of technology as a supportive measure in achieving a high ranking educational breakthrough in the 21^st century especially when they need to manage a wide range of students’ data. This is because they rely on manual ways of creating, managing and displaying students’ data. Computations of such data are so cumbersome and mistakes are unavoidable. There are always complaints of computational errors in students’ terminal reports, class performance, financial records, and so on. Furthermore, record archival and retrieved processes are so slow which in turn decreases the school administration efficiency. Hence the need for the design and automation of web based school management portal (WBSMP) as an integral part in e-government. This research is conducted to design WBSMP that could be used by various schools in Nigeria. The objective of the WBSMP is to provide the following services among others; reduce school administration running cost, increase school administration efficiency, run platform of communication between school and parents, document download and newsletters provided by the teachers and management, online registration, track students’ enrollment, online checking of results, etc. The design of WBSMP was done using Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) and JAVA programming languages coupled with user interface (UI) designing languages like Bootstrap, and the database was designed using Structure Query Language (MySQL). Several input formats were designed to capture various data needed to generate various output reports. The WBSMP was carefully tested and evaluated and it was found out that the system achieved the stated goals. This research work ‘Design and Automation of WBSMP’ is recommended for all basic schools and post basic schools in the country.