In the words of Jane D. Hull, an American (former) politician and educator, at the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents.

There are usually several cases of forged school examination results (report forms) in most schools/colleges because the students’ interest is to impress their parents or guardians with their performance. This is something that is occasioned by lack of information sharing or regular and continuous communication between the school and the parent or guardian.

As a parent or guardian, imagine a situation where you get or remotely access the progress of your son/daughter in school in form of alerts and by the end of each term, the student comes home with hard copy of the information you had earlier received…

Will there be cases of forgery? No! In fact the student will always work hard to ensure that they please you with actual marks. As a result, they will go an extra mile to improve their performance in both academics and co-curricular activities and in return they will post excellent performance as they graduate.

Such can only be achieved if learning institutions — schools and colleges, leverage on the fast growing technology by acquiring an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for schools to automate their processes. Such software manage admissions, student information, staff, accounts, procurement and examinations. Comprehensive ones come with modules to manage hostels, transport and the library.

With all processes in the school automated, communication or information sharing tools like email, Short Messaging Service (SMS) and mobile (Android/iOS) applications come in handy in automation of communication where all school stakeholders receive respective/targeted messages or notifications by a click of a button.

This is attainable because such automation software (school management systems or ERPs) are locally affordable; some on one-off cost and others offered as a service billed monthly or annually.

It is therefore a responsibility of every parent, guardian or any school stakeholder to ensure that their son’s/daughter’s institution has implemented such systems that would facilitate seamless communication and information sharing to aid tracking students performance.

Somehow, the society demands that for one (parent) to be termed as successful, the children must be equally successful judged based on their milestones.