DEVELOPMENT OF SENIOR AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AUTOMATED REGISTRATION AND ENROLMENT SYSTEM: BASIS FOR EFFECTIVE SCHOOL RECORDS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AT MAKATI HIGH SCHOOL AbstractI. IntroductionRecords Management system (RMS) is the management of records for an organization throughout the records-life cycle.

The activities in this management include the systematic and efficient control of the creation, maintenance, and destruction of the records along with the business transactions associated with them. Considered a key component of operational efficiency, record management adds more value to organization’s information assets. 2 It helps school managers to systematically collect, store and analyse information about their school so they have relevant and reliable information readily available to support decisions they make in running the school. 3. School that systematically maintain and use school records, both quantity and quality of data will improve schools planning and managing education system.

Moreover, it is necessary to reorganized management and distribute accountability throughout the school system to improve data and information management in schools and better cooperation of the stakeholders. Utilization of technology nowadays specifically computer has become a necessity to all sectors especially to the education sector. Majority of the government schools still do not adapt the use of technology. Different forms are still done on paper to make any communications in school premises.

We all know that school are operating at a great bound struggling to serve as many students as possible with the best of their abilities. But as the years goes by, the number of students has grown especially Senior High School were being added in the curriculum wherein the manual or traditional process of managing students’ record is no longer practical. Currently, the student registration and enrolment system in high school runs manually with extensive human involvement. Paper-based forms are provided for students to write their registration and enrolment information with four copies (one each for Guidance, Accounting, Adviser and Student).

Guidance Counsellors will verify student’s information through the requirements submitted by the student. Then, during this process, the Guidance Counsellors encounter several problems that make the entire process inconvenient and time consuming for the students, parents or guardians, and school administrators as well.Since issues are addressed via different means, the data per se is not centralized resulting to confusion, unattended duplication or redundant information, and even missed or lost information. The school administrators, division and regional personnel are usually deals with enquiries and even complaints concerning the Guidance Counsellor’s operations and services. The manner in which they responds to these desires for information is deemed very important in the image not only of the Guidance but also of the entire school. This is the reason why the school needs to embark on a school record management system, but also to ensure that they are ready to respond to the changing needs of the society 1. Through this platform, the Computer department will be able to respond to the issues raised by the school administrators, division, and regional personnel on a more organized, timely and accurate manner.

These enquiries may occasionally include services which could be directly translated into profits for the school. The main goal of the study is to develop an automated registration and enrolment system basis for effective school record management system. A system that is computerized, user-friendly, time efficient and effective. The said computerized system will manage student records, lessen all paper works and manual records keeping, retrieving, and updating, increase productivity and accountability in the school, reduce in research for the right information, save resources from time consuming research for data retrieval, eliminate redundant data, reduce operating cost, minimize litigation risks, protect and secure vital information, and provide easy and better access to relevant records. Printing of registration and enrolment will be done only if needed.

Therefore, the system will serve the following stakeholders: students, parents or guardians, guidance counsellors, school administrators, teachers to ease in keeping tracks of students, reducing students’ paper forms, avoiding long queues, waiting time and increasing the number of students. II. Methodology2.1 System Architecture The researcher utilized the System Architecture as shown in Figure 1.

INPUT PROCESS OUTPUTFigure 1. Input-Process-Output Diagram for the Development of Senior and Junior High School Automated Registration and Enrolment SystemUltimately, the initiation of the project would not have been possible without identifying the project requirements such as hardware, software, knowledge and actual data. These requirements are vital in the development of the project. The details are presented in the succeeding discussion.

INPUT The following identifies the input in the systems development approach. Inputs include Hardware, Software, and Knowledge requirements.Hardware Requirements The development of the actual prototype required the following hardware resources:Table 1. Hardware Requirements for the Development of Senior and Junior High School Automated Registration and Enrolment SystemDescription Minimum RecommendedHard Disk Space 80GB Disk Space 250GB Disk Space or HigherRAM 1GB RAM 2GB or HigherProcessor 1.8Ghz 2.9Ghz or Higher A development PC with the specifications described in Table 1 was the main tool for the development project. The required disk space corresponds to the needed space to install necessary applications as well as the actual files which were used by the developed system itself. In addition, in order to test the interface design and functionality of the prototype, Laptop and PC were used.

Software RequirementsTable 2. Software Requirements for the Development of Senior and Junior High School Automated Registration and Enrolment SystemDescription Minimum RecommendedDatabase Management MySQL MySQLProgramming Language Java JavaMS Office Application MS Excel MS Excel The set of software which was installed in the hardware requirements are listed in Table 2. Primarily, the entire development platform was composed of following tools that conform the program required for integration and implementation purposes: (1) Java is a computer programming language.

It enables programmers to write computer instructions using English-based commands instead of having to write in numeric codes. It’s known as a high-level language because it can be read and written easily by humans. 4.

(2) MySQL is a freely available open source Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL). SQL is the most popular language for adding, accessing and managing content in a database. It is most noted for its quick processing, proven reliability, ease and flexibility of use. MySQL runs on virtually all platforms, including Linux, UNIX and Windows 5. (3) Ms Excel is one of the MS Office Application.

