Snakes and Ladders

Here, at Parikrma, I have been asked to get a School Management Software in place. Most people I mention this to, wonder "There must be tons of school software out there. Why doesn't Parikrma use what is already available?" That's what I thought two months ago. I was urged not to look at Parikrma as just a school, but to really understand the concept of Circle of Life. It has taken me a while to understand this model. I use a metaphor to explain it – "Snakes and Ladders".

Children often have some goal in mind - "I want to become an astronaut", "I want to be a teacher" etc. Look at a child working towards her goal as working through a board of Snakes and Ladders. Teachers at Parikrma erect several "Ladders" for this child to help her get to her goal. These "Ladders" come in the form of curricular and co-curricular education. While she navigates through the board with the help of ladders, she faces several "Snakes" that debilitate her and pose severe risks to her achievements.

In the case of children at Parikrma, these "Snakes" are numerous and deadly.

• The lack of financial means to education. Parikrma handles this by looking to donors and volunteers for help


• The lack of stability at home. This has several implications on a child. These manifest as behavioral and psychological issues. Children are closely monitored for any signs of trouble.


• There are the secondary implications of the kind of home environment of these children. Privileged children get enjoy not just a stable environment at home, but also get their role models, the necessary exposure and the occasional additional tutoring help. In the case of Parikrma children, lack of exposure and additional help is another "Snake" to deal with.

If we continue with this metaphor of "Snakes and Ladders", then we can notice that most schools erect "Ladders". But not many deal with "Snakes" and certainly not to the extent that Parikrma does. At Parikrma, handling these "Snakes" is as much a priority as putting up all the "Ladders". The close examination of the lives of these children, more often than not, reveals one or more of these "Snakes" that pose serious risks to their education. This starts the multi-team effort of risk-mitigation. This could take several attempts and several years. Eventually, by mitigating these risks, Parikrma hopes that the children will be able to better imbibe the education imparted in class.

"Ladders" are easy to understand.

• Create lesson plans & track lesson plan delivery in class


• Track teachers and students attendance and students grades


• Create several reports – reports on students of a teacher, reports on a student, reports on trends in the whole school

The "Snakes" introduce complex requirements

• Maintaining medical / dental / mental records of a child, including all intervention details


• Maintaining behavioral records


• Monitoring the home environment of each child. Capturing details of a family like income, health, living conditions and issues like alcoholism, if any


• Recording all the exposure and extra-curricular achievements of a child so that she can be handed her "file" as she steps out into the world from Parikrma


• Reports for donors


• Recording the qualifications and availability of a volunteer, so that remedial classes can be planned

This is what the Circle of Life is. It's more than just class rooms and play grounds. It's everything from ensuring a child is not hungry in class to trying to improve the environment at home so that the child is sent to school in a happy state of mind each morning. And the school software needs to aid in all of these activities.

These complex requirements are met with an additional non functional requirement of simplicity. The users of this software are expected to be teachers. Teachers are kept quite busy by all the children in class. They barely have time to learn several new systems and do complex data entry. Hence getting bits and pieces of the software will complex things by requiring teachers to learn too many different kinds of systems.Building a software poses its own problem. Since most work we get is pro bono, development is really slowly. That means that the builders are not necessarily around for enhancements and maintenance.

So I am thinking, open source custom solution. So now I am on a quest to find someone who can build the first version. It will be interesting to see if this approach will work for Parikrma