10 Fresh Administrative Tools to Help Principals Lead the Way

Tools to Help Empower Top-Down Leadership

Principals are not only managers but leaders who change their schools and guide them to better teaching and learning. Our responsibilities as leaders have many critical ones, including managing people, processes, and data, creating a suitable environment for teaching and shaping a vision of academic success for all students.

It was not always this way for us and public knows about that as well. Anyone can read this recent report by the Wallace Foundation and discover that only ten years ago school leadership was absent from school agendas. However, the recent decade has made a huge difference and now principals have more administrative roles than ever.

For example, we are responsible for financial management, fundraising management, housing management, attendance tracking, academic reporting, cafeteria management, clinic management, special education, and many more others.

To make sure that all of them are performed well, we use various tools that can automate and optimize the work.

Here is the list of ten fresh ones already used by hundreds of colleagues.

1. School Management Software by RenWeb

School management systems are great for performing many administrative responsibilities and can really help to optimize them. An improved quality of school management is linked with 18 percent increase in GCSE scores, says this Guardian article. RenWeb school management system is a perfect way to increase the performance of the entire school. It provides powerful solutions to automate the school administration and communication with parents (more than 300 features!).

Highlights:

• Scheduling
• parent portal
• bookstore management
• attendance tracking
• cafeteria management
• k-12
• financial management
• behavior management
• academic reporting
• clinic management
• classroom management

2. Parent Locker

This is a leading cloud-based school communication and management platform. According to a recent study performed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, teacher-family communication improves parent involvement and subsequent student improvement. Virtual classrooms provided by the platform allow parents to see what is going on in the class. Plus, the each classroom has a blog where parents could share their feedback. This is especially great for us as educators because it allows direct communication with parents and their better involvement in learning (who wouldn’t love that, right?)

Highlights:

• Data Reports
• School Store
• Parent Chat
• Nightly Homework Email
• Parent-Teacher conference reservation module
• Exam registration
• Group pages
• Virtual classrooms
• Staff management
• Behavior management
• Attendance tracking

3. PCSchool Administration Software

Another fully integrated, cost-effective school administration package that allows managing finances and student and staff management. This package was designed by fellow principals and administrators. It is great because it means that the developers knew the regular issues that needed to be solved. The package also provides a comprehensive control over the school by providing numerous features.

Highlights:

• Curriculum
• Library
• Assets and maintenance scheduling
• Foundation
• Attendance tracking
• Personal and professional development
• Teacher portal
• Student portal
• Parent portal

4. Hero

Even though our job description does not actually contain afterhours, working on the go is usual for principals. In-browser web app and mobile apps provided by Hero are combined into a platform useful for capturing anything that happens in school on the go. Among the main features of Hero is a positive behavior reinforcement programs that could be very useful for school with high rates of incidents. A recent study by Georgia Southern University is often cited to demonstrate how school-wide positive behavior programs contributed to a reduction of school incidents and improvement of behavior of students.

Highlights:

• Parent Portal
• Student Portal
• Teacher Portal
• Apps for staff, parents, administrators, and teachers
• School-wide programs
• Event management
• Referrals
• Positive behavior reinforcement

5. Rediker School System

School management software from Rediker focuses on six essential areas: admissions and enrollment, student data management, evaluations, integrations and partnerships, responsive school websites for easier use by parents, and district management. A must-read on any principal’s bookshelf, Technology in Schools: Suggestions, Tools and Guidelines for Assessing Technology in Elementary and Secondary Education, describes that district management software supports skill development, improves communication, and primary administrative functions on an entirely new level. Therefore, an appropriate tool should be used, and Rediker is a good way to go.

Highlights:

• Teacher evaluator
• District management
• Communication tools
• Diocesan management tools
• Library management
• Attendance management
• Parent portal
• Student portal
• Professional websites for schools
• Enrollment and admission management

6. FeKara

School admin powerhouse and modern management software option that helps to deal with everything related to school, from budgeting to exams and assignments. It is perfect for groups less than 50 students because the platform is limited by this number of students. This is a real time-saver for those of us who work in small classes.

Highlights:

• Mobile app
• Courses and batches
• Student data
• Email integration
• Time table
• Calendar
• Attendance management
• Library management
• Student admission
• School event calendar

7. Classe 365

This tool is actually suitable for both k-12 school and higher education institutions. Among the most prominent features of the platform is opportunity to provide webinars for students, which allows flexibility, cost-effectiveness, interactivity, and a better understanding of content, says EZTalks. The principals often joke that it allows to manage the school 365 days a year, which is appreciated by many of us.

Highlights:

• Financial management
• Scheduling
• Library management
• Special education
• Behavior management
• Bookstore management
• Admissions management
• Enrollment management
• Fundraising management
• Curriculum management
• Parent portal

8. Open-School by Wiwo

By streamlining processes and automating tasks, Open-School allows to provide a positive experience for every user. It is super easy to use guidance system that connects with parents and has mobile apps to stay updated at all times. For us who manage huge classes it is like having an awesome personal assistant who is available 24/7.

Highlights:

• Enrollment management
• Higher education
• Financial management
• Admissions management
• Parent portal
• Scheduling
• Special education
• Curriculum management
• Enrollment management
• Library management
• K-12

9. TS School

A fully customizable and free, this school administration software is perfect for those of us who just begin their way in learning new technologies. It provides a large number of useful modules and is incredibly easy to use thanks to a responsive design of the environment and site, which could be good or overall popularity of school. Since it is important to improve the image of school in the community, TS School can be a go-to tool for achieving this task.

• Calendar
• Medical
• Library management
• Financial management
• Messages
• Exams messages
• School safety
• Discipline management
• Attendance
• Statistics
• Sports

10. Fedena

One of the biggest advantages of Fedena is an open-source design, lack of limits on administration and student logins, and unlimited courses and batches. What is really awesome for us about this tool is that it does not have any limits and restrictions at all! Moreover, open-source means that we can actually contribute to making the app better for everyone.

Highlights:

• Attendance management
• News management
• Examination management
• Admission management
• Student data
• Time table
• Calendar
• School safety
• Teacher management
• Sports
• Behavior management
• K-12
• Bookstore management
• Parent portal
• Library management

Over to you!

Hundreds of our colleagues are already using these school management systems to automate and optimize their work. Are you thinking of joining them? Well, you definitely should, because it is a great time for us in terms of accessing the resources that allow a better management of students, processes, and programs.

Let these tools be useful for you and happy managing!