Parental involvement and awareness using Malaysian’s Smart School Management System

Abstract

Parental involvement is one of the factors that effectively contributes to students’ learning. One of the existing problems in Malaysian Smart Schools is that parents are not fully utilizing the Smart School Management System (SSMS) due to lack of information, time, training, computer incompetence, and unrecognized features and functions in SSMS. The purpose of this paper is to assess the parental involvement in using SSMS at Malaysian Smart Schools. This paper also ascertained the need for training to utilize SSMS, and identify barriers in using SSMS while improving communication between parents and staff at Smart Schools. Although the integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Malaysian Smart Schools is relatively high, this study found that there was a need to introduce SSMS to parents as stakeholders and get them more involved in using the available resources at Smart Schools. Thus, this study proposed a number of guidelines for Malaysian’s Ministry of Education and Smart Schools in order to create an awareness and get parents engaged in their children’s education by using SSMS.