Maheshwari Public School Computerisation

Dr A K Pandey was Principal of Maheshwari Public School (MPS) from 01.12.1998 to 30.06.2005. Maheshwari Public School promoted by Shri Maheswari Samaj was established in July 1977 in Jawahar Nagar area of Jaipur. It is affiliated to CBSE and it is also an accredited institute of National Institution of Open Schooling. The school has currently student strength of 3000 and teacher strength of 145. In +2 stream, it offers both science and commerce streams. The school campus is of 11,400 square yard with a carpet area of 1.25 sq. ft. There are altogether 62 sections with classes from I to XII. Well equipped Physics, Chemistry and Biology labs are established. The school has also installed closed circuit television (CCTV) so that principal sitting in his/her room can to find out what’s happening in which classes. Similarly a 2-way public address system to address one/more/all rooms has been installed.

In his last assignment as Education Director of Hermann Gmeiner Schools, Faridabad, Dr Pandey had taken interest to popularize information technology (IT). Though he does not consider himself as an IT expert, he has still acquired some basic skills in IT through his personal efforts. He is fond of e-mailing and loves to be in touch with his old students and friends through e-mails. He can also word process a document without any external effort, and his current passion is to learn PowerPoint presentation well. After joining the school he realized that Maheswari Public School has been a leader in IT implementation in Jaipur with computer education being imparted in the school since 1986. In April 1986, MPS had set up a computer lab with 30 PC-386 systems. MPS was also the first school in Rajasthan to implement Bharatiyavidya; a computer based teaching (CBT) aid with a large screen TV . The school had invested quite a bit in setting up a good IT infrastructure.

Dr. Pandey also found out that the previous principal, Mr. Handoo was a progressive person and had encouraged some interested teachers to develop small software to automate various functions of the school. The process of software development started with Mr. E V Ajay Simha a Geography teacher trying to develop a payroll system as part of his hobby. Slowly with the support of Ashish Bhargava (Personal Assistant to the Principal), Mr. Naveen Mandhan (teacher in Comp. Sc. Dept.), Preeti Saxena (computer teacher.) and Ritu Sareen (computer teacher) this process got converted into a full fledged and formal software development activity. Even, Ms Abhilasha Sharma, head of computer science department helped the team in the conceptualizing some of the software.

In 1993, the first software to be developed in house was the Payroll System followed by the Fee Collection System and Student Registration System in 1994. Examination department software was developed in 1995. Three years later the time table software was developed. In 2000, leave record of staff was computerized using an in-house software and in 2001 a software for Allocation of Streams for Class XI was developed. In 2002 Teachers Performance Monitoring System was brought into use. Since 1995, some limited computerization of seating plans for board and external examinations are being done by the Examination department using Lotus 1-2-3 program. The latest software is the Student Attendance System.

Dr. Pandey decided to continue this process and in fact tried to formalize the process little bit by recognizing the efforts of the teachers and rationalizing their workload. He also initiated a comprehensive training program for his staff members. Three kinds of computer training programs were organised: 1) for computer teachers to learn the emerging technologies 2) for administrative staff in office automation work 3) subject teachers in use of computers in teaching and other routine work. One week training program for computer teachers is conducted by external experts every year. The other two programs for teachers and administrative staff are conducted by in-house staff members. All these have resulted into various benefits. Teachers at MPS have been trained to use computers as teaching aids. Staff members have become comfortable is using computers for entering data, generating reports and doing a little bit of word processing. The school software team has been able to develop and implement a number of programs that take care of various functions of the school (See Exhibit-1 to know more about various programs developed at MPS). In fact, besides MPS, its other sister schools (Shri Maheswari Senior Secondary School, Maheswari Girls Senior Secondary School, and Maheswari Girls Public School) are also using the programs developed by software team of MPS. For example, Library and Fee Collection System developed by MPS are being used by sister schools since last 4 years. Examination System would be used by them from this year while Attendance System would be brought into practice from the next year.

Dr Pandey keeps attending various training programs organized both in Rajasthan and at all India level (Exhibit 2 shows various programs attended, research paper published by Dr Pandey and other activities of Dr Pandey Exhibit 3). He is also member of some committees related to course fixation and other education related issues. With his exposure, he feels that MPS is still to achieve a lot in school automation. For example, most of the software at MPS is stand alone with some facility of data exchange. This means there is still a lot of data duplication that hogs space and breeds inaccuracy and inconsistency in data. Most of the programs have been developed using FoxPro on DOS, an old software tool (See Exhibit-4 to know which programs are developed by whom and on what platform). These programs can be made to operate faster or in friendlier manner if they can be remade using newer tools like Oracle or Visual BASIC.

Though some articles in the net, Dr. Pandey also discovered that some schools abroad have started making available some appropriate school data like the performance of the students, school schedule, and circulars to the parents through the school websites. Dr Pandey believes MPS can also establish similar facilities for its parents. Though MPS has established two LANs (one for computer lab and the other for school information system), the school is yet to establish a campus wide network with supporting SIS to become an information rich school. All these goals and challenges encouraged Dr Pandey to think of establishing a long term IT strategy for the school. For this purpose, he invited a well known IT consultant from Delhi who could look at the school systems and help to devise a strategy. The consultant was shown the existing IT infrastructure (See Exhibit-5for the IT infrastructure of MPS) and the software currently being used in MPS. The consultant also talked individually to vice principal, some subject teachers, computer teachers, students and office staff to get an overview of the perception of different stakeholders regarding the existing school information system (See Exhibit 6 for observations of different stakeholders).

Dr. Pandey has to resign from Maheshwari Public School due to differences with the management on the point of this project. He wanted that neighboring schools must be benefited by using such developments. At present he is the Principal of Gyan Vihar, a co-educational English Medium School at Malviya Nagar, Jaipur affiliated to CBSE. Gyan Vihar is a six year old school with strength of nearly 900 students. It runs its Engineering, Management and several PG Courses having its affiliation to University of Rajasthan and approval of AICTE.

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