UK based media conglomerate, famous for brands like Penguin Books and Financial Times, has launched Power School, a web-based student information system in eight of its schools across four states in the country.
The Power school technology uses ERP to help parents and teachers keep track of students’ safety, academic performance and behavior at school. In addition, the technology gives parents, teachers and students easy access to school circulars, fee payment, and student assessments. PowerSchool is primarily a web-based student information system that provides grade management and viewing for teachers and students alike. Using PowerSchool, teachers are able to record grades and attendance for students to view at home.
Among other services offered are the SMS alert service that ensures parents receive all updates and announcements related to events in school, circulars, quickly and a GPRS service in collaboration with North Star which is activated in school buses to trace all bus routes.
Earlier, Pearson introduced tablet based education solution for schools in India. The tablet – MX Touch contains digital learning content, which is compliant with the school syllabus and comes bundled with tablets. The product also allows parents to monitor the academic progress of their children with easy to assignments, difficult lessons covered during school hours and archived assessments and tests.
Through Power School technology, Pearson integrates with PayUPaisa, a new service launched by PayU. Integration with payUPaisa enables easy and safe mode of online payment for parents to pay fee, and for books and uniforms.
Given how unstructured the ‘technology for schools’ industry has been, Pearson’s offering definitely appeals to the K-12 segment industry which mostly has been using basic software (like MS Excel/Word etc) to the ones created by local vendors.
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Power School was purchased by Pearson from Apple in 2006 and currently has 10 million student users in over 65 countries. Each student or teacher using PowerSchool has a password-protected account.
Pearson Education Services, which aims to open more than 100 schools by 2017 in India, provides end-to-end customized education solutions in the K-12 segment, with a focus on technological innovations. PES’s currently offers School management services, online tutoring, ICT solutions and technology aided coaching classes and test preparation services.
