SMM

New data system for schools

BANGI: Less bureaucracy and paperwork are on the cards for teachers.
The constant filling of forms and duplication of data, long a sour point for teachers who complained it took them away from teaching, will be a thing of the past with the Education Ministry’s new and improved Student Information System.

As of this year, the system, better known by its Malay acronym SMM, has finally been installed in all primary and secondary schools in the country, Education Ministry Schools Division director Noor Rezan Bapoo Hashim said yesterday.

However, the current system in schools is still not online, and thus cannot be accessed by education district offices and state education departments.

The ministry yesterday launched a pilot project in 10 schools which combined the SMM system with a computer platform called Smart Thin Client, which will have the capacity to go online and make it easier for schools to store their students’ information.
"It is a proven technology that helps us save costs and also help the teachers eliminate time spent on updating records and provide the ministry with timely submissions," Noor Rezan said.

"We are happy with the results and will now deploy SMM on the Smart Thin Client to the 10 schools involved in the project, with the possibility of implementation nationwide if all goes well," she said at the launch at Sekolah Kebangsaan Jalan 6, Bandar Baru Bangi here.

The SMM was first implemented by the ministry in 2004, and the ministry installed it in schools in stages, upgrading and improving it while it went along.

It maintains the student learning data for all the primary and secondary schools, storing the learning records and personal information of students as well as teaching staff.

Noor Rezan said if the pilot project was successful and approved by the ministry, all schools could be online by 2008 and information could be easily retrieved by education district offices and state education departments.

It is a mammoth task as there are around five million students in Malaysia, and the the figure is increasing, Noor Rezan said.

Currently the SMM, on its own, is installed on one computer in each school and only one teacher can access it at a time.

It cannot be installed on many computers due to the processing load and the difficulty in maintaining all of them individually.

With the new and improved system, now loaded on the Smart Thin Client platform, there is one network which links the computers in the school and does all the processing, relieving the burden on the individual computers.

The platform means that teachers can access the SMM database through any computer linked by it in the school.