The increasing penetration of examination management software has brought a new focus on assessments and evaluation systems in schools as a critical function. For the longest time, attention was rarely paid to the complexity and enormity of this massive task. However, with the evolution of the modern education ecosystems, there has been a remarkable increase in the diversity of the examination structures and the frequency of tests and examinations routinely undertaken by the school. The number of reports needed for compliances and internal evaluation is way too many, and mostly unavoidable because assessment is crucial not just as a norm, but also because it gives school management a sense of the extent to which each student is grasping the concepts and learnings. A good result-generation system cuts down on the hassle significantly and makes assessment smooth, effective, and less intensive for the staff.
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The Challenges
To evaluate what makes a good examination management software or result-generation platform, one first needs to understand what are the granular challenges that need to be addressed by them.
One of the most important issues that we come across in the context of result generation is managing changes. If the education Board makes any structural changes to the grading system or weightage, all the previous year’s report cards get impacted. Changing subject orders across classes is another hurdle that schools have to deal with when it comes to handling result generation.
Similarly rounding off as per the school’s requirement is an important functionality that is rarely addressed. Different schools have different criteria, thresholds, and points for rounding off the scores. Some schools prefer to round individual subject scores while others prefer a rounded-off grand total. Whatever the requirement, it is specific and important to the schools and needs to be catered to by their result-generation system.
The biggest challenge, however, remains the amount of data. As the diversity has increased across classes in the examination, so has the frequency of tests and exams, with weekly and monthly evaluations becoming a norm. This results in a massive number of calculations that need to be done and an equally large amount of data that needs to be managed and communicated to the parents. Involving teachers in this process means they are bound to spend a significant amount of time and labor in doing these calculations, transmitting them to the parents, analyzing the reports, and figuring out the action that needs to be taken concerning each student. This is an extremely daunting and exhausting process which also has an impact on the action that needs to be taken basis the assessment.
Automating the result-generation process through digital examination management platforms is therefore not just a choice but an essential initiative that needs to be undertaken to make the school’s day-to-day operations more efficient and effective.
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The Solution
A good examination or result-generation platform has to fulfill certain essential criteria and some very specific requirements.
Automate The Calculations, Report Generation, and Communication: This goes without saying that a good result generation system has to go beyond the existing systems that customize the report cards but fail to cut down on the effort and labor involved in report generation. A good report card generation software not only automates all the calculations and data collation but also makes it easy for the school staff to generate reports and send them across to parents either digitally as online report cards or as printouts.
Generate Detailed Reports:
Schools often need detailed specific reports that go beyond the bird’s eye view of a standard report card and provide information like comprehensive marks breakup, percentage, weightage, and analysis of the scores to better assess the students and take action. An effective examination management platform enables schools to generate these reports without any manual hassle and analyze them with speed and ease.
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Manage Structural Changes and Rounding Off:
A good result-generation platform helps schools navigate any changes that may be introduced in the grading system, marking structure or weightage without impacting the previous years’ records. The subject order is taken care of on a class-by-class basis. Similarly, each school’s rounding-off requirements are specifically catered to, ensuring that the school’s evaluation uniformity is maintained without any manual intervention or problems.
An examination management software and a result generation platform like the one offered by Schoolpad understand these concerns and are designed to address them effectively and with ease. Having helped 100s of schools generate their report cards across different classes and different boards, Schoolpad’s platform has been evolving and innovating constantly to reflect and address the specific needs and hurdles faced by schools when it comes to evaluation and assessment.
Irrespective of your choice of platform as a school, it is essential for the schools to remember that using good tools to digitize and automate a critical function like assessment can go a long way in not only managing their operational hurdles but also giving their growth story the much-needed edge.
Want to learn more about how you can use Schoolpad’s examination platform to manage your assessments and evaluations? Want Schoolpad to be a partner in your school’s growth story? Please feel free to get in touch with us at connect@schoolpad.in . You can also click on the request a demo link and one of our coaches will get in touch with you.
