If you are a school administrator, you might be struggling with many questions including: “how can we deliver the same service during the pandemic as before?” and “how do we organize our workflow seamlessly?”. Well have a seat! Class is in session.
Many school websites serve as a memorial or a database for students and alumni. Their website serves to display accolades or achievements, school policies, compliance procedures, basic contact details, an about-us page, welcome from the principal and headteacher, and useful information about staff members. If your school’s website falls into this archival category, you have more than one problem.
Ask yourself this question. Should you be paying maintenance for a website that does not solve any of your problems? Your school’s website should solve most of your problems. It should be an extension of your administrative staff, teachers, and other stakeholders. Now, let’s discuss some of the features that your school’s website must have to solve your problems.
Register new Students online
You should not only be able to manage student registration on your website, but also make admission arrangements for students, promote students to different classes, and accept tuition payment.
Transferring students from one school to another should be easy if your institution has multiple schools, for example, Prep school and High School. Also, keep track of students that are transferred to and transferred between schools.
Parents Should Have Access To Your Website
Parents are very important to schools because they pay the bills. Therefore they should be treated as such. Providing a front-end login pannel for parents can boost your school’s ratings. This panel can provide information like student’s booklist, reports, performance updates, exams, assessments, behavioral policy, notice board, and homework.
A school fee collection form can also be placed on the page. This will allow parents to search for their children’s names and view pending fee invoices. Thereafter they can make payments on the website.
Your Website Should Be Accessible To Students
Students are the most important stakeholders in a school and any school website must be useful for students. Your website must have a student login and an accessible dashboard. Additionally, students should be able to download study materials for classes, view course outlines, and exam timetables.
Students should also be able to view their various fees, admission details, ID card, school year calendar, and pay the remaining fees using a suitable payment method from their panel, and view their payment history.
From the student panel, students should be able to access and view the school’s noticeboard and view pending fee invoices.
What about online classes?
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, many schools have resorted to conducting classes online. Therefore your school’s website should be able to accommodate the creating of classes and sessions for students, through Zoom. When your website is integrated with zoom your teachers will be able to create classes while students can join these classes from their pannel on your school’s website.
Should Administrative Staff Have A Login?
Administrative workers play a great role too in your school community. Administrative personnel like Vice Principals and Principals etc, should be able to create custom roles and assign permission to other staff members. The school administrator should be able to create any number of staff with designated roles to manage the school.
What About Teachers?
On the teacher’s panel of the website, there should be the ability to take the daily attendance of students. Also publishing the attendance report in the dashboard of students and parents is possible.
The ability to generate and manage class timetables, add exams, exam papers, exam dates, and exam centers is crucial. They would be able to generate room numbers for single or multiple classes. All of this information would be published on the student dashboard.
Lastly, teachers with the necessary permission may add homework for classes on the student dashboard section. Students will be notified of these changes by SMS.
Accountants
Giving your accountant access to your website’s back-end can be beneficial. Your accountant will be able to generate an invoice, conduct expenditure management, handle income management for payments collected online and offline, and structure fees for students. From the back-end of the website, your accountant should be able to collect partial payments or one-time payments for students. There is also the option of integrating your accounting workflow using Quickbooks to automate your accounting process.
What about Librarians?
Your school Librarian should also benefit from this system. They will be able to Manage books, add books, generate and print student’s library cards, issue books to students, and keep track of books issued and return from the back end of the website.
Can We Display News And Updates?
The average school today has a full calendar of their yearly activities for students and teachers, both academic and extra curriculum activities. Therefore, all your stakeholders should be able to access information about these activities, on your website. One of the best ways to display this information is through a blog and events page. With this inclusion, you can reach out to the school community and improve your Google rankings with regular postings.
These are some of the important things that a school website should have. Impression Marketing Jamaica can make this a reality for you. We can design your school website to meet your needs. Don’t get trapped with a website that can’t solve any of your problems. Contact the experts and put your school on the map.
