DECLARATION

This is to certify that the project report entitled Student Enrolment System
(SES)submitted by Darius Mogaka Riro in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Bachelor of Information Technology embodies the bonafide work done by myself
in the final semester of this Degree under the supervision of the undersigned.
The project or any other part of it is my original work; it has not been submitted earlier to
other University/Institution for the award of any Diploma or Degree.

Name: DARIUS MOGAKA RIRO

REG NO: BIT C006-0195/13

Signature: ____________________________

Date: ______________________

Approval
This project has been submitted for examination with my approval as the University
Supervisor

Name of Supervisor: ANNE IYOGA

Signature: ____________________________
(UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR)

Date: ______________________

DEDICATION
I dedicate this project to my beloved parents, who supported me morally and financially
during the project development and research period.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Every effort is motivated by an ambition and all ambitions have an inspiration behind in the
height of reaching a mile-stone in life. I owe my deep sense of gratitude that helps me in such
a constructive work with grateful heart, I avail this privilege to express my deep sense of
gratitude and indebtedness to my esteemed guide and supervisor Madam Anne Iyoga for her
guidance, supervision and critical suggestion throughout the course.
I gratefully extend my sincere thanks to all faculties and to all teaching and non-teaching staff
members of the department.
Sincere thanks are extended to my classmates for their valuable advice and moral support.
My thanks are due to my parents and loving brother for their affection, inspiration, patience
and support.

ABSTRACT
An E-enrollment system for students in Kenyan public schools is a web-based application
that provides a platform through which schools would enter and update their students
population information on annual basis. There is need to employ new available technologies
to replace manual process that involves use of paper and pen to source and maintain records.
Its too bureaucratic, therefore quite unreliable and very slow hence time consuming. This
project mainly concentrates on improving the manual method by adopting browser Server
architecture to build the E-enrollment system for students in Kenyan public schools.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION......................................................................................................... i
DEDICATION............................................................................................................ ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENT.............................................................................................. iii
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES................................................................................ vii
CHAPTER ONE......................................................................................................... 1
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................... 1
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY.............................................................................. 2
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.............................................................................. 3
Objectives of the study.............................................................................................. 4
Specific Objective................................................................................................. 4
Research questions................................................................................................... 4
IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY................................................................................ 5
SCOPE................................................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER TWO........................................................................................................ 7
LITERATURE REVIEW.............................................................................................. 7
Introduction to literature review................................................................................... 7
The theoretical framework.......................................................................................... 7
Main review of past studies done in the area....................................................................7
CHAPTER THREE..................................................................................................... 9
DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY.................................................................................. 9
Study Design.......................................................................................................... 9
Target population..................................................................................................... 9
Sampling design...................................................................................................... 9
Data collection procedures and instruments...................................................................10
Data Collection.................................................................................................. 10
Instruments....................................................................................................... 10
Data Analysis........................................................................................................ 11
Workplan................................................................................................................ 12
1.1

Printing cost:............................................................................................... 12

1.2

Equipment cost:........................................................................................... 13

1.3

Software Purchase/License cost:.......................................................................13

CHAPTER FOUR..................................................................................................... 14
DESIGN SPECIFICATION......................................................................................... 14
5

USE CASE DIAGRAMS......................................................................................... 14

Class Diagram....................................................................................................... 16
User Interaction..................................................................................................... 17
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE APPLICATION MODULES................................................18
1.4

Registration & Login..................................................................................... 18

TESTING AND EVALUATION................................................................................... 18

Login.................................................................................................................. 18
CHAPTER 5............................................................................................................ 20
CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK.............................................................................. 20
APPENDIX II: GANT CHART................................................................................ 21
References.............................................................................................................. 22

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Work plan...................................................................................................................13

Table 2: Time Frame29

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
SPSS-Statistical Package for Social Sciences
SQL- Structured Query Language
PHP-Personal Home Page

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
With the invention and availability of modern and robust technology, there is need to
integrate information communication technology structure in business strategies and
operations to improve processes, and add in efficiency to service delivery.
Today Technology plays multifaceted role in all organizations irrespective of the industrial
discipline they fall in; from health to education, education to commerce etc. This has
necessitated development of information systems such as e-commerce in business, e-health in
health, e-booking in airline industry. This is in recognition that ICT is no longer a luxury and
privilege but a basic tool in our daily systems as it improves accessibility and quick transfer
of information data. In Kenya, over years ICT has been less meaningful across most
organizations. Its use rose gradually, the government through various ministries would want
to empress technology in order to achieve vision 2030.
The E-enrollment system for students in Kenyan public schools is an automated web based
application system that will enable the ministry of education to collect, track and determine
accurately exact population of students individual schools. This data will determine
accurately how much funding a school should receive in a certain year. This system will use
birth certificates serial number to uniquely identify each student.
The online system will curb limitations of the manual process by increasing transparency as
well as access to information and reduce loopholes of cheating as most head-teachers of
schools are tempted to cheat on their students population in the records to receive extra coins
which ends in their pockets. The system will ensure efficient and faster transfer of data and
bring in better management of data records.
The E-enrollment system will incorporate the funding allocation and distribution package that
calculates and display amount each school receives in a given financial year.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

