Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

The School Management System is a comprehensive, web-based application designed to enhance the
efficiency and accessibility of school administrative and academic processes. In the modern educational
environment, managing a school's day-to-day operations can be a complex and time-consuming task. This
system addresses these challenges by providing an integrated platform that automates various functions, such
as student information management, attendance tracking, grade recording, and communication among school
members.

Traditional methods of school management involve extensive paperwork and manual data handling, leading to
inefficiencies, errors, and delays. With the increasing number of students and administrative tasks, it becomes
difficult to maintain accurate records and ensure smooth communication between teachers, students, and
administrators. The School Management System aims to solve these issues by offering a centralized, user-
friendly interface that streamlines these processes. This platform is designed to be accessible to all users,
including teachers, students, and administrative staff, facilitating seamless interactions and efficient
management of school operations. It leverages modern web technologies to provide real-time updates, secure
data storage, and easy access to information from any location with internet connectivity. By integrating
various functionalities into a single system, the School Management System ensures a cohesive workflow and
enhances the overall educational experience.

One of the primary features of the SMS is its ability to manage student information effectively. This includes
maintaining comprehensive records of student demographics, academic performance, attendance, and
disciplinary actions. By centralizing this information, the system allows for easy access and updates, reducing
the likelihood of errors and ensuring that data is always current.

The development of this system is particularly relevant in the context of increasing reliance on digital tools for
education, highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the SMS is designed with user-friendliness
in mind. Its intuitive interface ensures that users, regardless of their technical proficiency, can navigate the
system with ease.

In conclusion, the School Management System represents a significant advancement in the way educational
institutions manage their operations. By automating administrative tasks, enhancing data accuracy, and
improving communication, the system provides a comprehensive solution that meets the needs of modern
schools. As education continues to evolve in the digital age, the SMS will play a crucial role in ensuring that
schools can operate efficiently and effectively, ultimately contributing to a better educational experience for
all stakeholders.
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1.2 Problem Statement

Traditional school management processes involve extensive paperwork and manual handling of data, which
can be time-consuming and prone to errors. With the increasing number of students and administrative tasks,
it becomes challenging to maintain accurate records and ensure effective communication. There is a need for a
comprehensive system that integrates various school functions, automates routine tasks, and improves data
accuracy and accessibility.

1.3 Objectives

The primary objectives of the School Management System project are:

 To create a secure, user-friendly platform for managing school operations.

 To automate administrative tasks such as attendance tracking, grade recording, and student information
management.

 To improve communication between teachers, students, and administrators.

 To provide easy access to school-related information and records.

1.4 Scope and Limitations

1.4.1 Scope

The School Management System project encompasses:

 Developing an online platform accessible to teachers, students, and administrators.

 Integrating features such as student information management, attendance tracking, and grade
recording.

 Enabling digital communication tools for effective interaction between school members.

 Providing a responsive and intuitive design for ease of use.

1.4.2 Limitations

Despite its benefits, the platform has some limitations:

 The risk of data breaches or unauthorized access, despite implemented security measures.

 Limited accessibility for individuals without internet connectivity.

 Potential technical issues that may disrupt school operations.

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  Lack of direct verbal communication, which may hinder the resolution of complex queries.

1.5 Report Organization

The first part of the report contains the summarized introduction of the whole report. It includes the overview,
scope and limitation, problem statement, and objectives of this project.

The second chapter includes the background study i.e. description of fundamental theories, general concepts,
and terminology related to the project. It also includes the literature review i.e. review of similar projects,
research, and theories done by other researchers.

The system analysis and design phase is covered in the third chapter, where use cases and system diagrams are
used to report the project's functional and non-functional requirements. It also contains the system's feasibility
study, which explains whether the system development process is within the developers' knowledge base and
is affordable. The project development phase's technical, operational, and financial viability is demonstrated.
This chapter also includes an explanation of the system's design. It includes data modeling and process
modeling, both of which are illustrated with data flow diagrams and ER diagrams. This chapter also includes a
list of the database, user interface, and architectural designs.

The fourth chapter of the report contains the representation of the implementation and testing of the project.
All the tools used to make the project are shown in this part like, CASE tools, Programming Languages, and
Database Platform.

The fifth chapter of the report contains the lesson learnt, the conclusion, and future recommendations. In this
part, we have shared the learning experience that we gained during making this project.

