Again, there are several types of educational records maintained in the form of registers in a school. Some of these include:
(a) Attendance Registers:
As for as possible, only one attendance register should be kept by a teacher. Usually, students’ attendance register is maintained by their class-teacher and it maintains a record of students’ names with their attendance on every working day.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Great care should be taken to see that attendance is regularly and properly marked. Attendance should be, ideally, marked twice a day, one in the morning or beginning of the school day and the other at the end of the school day.
No blank spaces should be left in the register and no dots in pencil should be marked in it. It should be filled in with ink only. However, one can use some letters to make the process of marking the attendance faster such as ‘P’ for being present, ‘A’ for absence, ‘S’ for sickness and ‘L’ for leave.
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Usually, names of boys and girls are entered separately though it does not serve any specific purpose. For the sake of convenience, students’ names should be entered in the register in an alphabetical order. Holidays need to be shown in the attendance register along with the nature of the holiday, e.g. Sunday; Diwali, Christmas etc.
If a student wishes to remain absent, application for leave must be signed by his\her parent or guardian. The application must clearly specify the reason for absence and vague reasons such as ‘urgent domestic work’ should not be accepted.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In case of absence for a longer duration on account of sickness, a doctor’s medical certificate should accompany the application for leave. If a student remains absent for a longer duration i.e. about a week or longer without intimation, the principal should be informed immediately.
At the last day of the month, the total number of working days along with the number of days each student has remained present in school need to be entered in the register in a separate column.
(b) Teachers’ Attendance Register:
This is generally kept in the principal or supervisor’s office. It should show the time of arrival and departure of a teacher. It should be regularly signed by a teacher twice a day, once when he/she arrives at the school and once at the end of the school day.
Holidays and their nature should be entered in this register. It should also indicate the number and nature of leave taken by teachers such as casual leave, sick leave, leave without pay, duty leave, etc. All applications of leave must be filed in the school office.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In case of medical leave, a doctor’s certificate must accompany the leave application. Leave application needs to be sanctioned by the principal.
At the end of each month, the number of days’ casual or sick leave taken during the month should be entered in the register. Names of the teachers are usually entered in this register in order of seniority along with their dates of appointment confirmation.
In addition to these two, there are some other records to be maintained by a school. These include:
(c) Records of Time-tables:
(d) Examination Result’s Records:
(e) Teachers’ Log-book:
It is a record showing details about the daily teaching- learning activities of a teacher. It contains details about the date, class, chapter, objectives of the lesson, teaching points, teacher’s activities, students’ activities, audio-visual aids used, home-work given to students, students asked question at the time of recapitulation and evaluation of the lessons questions the tests conducted.
It also contains space for supervisor’s and principal’s remarks, if any, while supervising teacher’s lessons in the classroom. This log-book may be in the form of a printed book or loose sheets papers to be kept neatly in a file. Nowadays, instead of a book or sheets of paper, some schools use computers for recording such details.
A Log-book helps in advance planning of weekly teaching-learning activities, in ensuring that teaching of lesson is as per these plans and in maintaining a record for future reference. It is aimed at making daily work of a teacher more systematic and organized.
(f) Conduct Register:
In which the general conduct of all students is recorded. However, if regular progress reports are maintained, such a register may not be kept.
(g) Punishment Register:
In which a record is kept of punishments give by the principal or teachers. However, this register is meant only for serious infractions of rules or misconduct or breaches of discipline.
This register should include name and class of the student, date of misconduct, nature of the breach of discipline, nature of punishment and signature of the principal. All cases entered in this register must be reported to the parents concerned and the date of reporting to parents must be entered in the register.
The principal can also enter in this register, at a later date, his/her remarks concerning the effect of the punishment-positive, negative or indifferent on the student.
(h) Cumulative Records:
The importance of adequate student records cannot be over emphasized as they give assistance to a teacher in improving his/her instructional programme by understanding the make-up of individual student in his or her class better.
Individual development trends and academic achievement patterns become clearly discernible through and cumulative record card. Proper placement and objective scheduling of student is possible through the use of cumulative record cards. The more a teacher knows about his/her student, the greater is his\her interest in their Welfare.
A central cumulative file should be organized by the clerical staff so the teachers are spared from this continuous responsibility of receiving and issuing records to other interested personnel. Cumulative records should be kept up-to-date and absolutely confidential.
A good cumulative record card should contain the following information about each student:
(1) Name in full, date and place of birth, name of the previous school attended and its location.
(2) Photograph of the student, general registration number of the student.
(3) Academic achievement in terms of marks and/or grades obtained from KG class onwards.
(4) Scholastic aptitude test scores, scholastic ability test scores.
(5) Results of personality and interest inventories and aptitude tests.
(6) Home address.
(7) Information about home background, number of family members, siblings, step-parent (if any), languages spoke l, occupation of parents or guardian and his\her office address, family and home relationships.
(8) Attendance data, health record, maturation characteristics, accomplishments and honours, interests and actives, educational and occupational aspirations and other comments.