It is used to generate automated report. You can create excel sheet via java code using apache poi library classes like HSSFSheet, HSSFRow. 6.Knowledge Requirements In this research, more focus should be given to the system development, aiming at grasping the requirements of the prospective system, both in terms of the student and schools perspectives. It is frequently stated that appropriate information on students and schools, subjects to be taken, selected tracks and strands, students and parents’ orientation on registration and enrolment system, enable correct analysis and design of complex systems. The research and developer must be knowledgeable about the nature of the data, its structure, its relationship to other data and its purpose.

The data were used in the development of the automated registration and enrolment system, designing appropriate interfaces and testing and evaluation stage. Thus, similar but actual data were used in different stages.PROCESS The process box in the conceptual model refers to the actual creation of the Senior and Junior High School Automated Registration and Enrolment System. In the process, the researcher used the inputs indicated in Figure 1 in developing the project and aligning it with the research objective.

Aside from creation of the actual system, processing also involved the reorganization of data into more complex, structures during subsequent processing. Analysis design, development and testing were the cone processors that led to the completion to the project. Implementation and Evaluation After producing the prototype, it was implemented in the actual test environment. Thereafter, it was evaluated by different sets of end users.

Each evaluation process required feedback from the system evaluators. These inputs were then assessed and evaluated to determine whether or not these have to be modified or applied to the working prototype. The inputs were found to be feasible.

Since the inputs made the project more efficient and useful, they were used to reengineer the prototype.2.2 Project Development Similar to any hardware or software development methodologies, the researcher chose a methodology that aided her in developing the project.

She considered a variety of factors in choosing the appropriate methodology such as resources, technical skills. And time constraint. With these factors in mind, she decided to make use of throw-away prototyping.

Figure 2. Diagram of Throw-away Prototyping Model Throw-away Prototyping is a technical mechanism to reduce project risk by exploring factors critical to projects success 7. A developed prototype, as part of a throw-away approach, did not form part of the final solution. It is likely to inform the final solution, but the prototype itself did not become part of the final solution. Throw-away prototypes are useful ways of exploring ideas, and gaining feedback from the client and/or end-user. They are used to answer questions. They are then discarded 8. Like any project development methodologies, the standard phases like planning, analysis, and design are included in the prototyping methodology.

The big difference occurs in the design phase where the prototype is being refined as many times as possible until it meets the requirements of the project. In detail, the throw-away prototyping methodology includes the following phases:Planning Phase Planning includes analysis of project requirements in terms of input data and desired output, processing was required to transform input into output, cost-benefit analysis, and schedule of the project. The feasibility analysis includes the technical feasibility of a project in terms of available software tools, hardware, and skilled software professionals. At the end of this phase, a feasibility report for the entire project was created.

The process of analysing the feasibility, developing the work plan and staffing the project happen in the planning phase. In this phase, the researcher identified the series of tasks which had been performed, created the schedule of activities and identified the feasibility of the project. The researcher embarked on different data gathering procedures in order to justify the existence of the problem and to further strengthen the observation that present solutions are not yet efficient and effective.Analysis Phase Gathering, analysis, validating, and specifying requirements are done in the analysis phase. At the end of this phase, the Software Requirement Specification document is prepared. It acts as input to the design phase and takes into account functional, performance, software, hardware, and network requirements of the project. The researcher finalized the scope of the project. After which, comprehensive research was done to identify the hardware and software requirements.

Design Phase (Quick Design-Initial Prototype) Design phase involves translation of the requirements specified in the software requirement specification into a logical structure that can be implemented using various engineering programming and mechanics principles. The output of the design phase is a design document that act as an input for all the subsequent phases. The researcher created the initial prototype from scratch. This served as the quick design prototype.

Since this prototype was done quickly, the functionalities are not yet complete and accurate.System Design In this study, one effective way to solve a large problem is to break it into a set of interacting smaller problems. Each of these smaller problems can then be decomposed into even smaller problems, until after enough iterations, gave birth to a problem that can be solved without further complications.

Each process of decomposition gives a set of components, and deciding what those components are and how they fit together is the activity of system design. The following diagrams describe the overall system design of the developed Senior and Junior High School Automated Registration and Enrolment System. Each diagram shows the functional requirements as well as the movement of data and activities across different entities in the developed project.Figure 3. Context Diagram User will login with their correct fullname and add necessary information regarding the registration.

Required registration details will be displayed afterwards. The Senior and Junior HS Registration and Enrolment System will save the registration and their details. It will manages the details of students and delivers the details for the specified student. MySQL Database will stores each and every information that is saved by the user whether it is the new registration or an old one. The modification or the updating of the registration is also very quickly and efficiently updated in the database. It saves details of all the students as well as their information.

And then, gives the details of the students requested by the user. Figure 4. Data Flow Diagram for Administrator/User Figure 5. Data Flow Diagram for Student 2.3 Operation and Testing ProcedureDeployment Plan To ensure the appropriate testing of the developed system both during development and before operational use, the researcher considered the adequacy of operational and development test resources including the personnel, policies, and procedures.