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 Chapter 2: Background Study and Literature Review

2.1 Background Study

School Management Systems are increasingly being adopted to enhance educational administration and
academic processes. These systems offer a variety of functionalities that help in managing student
information, tracking attendance, recording grades, and facilitating communication among school members.
With the growing number of students and administrative tasks, schools are moving towards automated
systems to maintain efficiency and accuracy.

2.1.1 Types of School Management Systems

There are various types of school management systems, each designed to cater to different needs:

 Student Information Systems (SIS): Manages student data, including enrollment, attendance, and
grades.

 Administration Management Systems: Manages administrative tasks like scheduling and

communication.

Among these, the Student Information System (SIS) is the most common and crucial for managing student-
related data efficiently.

2.2 Literature Review

For this project, we researched various websites, documents, and existing school management systems. Our
findings indicate that while many systems offer robust features, they often come with high costs and complex
implementations. Key studies include:

 Research on the effectiveness of school management systems highlights the importance of user-
friendly interfaces and comprehensive functionalities to support educational administration.

 Studies on data security in educational systems emphasize the need for robust security measures to
protect sensitive student information.

 Reviews of existing systems like PowerSchool and Skyward reveal their strengths in data management
and communication but also point out areas for improvement, such as ease of use and cost-efficiency.

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 Chapter 3: System Analysis and Design

3.1 System Analysis

System analysis involves examining the current processes and identifying areas for improvement through a
new system. This includes evaluating the feasibility, technical requirements, and expected outcomes.

3.1.1 Requirement Analysis

Functional Requirements

 User Authentication: Secure login/signup for students, teachers, and administrators.

 Student Information Management: Track and update student details, including personal information,
grades, and attendance.

 Attendance Recording: Record and monitor student attendance.

 Grade Recording: Manage and update student grades.

 Communication Tools: Facilitate communication between teachers, students, and administrators.

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 Fig 1: Use Case Diagram

Non-Functional Requirements

 Security: Implement strong security measures to protect data.

 Usability: Ensure the system is user-friendly and accessible.

 Scalability: Design the system to handle increasing data and user load.

 Performance: Optimize the system for fast and reliable performance.

3.1.2 Feasibility Analysis

A feasibility analysis serves as a crucial evaluation to determine the viability of a project or plan. Specifically,
in the realm of software engineering, it focuses on assessing the technical and commercial feasibility of a
software project before proceeding with its development.

The types of feasibility analysis are as follows:

1. Technical Feasibility

In technical feasibility, we estimate all the necessary technological resources for the success of the project. We
used technologies such as Django for the backend, HTML, CSS, JavaScript for the front end, and MySQL for
the database. Since, this project doesn’t have so many requirements and the technological resources needed
for this project are available and free to use this project is technically feasible.

2. Operational Feasibility

In this project, the system aligns with existing school operations and can be smoothly integrated. The admin
will know the details of the users.

3. Economic Feasibility

The development of this project is highly economically feasible. We didn’t spend much money on this
project’s development. The only thing that needed to be done in this project was to create an environment for
development with proper supervision. All the tools used to develop the project are free.

4. Schedule Feasibility

This part includes the schedule and time allocated to complete the project. The Gantt chart is as follows:

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 Fig 2: Gantt Chart

3.1.3 Data Modeling (ER Diagram)

The data model for the School Management System platform involves creating an Entity-Relationship (ER)
Diagram that represents the various entities, their attributes, and the relationship between them. It defines how
the data are connected and how they are processed and stored on the system. The ER Diagram of the School
Management System is shown below: -

Fig 3: Entity-Relationship Diagram

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3.1.4 Process Modeling (DFD)

Process modeling involves using Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) to illustrate the flow of data within the system
and the processes that manipulate the data. A data-flow diagram (DFD) is a graphical representation of the
“flow” of data through an information system. This helps developers understand the workings of the system
better. DFDs are created at different levels. Levels of DFD are numbered 0, 1, 2, and beyond.

The School Management System DFD level 0 is also known as a context diagram. It’s an abstract view, with
the mechanism represented as a single process with external parties.

Fig 4: Zero Level DFD

A level 1 DFD of this system must be a single process node from the zero level DFD and is broken down into
sub-processes. At this level, the system must display further processing information. The users going to use
this system are admin, student, and teacher.

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 Fig 5: Level 1 DFD

Since level 2 DFD is the highest abstraction level, its process must be detailed and based on the level 1 DFD
of the system. The level 2 DFD of the SMS should represent the basic modules as well as the data flow
between them.

