CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The educational industry or a school is classified by its output or product in form of human character, behavior, intelligence, knowledge, understanding and beliefs. In order to have knowledge of basic information or education of what we want to become in life or future we need a solid foundation that will groom us in attaining it. Every one in position of power and authority goes through an institution school therefore it is important that we keep record of every individual that passes through the school including the staff within a particular period of time. No one is admitted into a university or college without a secondary school certificate. The staff should also be considered in any establishment because they have their input in the growth and success of the organization, they are the rock on which a school stands upon.

In other to cater for all these, there must be a way of keeping record of student in the school. This notion prompted us to carry out this research work with the major aim of developing a student management information system in other to improve the administrative standard of the institution.

School records are official documents, books and files containing essential and crucial information of actions and events which are kept and preserved in the school office for utilization and retrieval of information when needed. Such records are kept by head of departments or administrative staff; hence the purpose of record keeping and management is to ensure that accurate and proper records of students’ achievement and growth, information on school activities and matters that will promote efficiency and effectiveness of the school system are kept. According to Durosaro (2002), records are important tools for effective planning and administration of a school. School records occupy strategic position in the effective and efficient organization and administration of the school for the document the planning and implementation of appropriate course of actions allowing proper monitoring of activities/tasks. Records are important because they serve as major information tool that sustains the school and aids in achieving educational goals and objectives. Records restore teaching competence and maintain the trend in the history of teaching and learning processes.

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Despite the importance of school records in the achievement of educational objectives, these records do not seem to be adequately managed by the management. From observation, it becomes obvious that accurate, reliable and trustworthy records that fulfill evidential requirements are being created but not properly managed. Egwunyenga (2009) emphasized that record management practice in Nigeria has a number of problems which may include insufficient skilled and experienced record management personnel and possibly low priority of record management in the scheme of things. Thus, management of school records become an issue of great concern to education stakeholders, parents, students, individuals, government and non-governmental organization.

This project work intends to take care of the following problems;

• Manage student record
• Hold student test scores, assessment score etc.
• Track student schedules
• Managing student health records
• Enrolling new student
• Maintaining discipline records.
• Managing any other records relevant to students.

1.3     AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objective of this project is to develop a system that will   adequately manage student information, student’s record, and student’s     transcript. The software can be modified to suit all the departments and    can be used by colleges of education and polytechnics for the same        purpose.

1.4     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The extent to be covered in this project work is the development of an     adequate system that can manage student information, record and       transcript.

1.5     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study is found useful to Polytechnic administration, which include Admission officers, head of departments, administrative secretaries, etc. As we all know, information is the bedrock of any developing society, this study deals with the proper handling of both student staff information in secondary schools. Also this research work is found useful to future project student who may want to carry out research on similar or related topic. This project is also significant in the following ways:

• Need for efficient, effective and adequate management of students academic records.
• Need for adequate protection and security of vital information
• Providing academics the ability to manage and communicate more effectively with students data.
• Helping academics spend less time on processing students data
• Need for easy and past means of information dissemination within the department

1.6     RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The methodology adopted in this research project is as follows; Findings during the investigation process were gathered so as to fully identify the problem areas of the existing system. There are some flaws that were identified which the proposed system intends to correct.

1.7     DEFINITION OF TERMS

• MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM (MIS): MIS is a system that is designed to provide information that is needed to manage organizations efficiently and effectively. Management information systems are not only computer systems. But MIS encompass three primary component; technology, people (individuals, groups, or organization), and data information for decision making.
• DATABASE: A database is a collection of interrelated data stored together with minimum redundancy that can be retrieved for various applications.
• AUTOMATED: These is the process by which computers have been used to control a particular process in order to increase reliability and efficiency often through the replacement of employees or a manufacture, this could entail using robotic assembly lines to manufacture a product.
• MANAGEMENT: it is the control and verification of the system in order to detect short comings and weaknesess, if the organisation has enough financial,physical and human resoures to operates correctly and hence produce expected result
• STUDENT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (SIMS): Student information system is a student-level data collection system that allows the department to collect and analyze more accurate and comprehensive information, to meet federal and state reporting requirements, and to inform policy and programmatic decisions.
• VISUAL BASIC: Visual basic is a third generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft for its COM programming model first released in 1991. Visual basic is designed to be relatively easy to learn and use i.e. it user friendly.
• AUTHENTICATION: A security method of guaranteeing that a massage is genuine, that it has arrived unaltered and that it comes from the source indicated.
• ENCRYPTION: Encryption is the transfer of data into a secret code. Encryption is the most effective way to achieve data security. To read in encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it. Unencrypted data is called plain text while encrypted data is referred to as cipher text. There are two main types of encryption; asymmetric encryption (also called public-key encryption) and symmetric encryption.
• AUTHORIZATION: This allows users to sign in to your application with access to the data they have stored.
• INFORMATION SYSTEM: This implies properly defined system of collecting data or information both relevant and meaningful to a certain context.