Due to the rapid changes experienced by schools in terms of learning, instruction, and engagement to students, schools invest in digitized classrooms. Although this is an innovative approach, the emerging use of school management systems can be overwhelming. Educational institutions may turn to open source management or the integration of Excel templates for managing various admin tasks and school operations.

In this article, we hope to provide answers to the following questions about the school management software in Excel:

1. How can MS Excel templates help in school management?
2. What are the school management Excel templates available for the admin, human resources, teachers, students, and parents?
3. Which sites have downloadable school management excel templates?

How MS Excel Helps as an Open Source School Management Software

As managing school functions can be taxing, a lot of school management systems have been made available for school solutions. Various school-related software is accessible online. Investing in such school management technology may be costly for some educational institutions. Although this is true, automating school operations amidst the ongoing changes in education can be inexpensive, moreover FREE!

In line with this, we are open to the idea of school management software in MS Excel. Excel templates can be a great help especially that they are ready-to-use and customizable per feature. Also, excel templates already have navigation tools for computations and calculations just in case the user would like to alter a code based on their system.

Excel spreadsheets help educational institutions in various areas as they can be used as open-source management software. Below are the uses of MS Excel templates in specified operations of school management:

For the School Admin

Inventory

Schools can have their assets inventory and issuance register with ready-to-use excel templates. This manages a list of assets and equipment along with issuance track inventory. Included in the spreadsheet will be the tracking numbers, sales, and scraping details. An issuance register enables the school to maintain a record of issues and receipt of various equipment, materials, and other supplies meant for use by students.

It also records purchases acquired by the school. It allows the school admin to evaluate the total worth of assets for accounting purposes. In the example template above, the manual data entry is in the light blue cells while the cells in the navy blue contain formulas. With these automated formulas, the excel template for school inventory fetches relevant data automatically.

School Library Register

The excel template for the school library helps librarians maintain the inventory and issuance record for the books.

It allows the school librarian to add, deduct, and search the inventory of books as well as keep track of the name of the borrowers. By making their entries, both the teachers and students track the days of lending the books.

The relevant details in the template must include the author’s name, borrower’s name, and other relevant details like the date when the book is borrowed and returned. The excel template for the school library register keeps the list of books per category like a digital library. 

Fees Collection

The timely collection of dues from students is an important role of the school registrar. The smooth functioning of school admin in student fees collection system led by the use of excel templates also eases the distribution of teachers and staff salary. The template shows the outstanding amounts along with the total outstanding summary. It helps the school admin have a check on receipt of fees to magnify dues. The template maintains a class-wise student fee collection for 30 classes.

School Admission

One laborious but important task in school management is securing the student forms and statistical data.

A school management software in Excel can also cater to general registration and generate bonafide certificates for students. The bonafide certificate is a documented proof that the student belongs to the school. School-printed registers record all relevant data of every enrolled student wherein the entries are done manually on the template that can be printed. This authenticates the student’s ongoing association with the educational institution.

The excel template for the school statistical register maintains statistical data of students with built-in charts. The school can easily access the data required in tabular formats along with charts. Also, they show student statistics through gender-wise and religious-wise reports. These charts and data are useful for micro-analysis.

All the images above are taken from ExcelDataPro.

For the Human Resources

Employee Recruitment

This free HR excel template for recruitment helps to track the status of the applicants in an organized manner. Using this template, the human resources department can get an instant view of how many applicants are in the recruitment process and wherein the pipeline the applicants are dropping off. Because of this, the recruitment process for an open job or teacher position will be easier to visualize. It makes effective recruiting metrics in tracking the status of teacher applicants.

Employee Checklist

Using a free excel template for documenting the completion of activities is easier to make in a checklist. The human resource may use this to track new teacher employees for onboarding activities. Tracking such activities for all employees can also be done within a single file or template. Besides, the template is customizable and provides a printable checklist for each employee in one file.

Time Card & Work Hours

There are also Excel spreadsheets for time cards and work hours for business and school. These free timesheet templates in Excel are used for calculating work hours. Time cards allow employees to enter time card entries like their time in, time out, and break times. The payroll timesheets can be created weekly, biweekly, or monthly.

The presented images above are from Indzara.

For the Teachers

Class Schedule & Timetables

Another free template to operate a school management software in Excel is the academic period allotment system. This shows the viable timetable where each class and subject is covered. It also shows the proper load given to teachers wherein most input is from the teachers themselves and the school management.

Lesson Plans

The template for syllabus and lesson plans in Excel enables teachers to plan syllabus for the academic year for a particular subject. It is designed in such a way that helps in creating the blueprint or outline for classroom explanation of each chapter leading to effective teaching. Most schools prefer the template planner separated for syllabus and lesson. The syllabus template is further divided and scheduled monthly whereas the lesson planner is for the daily teaching plan.

Teacher’s Attendance

Another important feature of a school management system is the tracking of attendance. The Excel template for school attendance reports can be used to create class attendance reports that are printable. This free downloadable Excel template is easy to use as an attendance register tool. It has a total of 12 sheets for the months of June to May wherein teachers can have a drop-down list for the abbreviations for marking attendance. This template is designed for marking absence or presence, no. of leaves, and etc. The ideal number of days for each sheet is 28 days.