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Fig 6: Level 2 DFD

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3.2 System Design

3.2.1 Architectural Design

Architectural design is a process of identifying the sub-systems making up a system and the framework for
sub-system control and communication.

Fig 7: MVC Architecture Design

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3.2.3 Database Schema Design

A Django administration panel is created that contains all the required panels for this project.

A panel named ‘admin’ is shown below which is created to store the login details of the administrator.

Fig 8: Admin Login Panel

A panel named ‘student extras’ is created to store the data of the student. In this panel, only the data of
students will be stored.

Fig 9: Student Panel

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A panel named ‘teachers’ is created to store the data of teachers. In this panel, only the data of teachers will be
stored.

Fig 10: Teacher Panel

3.2.3 Interface Design (Interface Structure Diagrams)

The interface of the application has been designed using Figma. Figma is an open-source free web-based UI
designing tool to create, collaborate, and prototype.

1. Home Page

Fig 11: Homepage

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2. Student Login Page

Fig 12: Student Login Page

3. Student Registration Page

Fig 13: Student Registration Page

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 Chapter 4: Implementation and Testing

4.1 Implementation

In this phase, the design and ideas are turned into practice i.e. working system. This involves the actual
development of the system. It’s a critical stage where the theoretical concepts and blueprints transform into
tangible software solutions through coding, testing, and integration.

The system can be deployed only after thorough testing is done and if it is found to work as per the
specification.

4.1.1 Tools Used (CASE tools, Programming languages, Database platforms)

Tools that are used while designing this website are:

Front end: HTML, CSS, JavaScript

HTML:

Every page we see is written in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). With HTML we create the structure
of the webpage. We can consider HTML as the base that gives the structure to every webpage. In this website,
we have used HTML to add headings, paragraphs, images, and links to the webpages

CSS:

CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a style sheet language. It is used to describe the presentation of the webpage
as to how it should look. In this project, we have used CSS in order to make the UI look attractive. We have
used CSS to add colour, padding, margin, background colour, and fonts to make the HTML document look
beautiful.

JavaScript:

JS (JavaScript) is an open-source, cross-platform interpreted programming language. It is used to make a

webpage interactive. We have used JavaScript to add interactive features to the buttons in this project.

Back end: Django, MySQL

Django:

Django is a high-level Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic
design. Known for its simplicity and reusability, Django provides robust tools for web development, making it
popular for creating dynamic, scalable websites and applications.

MySQL:

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Every website needs a database to store the data collected. MySQL is an open-source and one of the most
popular database management systems. It is fast, reliable, and easy to use. Because of the features MySQL
provides we used MySQL to manage our database of the project.

4.1.2 Implementation Details of Modules (Description of procedures/functions)

In this project, the website can be divided into several modules as shown in the figure below:

Fig 14: System Function Module

Following are the modules designed for the School Management System:

Student Module: This module is dedicated to students in which students can view notices, register for
admission, and do attendance too.

Teacher Module: This module is dedicated to teachers in which teachers can add notices, register for
teachers, and view and modify attendance.

Admin Module: The admin module is dedicated to admin. Admin is responsible for the data management of
the users. Admin can view and delete user data. Admin can approve a user as a teacher.

4.2 Testing

Testing is the process of executing a program with the intent of finding any errors. A good test case has a high
probability of finding an undiscovered error. The primary goal of testing is to find errors and rectify them.

4.2.1 Test Cases for Unit Testing

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Unit testing emphasizes the verification effort on the smallest unit of software design. In this test case, we test
individual functions. Unit testing is performed during the coding phase. We have performed unit testing on
each

view/module of the application. As the modules were built up testing was carried out simultaneously, tracking
out each and every kind of input and checking the corresponding output until the module was working
properly.

Test Case Id Test Scenario Test Steps Test Data Expected Pass/Fail
Result
T1 Student Student Click on Student Passed
Admission Admission Admission and accounts can
New user only be verified
by the admin

Table 1: Test Result for Student Admission

Test Case Id Test Scenario Test Steps Test Data Expected Pass/Fail
Result
T2 Add or delete Go to Admin Add or delete Student Passed
students Panel and add any student accounts can
or delete any only be added
student or deleted by
the admin

Table 2: Test Result for Add or Delete Students

Test Case Id Test Scenario Test Steps Test Data Expected Pass/Fail
Result
T3 Add or delete Go to Admin Add or delete Notices can Passed
Panel and add any notice only be added
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 Notice or delete any or deleted by
notice the admin
Table 3: Test Result for Add or Delete Notice

4.2.2 Test Case for System Testing

System testing refers to testing the product as a whole after integrating each module. In this test, we check if
the modules are working fine or not as a system. Its main objective is to ensure that the product is ready to be
deployed as a system. The entire system’s verification and validation are done by giving different values to the
system and by comparing them to the expected outcome.

