A Study on the Impact of Management Information Systems on School Administration

A study on the impact of Management Information Systems on school

administration

Abstract:This paper specifies the importance of management information system in the school administration. As the administration directly influence the educational growth rate of a school,therefore any unsolved issue in administration can substantially affect education system and its stakeholders,i.e., Students, parents, and teachers.A lot of study has been done on the effect of management information systems on education system in terms of the introduction of information and communication technology in school but impact of this on school administration is generally neglected. Literature studies provide sufficient evidence on the direct impact of administrative structure and efficiency on educational growth.Therefore, to stimulate the educational growth and get the best out of it, a focus, and strong importance should be given on the school administration which can perform efficient and effective way by the use of management information system.This paper mainly focused on nine issues of administration which can easily resolve with the help of management information system and make it far better and effective.

Keywords: Management information system, information, and communication technology

1. Introduction:

Computers are very powerful as a tool for learning,teaching as well as for administration in schools in today’s life[1].Management information system(MIS)predominantly refers to a computer-based system that renders the management the environment to efficiently manage and organize various departments.It helps in decision-making and strategic planning, record keeping, and transaction handling, management, and operational control,short-term planning, and goal setting.MIS, therefore, plays a consequential role in management, administration, and operation in an organization.

This paper focuses on the applicability of MIS in school administration and how MIS can make a positive impact on the education system in the school. The administration generally refers to an organization which involves efficient allocation and usage of people and other resources.Therefore, any discrepancies in administration such as poor infrastructural facilities, overpopulation in class, principal-teachers relationship,staffing problem, unsatisfied parents etc decelerate the growth rate of the education system of the school which is highly undesirable for a country. For example, India is having more than 1.4 million schools with over 227 million students enrolled and thus possessing a significant role in world education industry[2] .

In this paper, the emphasize is given to school administration and education only.The reason behind is that according to National Education Budget(2005-2012), the attendee in primary school and secondary school are approx 93% and 69% respectively whereas post-secondary is only 25% in India[3][4].According to budget expenditure from 2011-12 to 2013-14,Indian Government already has invested total 80.78% of total budget allocated for education sector on school education out of which incorporation of Information and Communication Technology(ICT) in schools consume a major portion of the allocation[5]. The importance of ICT lies in the fact that it significantly increases the efficiency and effectiveness in school management in terms of proper usage and allocation of resources(e.g.,students, staff members, teachers, student-teacher ratio in class, timetabling etc) and monitoring each operation in the school in a simplified manner.Now, this huge investment by the government will be worthwhile if there is an evidence that has made a commensurate impact on school performance and effectiveness[6].MIS are used to support and enhance the school administrative activities such as financial management, building an effective strategy, and structure, effective assessment procedure, and staff allocation scheme.MIS is a relatively new field of study which demands in-depth research and study on system utilization in schools and their effect on the education process.Literature study supports this statement in the aspect that there are many research and studies have been done on the role of management of information system(MIS) on class and teaching but a very few research have been conducted on the use of MIS in education management and their effect on managers in school.

It is organized as follows. It first provides the importance of an administration in school and then tries to present nine issues faced by school administration due to lack of proper information system.Subsequently, it reviews the solution of those issues in the light of MIS and tries to establish a relationship between the usage of MIS in school administration and educational growth in schools.At the end of the paper,future empirical research in the favor of more investment in MIS in school administration is proposed to increase the enrollment numbers and literacy rate in rural part of the country.

1. Specification:

According to Peter Drucker,” the administration is the organ of its institution. It is responsible for making work productive and worker achieving, managing social impacts and responsibility.” The structure that is seen generally in school administration is hierarchical with centralized decision-making capability which makes the response time slower and inefficient. Due to lack of proper information system,many avoidable issues arise which are as follows and more importantly the literature has a wealth information this issue[7].

1. The rise of communication gap due to lack of formalized communication platform.
2. Keeping track of every record of various departments in an easily accessible way.
3. The absence of the practice to represent the overall progress of a student in a pictorial way rather than conventional reporting system.
4. Lack of attention and “new learning” in class due to old teaching method and teachers from Gen X.
5. The conflict between the opinions of  Gen X and Y members in the same school.
6. Unable to handle enrollment boom.
7. Complex maintenance and Operations.
8. Rigorous and hectic staff training system.
9. Lack of technology incorporation in the environment leads to lack of motivation and inspiration.

On a daily basis, school administrators face this kind of various issues arising from each stakeholder(e.g., Parent, Teacher, Student, Staff etc)of the school and the success or failure of the administration is determined by their reaction towards these issues.

 The first issue suggests that a school equipped with proper information system can build a platform where three main pillars,i.e., teachers, students, and parent can communicate any time easily without violating some formalized and official time constraint.It also creates more healthy and comfortable relationship between the stakeholders of the school.MIS provides a very simple solution for the second kind of issue by the means of transaction system and database which saves more than 70% time spent on only recording,searching, processing and communication.The third issue is important as the educational growth of any student is the main objective of a school which can be easily resolved by using various software linked with the database of the marks of each student throughout a long period.By introducing ICT in schools and teacher training , the environment of the class can be improved along with the increased attention of students.Gen X members of the school suffer from the embarrassment due to lack of proficiency in technology handling which decreases the efficiency and motivation in work.By proposing some basic training, they can be easily understood that how technology can reduce their workload and make work interesting as well as more efficient.MIS gives the interface to forecast the workload, long-term planning such as enrollment boom.It also helps in systematization of operations and maintenance in administration.Rigorous staff training can be simplified with the incorporation of MIS in terms of non-occurrence of repetitive and lengthy hectic schedule, the absence of manual long calculation, quick decision making using software, easy data fetching using query optimization and interesting interface to work.Therefore, it can be inferred that incorporation of technology in terms of MIS in the whole administration not only increase the efficiency and throughput of the system but also motivate and inspire people to do their assigned work more quick and easy manner. Therefore it is seen that there is a relation between the health of the administration of the school and its success as an educational organization.