Your School Already has a Report System?

The Paper Chase

If your school has an inadequate or paper-based system you will appreciate what a nightmare it can be, chasing bits of paper with reports getting lost or damaged. One report may pass through several hands - plenty of scope for mishap, frustration and stress.

Existing Computer-Based System

Alternatively your school may have developed a bespoke computer system. With such systems a common problem is lack of scalability: what copes well with a handfull of teachers may become unworkable when servicing many simultaneous users.

Maybe the in-house system has been developed and maintained by a member of staff. When that person leaves, detailed knowledge of how to operate and administer the system often leaves with them.

So:

Does your current system use Microsoft Access?

Things To Consider

Features for Administrators

If you already have a system, there are various things that you should consider. In particular, is your system (irrespective of whether it is easy for teachers to use) easy to administer. Without the benefit of a carefully designed system that give fine-tuning of what teachers can and cannot do, it can be very difficult to impose overall control and consistency.

Is administration built-in or a separate system?

CAIRO has all of it's considerable administrative capability built into the one program (the same one used to key-ion the report data). There is not a plethora of icons, all over your desktop, instead, you have a single, simple administration menu (only visible to those CAIRO users who are designated as administrators).


Is your database system standard?

CAIRO uses Microsoft SQL Server (versions 2000 and 2005 are both supported). This is an industrial-strength system used by most major software houses. It is also extensively used in industry, banking and commerce. Many of the major school administration systems (such as SIMS) now use Microsoft SQL Server.


Is your data secure?

All data for CAIRO is held on a central server. The server is independent of any file sharing that takes place and CAIRO communicates with the server using one of a number of configurable protocols. This ensures a high degree of security and isolates the data from prying eyes and tampering. Access to the database is protected by a password that is independent of the user logins.


Is your system resilient?

When CAIRO is installed, a custom Maintenance Plan is created that makes regular backups of the database in such as way as to be integrated with the regular tape backups of the server. This is typically done daily, but at busy times, it is perfectly feasible to run scheduled backups mnore than once a day.


Is your system dependent on just one or two members of staff to keep it going?

Systems developed in-house by schools often rely heavily on the member of staff who initially created it. Also, because such a system is not created by software professionals (who have the resources to solve tricky issues), the bespoke system usually needs a lot of nursing and manual intervention to make it all work. When the system's author moves to another school or retires, you may be left with a white elephant and no support.