Development of a computer-assisted School Information System for Namibian schools.

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) is taking on greater significance and importance for bringing a lot of benefits to educational institutions such as schools. The benefits IT brings include enhancing productivity, improving efficiency, providing better service and knowledge sharing, increasing competitiveness, reducing costs, just to name a few. This has also led to a rapid development of school information systems. The aim of this research work was to analyse schools administration procedures and construct a computer assisted system for administering Namibian government primary and secondary schools in admission procedures, storing of officials documents, learners and teachers records, attendance registry, storing learners examination grades and generate reports. The population of the research survey was the government primary and secondary school employees whereby teachers, secretaries and principals were interviewed. A judgmental sampling was used to select the schools whereby the following criteria were used; schools that follow government procedures, schools with computers being used fulltime, school with a pass rate of 35% of grade 10 or grade 12 (for secondary school).The sample included three from Khomas region, one from Otjikoto region (North), two from Omusati region (North). The questionnaire, face to face interview, a focus group and the study of the Education EMIS questionnaire were used as data collection method for the research. The findings show that affordability of software and computers maintenance is possible from the school funds. One conclusion from the interview is that in one school out of six some schools there were low or poor acceptance and efficiency of the school administration software they have purchased so they keep on switching between different software. A Dynamic System Development method was selected and used in the design and implementation of the software system, because of its rapid delivery of systems. Therefore, the constructed system might solve some of the gaps exhibited while using current School administration software, by providing features that are needed by the schools. However due to time constraint the implementation of the system did not allow a full usability test of the proposed solution.