Waldorf School Database

Digitalisation of school administration

How administration and organisation succeed efficiently. »

The Waldorf School Database WSDB is a central component of numerous privately managed (Waldorf) schools in Europe. The database is used to manage timetables, create certificates or send out newsletters.

The principles of Waldorf schools are to create social justice in education and to position pedagogy towards the individual needs of children. This offers children undreamt-of opportunities for personal development. The individual arrangement of everyday school life, increasing security requirements and obligations for documentation, however, represent an ever greater challenge for administration and organisation in Waldorf schools.

Voluntary Workshop Teams and sharing of knowledge

Many Waldorf schools come back to the expertise of their school parents, who work together in voluntary workshop teams. Their knowledge and expertise is used to enhance internal IT and organisation structures. In 2007, such a voluntary workshop team dealt with the enhancement of the school IT, which led to the development of the WSDB.

Compared to other software solutions, the open source (and freely available) school administration tool documented the specific processes at Waldorf schools and privately managed schools. Nowadays, the participating schools support our development team through continuous exchange of know how and experience. That is how we can continuously optimise and enhance the WSDB.

TEacher overview

Which teacher is supposed to teach at which class? WSDB supports the assignment and gives the necessary overview.

Intuitive Handling and avoidance of redundancy

The handling of recurring tasks in school organisation is made easier thanks to intuitive handling of the WSDB. The administration and management effort is structured to a great extend and reduced. The whole data collection takes place in one system and avoids error-prone double tracks.

"The WSDB provides the optimal basis for the administration of schools and kindergartens. It stands out through comfortable data entry as well as through features like e.g. the calculation of contributions, the managing of school reports or the registration of voluntary work. The interfaces between the WSDB module contribution management and the accounting program is a great add-on, that eases up repeating activities.“ (Milijana Vasic, secretary at Waldorf School Linz)

And what about IT security?

As most of the data that is handled in WSDB is very sensitive (e.g. personal data, contact data, accounting information, denomination), the WSDB is supplied with a very strict permission management. It complies with the highest security standards.

„It is very important that these sensitive data are administrated in a secure European cloud structure. User have the right to know at any time, who is able to access their data and whether data is analysed and evaluated.“ (Monika Kerschbaumer, primarily responsible for WSDB software development at X-Net)

Each school backups their WSDB data autonomously in-house or on virtual servers. In both ways, high security standards are satisfied. Teacher have their own secure connection, which allows only specific tasks for teachers (e.g. assessment, grading, not feature to contact pupils, email distribution lists to communicate with parents, pupils or workshop teams). Teacher can also access WSDB from their home office.

Certificates

Assessments and grading are inserted online. Certificates are generated and printed directly over the WSDB.

Modularity enables flexibility

The modular architecture provides schools an tailor-made entry into the system. The full version of WSDB displays the whole school process, starting at the management of potential members, staff, parents or pupils. The management of the financials as well as the preparation of certificates are integrated in the WSDB. Statistics that used to be created with a huge effort are generated with one click in the WSDB. The school organisation can now gain an up-to-date overview about specific parameters at any time using export and reporting functions.

The WSDB provides the following modules:

• management of pupils and after-school care club
• timetable
• certificates
• electronic class register
• management of kindergartens
• management of the association and of contributions