Free registration software

[vikpaw]

Electronic registration integration with an MIS is surely one of the more basic functions an MIS should provide. That is computer based, or even PDAs, biometrics, whatever. Paper or OMR registers are nonsense these days!

Nonsense is perhaps a bit strong, particularly for a primary school, but it all depends on the need and data usage.

We still use paper registers in the primary, but upper school use lesson monitor. The admin lady in primary then manually keys in the marks, so we have a whole school picture. Great I wish i could convince even just the old year groups in primary to do online registration but i've got a battle to convince management it's worth it for the teachers to save time, use technology, etc.

[GeeHubb]

Paper registers here too (Primary - 320 children). Actually they're old OMR register sheets but I pensioned off the reader some years ago when I realised I had much more control over the marks if I entered them manually. Twelve classes takes about 10 minutes to input twice a day. We find it much more accurate. SIMS not available for teachers in classroom (or anywhere else) anyway and I'd have an uphill battle on my hands to get the teaching staff to do it (not to mention that they'd never get it right)! SLT in our school see SIMS as very much an admin tool.

[PhilNeal]

Around 20% of primary schools input attendance in the classroom saving 1.6 hrs/week or 50 hrs/year. Many of those that take the register in the classroom do it on the whiteboard with the children marking themselves present.