For parents in Kerala who want to closely monitor the academic activities of their children, there is good news. In a welcome move, the state education department is set to allow parents access to Sampoorna.
Sampoorna is a software developed by IT@school, functioning under the education department, as a one-stop source for all the details of students from classes 10 to 12.
The software developed in 2010, has been positioned as a complete school management software that stores the details of students. It enables multiple data analysis apart from ensuring inclusion of differently abled students. It can also be used for academic and co-curricular planning.
The government in June made Sampoorna mandatory for schools functioning in the state. As per the instruction, all schools in the state- government, aided, CBSE, ICSE, Kendriya Vidyalaya institutions and recognised unaided schools, were asked to record details of their students through Sampoorna. The software will cover 50 lakh students in 15,000 schools.
“Parents login is an advanced step of Sampoorna. This feature will be incorporated in Sampoorna soon. By this, a parent will have their students’ routine information such as their attendance and progress reports. Giving login to parents is a big step towards their technological inclusion which has already been revolutionised by Sampoorna. In a conventional type of academic system, loss of quality is inevitable when there are multiple tiers of administration. Sampoorna has been envisaged as an application which can gauge the aptitude and behavioural patterns of the students, since children are spending more time in schools. Thus, parents can easily gauge any differences in their child’s behavioural pattern and there would be a mechanism for further introspection wherever required,” said IT@School executive director K Anvar Sadath.
The software will be available in an off-line mode which can be synchronised to an online server later, as well as in a mobile version too. IT@School will also assess the pattern for scaling up Sampoorna whether in a cloud based system or other similar forms. “The objective is to ensure that Sampoorna is accessible to parents from all walks of life, irrespective of any societal or financial borders by ensuring the privacy and security of data. Sampoorna will also enable the teachers to share specific information of students with their parents, whenever necessary,” he added.
He also claims that it is a unique system in the state. “I don't think any other states have such a comprehensive school management system,” said Anvar Sadath.
The government order issued on June 5 making Sampoorna mandatory in all schools said that it should include details required by agencies such as Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, Pareeksha Bhavan, the Statistics Wing and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. The educational directorates should issue periodic instructions for ensuring the authenticity of data captured in the software, the order also directed.
The objective of the order is to do away with the confusion created while the Education Department, other agencies and departments collect the same data from schools in different formats (online or offline). Through the order, a single form of data acquisition for all schools in the state came into effect.