Progress Reports

An automated student report card can be done using this free Excel template. This Excel template provides meaningful academic performance information to teachers with minimal effort. It shows the student’s academic results in class view, subject view, and student view.  It also encourages a more accurate analysis of the child’s growth in percentage and in graphical form. It will easily show the learner’s development in different areas. It helps teachers to create a comprehensive progress report of students according to their academic and conduct performance. Some templates for the progress reports also involve student attendance.

The attached images are gathered from ExcelDataPro.

Quizzes & Exams

There are also templates available for conducting quizzes and exams. The excel template allows teachers to customize and formulate their own questions with corresponding answers. This is very suitable for multiple-choice questions. Moreover, the template goes along with automatic scoreboard updates.

For the Students and Parents

Homework Planner

The students and parents can also benefit from homework planners using excel templates. The excel template for planning assignments combines an estimated time to complete each student task and plan on upcoming exams and time to study. The students can have printable copies from the excel template. It involves the weekly schedule of high-schoolers and home-schoolers alike.

The student may print blank copies and edit electronically. The template can be accessed with MS excel on mobile and Google sheets on iPad/iPhone when customizing. The template is paperless and is ideal for editing the student planner.

Weekly Class Schedule

MS Excel templates can also help plan courses according to the class schedules. This supports time management in downloadable PDF sheets. Moreover, the well-organized worksheet contains the main hours of the day divided into 30-minute intervals, and the other hours divided into 15-minute intervals. The weekly class schedule template is a handy tool in keeping the student informed of their learning hours.

SMS & Notifications

Excel templates can also be of help in the Parents-Teacher Meeting notice. It helps notify parents of upcoming school events such as meetings and conferences with minimal effort. The date and time are seen in the Excel template of notification. This template is easy to use as the teacher or class adviser can only copy and paste the data of students from the school database.

Another function is fee reminders which allow the collection of fees from the parents for an academic year in advance. Since many educational institutions collect fees on a monthly, quarterly, or half-year basis, the issuance of automated fee reminders will be of help. The excel template for number-wise data of outstanding fees consists of all details like name, student number, fee amount, the final date of payment, and other relevant details.

Supporting images above are from Vertex42.

Sites with Downloadable School Management Excel Templates

We have compiled five sites that provide free downloadable excel templates for school management:

1. ExcelDataPro

ExcelDataPro provides solutions for different features of school management. The templates are given to help to easily manage records of any educational institution. Included in such operations are the school general registration, school library register, and school asset inventory. These prepared templates have specified descriptions on how to create, customize, and produce copy for each designated user.

2. Indzara

Indzara offers free excel templates not only for school management software but for small business management and project management, as well. The templates are simple to use and effective at solutions for business and education alike. The templates also include the purpose of creating student report cards, school attendance reports, and quizzes, all of which are customizable and printable.

3. Cours Gratuit

Cours Gratuit is software that gives a complete solution that can be customized for a school handling management work. This helps automate the laborious paperwork involved in school management. Apart from the main templates are respective reports with administrative modules for better security of data. They have certificate management and pass/fail entry to the template.

It also digitizes question papers as well as accounts like ledger making, payment voucher entry, library, report generation, and utilities like backup, calculator, and search. 

4. Unifiedtransform

Unifiedtransform is an open-source school management software for the comprehensive and efficient flow of school operations. With a wide range of useful features, the school can import or export all these from/to MS Excel templates. They are remarkable for platform roles, attendance tracking, syllabus planner, registrations, and grading notebooks.

5. Vertex42

Vertex42 provides many free spreadsheet templates and other printable charts, calendars, and schedules for educational purposes. The excel template also provides a customizable behavior reward chart for students. School calendar collection, appointment schedule sign-up sheets, and monthly and weekly attendance have their designated templates in Vertex42.

However…

Excel templates can be difficult to manage. Spreadsheet upon spreadsheet can confuse users. The manual coding of data is also prone to errors that may compromise several data-driven decisions.

Another option is to invest in an all-in-one school management system that will automate all school admin processes. GoSchooler is one of the top picks in the market today.

This software offers a wide array of functions that will cover all the functions you manually input and track through these MS Excel sheets.

Admissions? GoSchooler has several admissions features, including a comprehensive lead generation tab.

Attendance tracking? The same software offers an RFID-based attendance system that will provide the hardware materials and integrate them seamlessly with the software.

Employee management? GoSchooler didn’t forget about that. It took note of all possible administrative processes from all angles.

Instead of going through several sheets to find what you’re looking for, GoSchooler organizes all your data. Easy access and input. Even easier retrieval.

FAQs

Conclusion

Finally, school management software can be utilized using MS Excel spreadsheets. A variety of school management software using Excel can be seen online. Most of these Excel templates are free to download.

In this wide application of remote and distance learning, the schools can evidently benefit from tools as innovative and easy as excel sheets for school management. All of the operations mentioned above are admin tasks that can be digitized using these spreadsheets. Using Excel in school management, any educational institution – huge or small school alike, can reap the benefits of adapting to the rapid change of today’s education.