The Core Principal

The PEMS was designed to plan out a set of classes (such at Algebra I, World History, English, and so on)  that the student will take over the course of a grade span.  A grade span covers multiple years of schooling and represents a planning horizon where student objectives can be achieved.

The core functionality of the PEMS is to allow adminstrators the abilty to pre-plan any number of "programs of study", which are called plans inside of the PEMS.  The student can then be assigned a plan, which provides the infomration needed to auto-enroll the student in classes every term until the plan is complete.

This approach differs from many other schooling approaches. In most countries, students are assigned subjects, such as English, Math, History and so on, that they must take in every year, and there is only only curriculum or syllabus that a school provides in the subject for that year.  This is the approach taken in the US for Grades K through 8, but not for the high school years, grade 9 through 12. In Highschool, student pick their individual classes they want to take each term, much like University level education.

In creating a plan instead of picking indiviudal classes, the adminstrator can ensure that students are meeting their various requirements for graduation. An unfortunate disadvantage to allowing students to pick their own classes is that they might not meet all the graduation requirements. By enrolling a student in a plan, the administrator will ensure that the plan meets the requirements.

To create a plan, the adminstrator makes a Plan record, then adds templates as child records tot the plan. The template links a class from the class list to a grade level and term.term label.  A template states, for example, the student will take Algebra 1A in the first term of ninth grade.  

When the Student is enrolled in the plan, the PEMS reads the templates and createdcreates incomplete enrollment record.  An enrollment record links the student term, the class from the class list, and records the grade the student achieved in the class. the enrollment record is displayed on the student's transcript.  The status of an enrollment reflects if a student is taking the class currenlty, completed the class or if the student is planning to take the class in following terms.

At any point in time, a student's enrollment records can be viewed and progress towards completion assessed by the number of completed enrollments.  This approach addresses a problem that many student information systems have in trying to assess how a student is progressing towards graduation. When students are p[icking an choosing their classes, it is very difficult