1.1 Introduction
Students' scholarship is a form of financial assistance given to individuals intended to be used for the sustainability of educators who are required, scholarships can be provided by government agencies, companies or foundations. The scholarship student involvement is the most important part of a student institute or a foundation. After the scholarship students complete their education, they begin their voyage in the corporate world. Many types of scholarship student a lot to the kind of education, grooming, opportunities, co-curricular activities and events provide by their college. Many scholarship students like to come back to their college that has been a very important part of their memory. They like to give back to their college by giving their valuable time. The system for applying the scholarship is manual for the student in the existing system. To avoid the manual system this proposed system develops the application for scholarship on the basis of cast category, academic performance and social status. In this system student can apply scholarship using this portal where they can upload the proof and photo in this application (Sowndhariyaa et al., 2021).
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Education system forms the backbone of every nation. And hence it is important to provide a strong educational foundation to the young generation to ensure the development of open-minded global citizens securing the future for everyone. Advanced technology available today can play a crucial role in streamlining education-related processes to promote solidarity among students, teachers, parents and the school staff.
Education is central to development. It is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality and lays a foundation for sustained economic growth. With this aim currently our government has given special emphasis to the educational sector and school improvement activities such as continuous professional development for teachers, training and upgrading teachers and capacitating schools with manpower and materials are among the major actions which have been taken in both primary and secondary schools. In order to facilitate and simplify these actions one of the major tool is to have automated school management system.
School Scholarship Management System consists of tasks such as registering students, attendance record keeping to control absentees, producing report cards, producing official transcript, preparing timetable and producing different reports for teachers, parents, officials from kebele or kefle ketema education bureaus and other stakeholders.
Automation is the utilization of technology to replace human with a machine that can perform more quickly and more continuously. By automating SMS documents that took up many large storage rooms can be stored on few disks. Transcript images can be annotated. It reduces the time to retrieve old transcripts from hours to seconds. However, the school system in the government schools of Addis Ababa is not automated and the record officers generate transcripts and reports manually and the school administrators use their experienced knowledge of miss and hit approaches to prepare timetables.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
Investigation revealed that the challenges encountered in the existing Scholarship Information Management System which entails that:
- The manual system requires a lot of paper work to process student scholarship information details.
- There is redundancy by the use of several type of validation that is the system.
- The existing system lacks quick access and processing of student scholarship information details.
In addition to that retrieving records of students who have graduated couple of years ago has been a difficult task and the manual system also has difficulty of producing different reports which are required by the stakeholders such as teachers, administrators or officials.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to develop Students' Scholarship Information Management System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Minimize the amount of paper work require to process students on scholarship information;
- Provide a searchable database to view the yearly reports;
- Eliminate unnecessary document flow and duplication of student's scholarship data;
- Minimize the time delay for giving scholarship; and
- Facilitate quick information processing and easy access to scholarship documentation.
1.5 Significance of Study
The use of Students Scholarship Information Management System has the significance effect and this can be enumerated as follows:
- To help the school to know the pedigree of all the student admitted into the school.
- To create a storage of large volume of data on school records.
- To assist the school management for easily identification of students on scholarship.
- To prevents students to involve themselves any havoc happening in the school because of the fear tracking them.
1.6 Scope of Study
The scope of this research is focused on the Design and Implementation of Students on Scholarship Information Management System using University of Uyo, Uyo in Akwa Ibom State as a case study.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Student Information: Is a student-level data collection system that allows the department to collect and analyze more accurate and comprehensive information.
Student: An institution for educating children or any institution at which institution is given in a particular discipline.
School Management System: An information system for managing students and teachers resources in a school.