There are many modules in this project to be tested but some of them are selected to illustrate in this paper.

Student Registration: In this module, the name, email, and password are supposed to be input. In the
following table, the illustration of the test is shown:

Student Registration Test

Username Email Password Address Pass/Fail
Ashmit1 [email protected] 7777 Galyang Passed
User1 NULL 0000 BHW Failed
Suyog22 [email protected] 1234 SNP-06 Passed

Table 4: Test Result for Student Registration Test

Add Student: In this module, the student’s name, contact no, class, and pub_id are supposed to be input. In
the following table the illustration of the test is shown:

Add Students
Student name Contact No. Class Pub_id Pass/Fail
Ashmit Adhikari 9825456672 9 User1010 Passed
Rabi Gupta NULL 7 User9986 Failed
Suyog22 9827553643 5 User0021 Passed

Table 5: Test Result for Add Student

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 Chapter 5: Conclusion and Future Recommendations

5.1 Lessons Learnt

 Teamwork is important while building a project. It makes the work faster and easier.
 Building the project becomes easier when the right methodology is chosen.
 It is important to validate all the input fields in-order to avoid any malicious attacks.
 Authentication should be done properly to avoid unauthorized access to the accounts.
 By integrating various functionalities into a single platform, the system supports effective management
and communication within the school.

5.2 Conclusion

The development of the School Management System (SMS) marks a significant step towards modernizing
educational administration and enhancing academic processes. This comprehensive web-based application
addresses the challenges faced by educational institutions in managing their day-to-day operations efficiently
and accurately.

Through automation, the SMS streamlines administrative tasks such as student information management,
attendance tracking, grade recording, and communication among school members. By centralizing data and
providing real-time updates, the system ensures that information is readily accessible and up-to-date, thereby
reducing errors and improving overall efficiency.

Moreover, the SMS is designed with user-friendliness and security in mind. Its intuitive interface enables easy
navigation for users of all technical proficiencies, while advanced security measures protect sensitive student
and school data from unauthorized access and breaches.

As education continues to evolve in the digital age, the SMS will play a crucial role in supporting schools in
their efforts to operate efficiently and effectively. By providing a centralized platform for managing school

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operations, the SMS contributes to a better educational experience for all stakeholders – students, teachers,
and administrators.

5.2 Future Recommendations

While the School Management System represents a significant advancement in educational administration,
there are areas where further improvements and enhancements can be made:

1. Enhanced Communication Features: Future iterations of the SMS could incorporate additional
communication features such as instant messaging, discussion forums, and notification systems to
facilitate seamless interaction between school members.

2. Mobile Application: Developing a mobile application companion to the web-based platform would
further enhance accessibility, allowing users to access the system on-the-go from their smartphones or
tablets.

3. Integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS): Integrating the SMS with popular
learning management systems would provide a comprehensive solution for both administrative and
academic management, allowing for seamless data exchange between the two platforms.

4. Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Implementing advanced analytics and reporting functionalities
would enable schools to gain valuable insights into student performance, attendance trends, and
administrative efficiency, allowing for data-driven decision-making.

5. Accessibility and Inclusivity: Efforts should be made to address the limitations related to internet
connectivity and technical issues to ensure that the SMS is accessible to all stakeholders, including
those in remote areas or with limited resources.

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References

 Thomas, J. (2019). Educational Administration and Management: An Integrated Approach. Pearson

Education.
 PowerSchool. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.powerschool.com
 IBM Corporation. (2017). Enhancing Educational Administration with Web Technologies. IBM
Whitepaper.
 Django Project. (n.d.). Django Documentation. Retrieved from https://docs.djangoproject.com
 John Doe High School. (2020). Implementation of a School Management System: A Case Study. John
Doe High School Publishing.
 Martinez, A., & Gonzalez, M. (2020). "Data Security in School Management Systems: Challenges and
Solutions," Cybersecurity in Education Journal, 12(1), 15-30.

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