This system will be developed, implemented and deployed in the ministry of education in
Kenya. Each public school will then have a portal with it.
Formal Education in Kenya started around 1900 during the colonial period with
establishment of few schools by the missionaries with the main concern of teaching Africans
on how to read and write. Later, the colonial government took up the initiative and built more
schools both for African and white students for learning, though, under segregation lines.
The history of free primary education in Kenya dates back to 1974 and in 1979 when the
Government launched free primary education program aimed at giving free primary
education to each child. However, lack of funds derailed those two initiatives, but in 2003,
the government reintroduced free primary education in primary schools, and today its still in
place. Later on, in the year 2008 the government extended support to students in secondary
schools, however only tuition fee covered.
The Funding of free primary and secondary education to schools is based on the number of
students that a school has enrolled. The ministry of education carries out enrollment annually
in all the schools to determine the exact number of current students in the country.
However, this enrollment exercise is purely manual, with schools needed to submit the lists
information of their students to ministry but has to pass through several hands e.g. through
D.E.Os offices, County education headquarters, before reaching to the ministry. This is quite
tedious. Additionally, the manual process has proved to be slow, unreliable as it has been
marred with issues of loss of file records, tedious; having to deal with papers and paper pileups. Now in the 21st century, a move from this archaic system to embrace new technology is
inevitable.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The ministry of education carries yearly headcount of students in all public schools to
determine the number of enrolled students in the country for purposes of planning, research
monitoring transitions and growth rates of students over years. Lately, with inception of free
education, this data is very useful for purposes of planning the financing process of each
enrolled student through disbursement of these funds to school. The enrollment exercise
which pegs how much a school receives. However, it has been prone to fraud, cheating and
not limited to inefficiencies such as slow transfer of information, lost information due
misplacement of papers, tear and wear.
This funds are pegged on the population of students a school contains given each student is
allocated certain equal amount of money for his/her education in that particular year.
There is need to cut down these slow, long and unnecessary procedure the record files have to
pass before they get to the ministry offices.

Objectives of the study

Specific Objective
Establishing an automated web-based enrollment system for students that will administer
funds allocation and distribution, to curb inefficiencies and non-transparency of the manual
enrollment process, and make this information available even to the public.
Other objectives
i.
ii.

Create accounts for every Kenyan public school

Allow school to log on into system and register students in their respective classes and

iii.

keep this information in the databases

Allow schools to make updates of their population figures

Research questions
i.

The research project probes the manual enrollment of students whether its
information data can fully rely on, its transparency and speed

ii.

What are the benefits of E-enrollment system to the ministry of education?

iii.

Will the automation bring in proper management of data records, better funds
allocation and distribution process?

IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY

In this era, automation of most business operations has become inevitable. Every agency,
organization and companies seek to revolutionize its approach to daily operations in making
them easily accessible, efficient and conveniently affordable. E-enrollment system is the way
for the Education ministry to ease transfer of information and the web application will be
easily accessible for access to schools
E-enrollment is important as seeks to reduce any erroneous claims or corruption in terms
funding in cases where a school manipulate records to receive extra funds. This is resolved by
the use of birth certificates which authenticate each student.
E-enrollment gives a broader picture of demographic distribution of students population in
the country, and can enable projection estimates of population growth of students. Increase
management visibility over the enrollment process. The ministry will monitor the process
without physical involvement and get in-depth understanding and correct population results
figures.
Finally using e-enrollment is in line with vision 2030 ICT automation goals

SCOPE
The E-enrolment system is an online computerized system that focuses on enrolling all
students in Kenyan public schools for purposes of determining exact students population in
the country to plan and the figures obtained are used for planning their funding allocation and
distribution to schools.
The system will be installed in the ministry of Education and will have an Administrator who
is responsible for managing the entire activities, components or users (accounts). The users
will majorly consist of the accounts of each school, and staff and the management in the
department concerned over this annual enrollment exercise within the ministry
The E-enrollment system will consist of the following components:
i.

An interface- that will be used by schools head-teachers to log on the system through

ii.

their accounts to enter and update records of students

The same interface will be used by education officers within the ministry offices using

iii.

their accounts to view schools records information

A database for storage and retrieval of data information pertaining to schools and
students.

CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction to literature review
We are going to explore the relationship between the rates of transfer of information, any
forms of fraud, efficiency against automation of the enrolment process.
In every research study there is need to review earlier works done to area so as to form basis
to support and draw insight into the research undertaken. In this research study I have
reviewed a number of articles done supporting the need of online/web-based systems and
their importance as they analyze these systems, though, they are drawn from different
disciplines such e-health, E-registration of KNEC exams among others.
The theoretical framework
In this section we will present various theoretical review that incline towards giving the
broader picture of many web based systems that have been developed and how they have
positively influenced business process. The section ends with conclusions of the main
theoretical concepts
Main review of past studies done in the area
Dr. Oloko M and Dr. Odero (2013), Effect of Online Registration on Exam Performance in
Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education Enrolment, they examined the relationship
between online registration against enrollment performance in Kenya. Their results indicated
a higher preference of online registration system as issues of multiple registrations and
impersonation cases in KCSE Examination had tremendously reduced.
They noted that the web-based system (E-registration) brought in efficiency in service
delivery and marked a big stride in improving the manual handling of registration. In their
view, E-registration resolved issues of mismanagement of students records, mismanagement
of courses registered for and double registration, these were drawbacks of manual system.
Additionally; the problems of wear and tear occasioned during retrieval and handling, and
sometimes some loss of data was resolved by the automated system. They equally noted that
this online system enabled data sharing and reproduction which would usually involve high
costs per unit with the manual systems, and it is in view of these, among more other reasons,

that the government introduced e-registration of pupils and students for the national
examinations.
DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY E-REGISTRATION
The shift to E-registration of secondary school candidates by the KNEC have been faced with
a number of problems. The shift to e-registration was challenging not only to KNEC but also
to the IT Service Providers. The challenges were two-fold, the main one being adequate
maintenance of the IT infrastructure in order to minimize down times. The second challenge
was ensuring the success of the 100% migration to e-registration, given the concerns raised
that the low level of computer literacy in the Country did not augur well for such an initiative

The research underscored the importance of e-Health using web-based applications to

promote the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities, and improving
professional practice through the use of information management and information and
communication technology(ICT), which is a powerful tool that enables data to be shared as
never before among health care workers: in their view, e-health

supported clinicians,

individuals to share and exchange information to improve outcomes, patient safety and
improve E-Health, just like any other web-based system, can help improve the quality,
capacity and efficiency of health care systems and it has the potential of improving access to
healthcare system for underserved population and to increase the capacity to provide tailored
and customization for individual patient and customers and service efficiency (Wallis 2011,
14).

Hien Nguyen (2008), acknowledges that web based applications plays a pivotal role in
revolutionizing process activities in most of higher institutional office environments,
conveniently replacing paper-based process.
He was able to oversee the development of this system which enabled applicants from all
over the world to complete forms, submit the application and retrieve the application status
online as well as have them processed electronically by various departments involved. Beside
these functionalities, the system was user-friendly, and reliable.

Despite the final system satisfying the core functional requirements, Nguyen pointed out
some of the limitations of the system and recommendations for future works. One of the
limitations was that all data was transmitted over the internet in plain text, making the system
vulnerable to eavesdropping attack. To overcome this threat, he recommends use of Secure
Socket Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the transmitted data.

CHAPTER THREE
DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
Study Design
This research will involve doing a case study in the ministry of education offices and schools,
both secondary and primary, located in Kisii County of Kenya.
This study is particularly useful because it will help us to know how the ministry of
Education conducts its annual enrollment process, the procedure and stages involved once the
principals/head-teachers takes the head count students in their schools then filling data forms
in before submission to concern offices. This is done with a view of getting to understand and
address the shortcomings of the manual process. Through the exploration one can develop
concepts more clearly, develop operational definitions and improve the final research
methodology.
Target population
The expected groups of population under this research will be conducted are as follows:
i.
ii.
iii.

Education ministry officials those in-charge of collection students populations data in

Kenyan schools(directors), data entry clerks, and web administrators of the ministry
Secondary schools principals and class teachers
Primary schools Head-teachers and class teachers

Sampling design
Its important to note that a sample size to be used for this study will be drawn from the target
population. In the education ministry offices, selection of the sample will follow the
management hierarchy a maximum of two senior authoritative officers; one involved in the
oversight role and another in the operations functional role, three data entry officers, and two
administrators in the ICT department.

A maximum of 15 schools will be randomly selected from the Kisii County, which is the
researchs case study, and each principal/head-teacher is assumed to take part by giving
helpful information towards the study. For verification and cross-checking of data, a
maximum of 3 class teachers from each identified school will be required to participate in the
study.
Data collection procedures and instruments
Data Collection
The instruments or methods to be used will be the Questionnaires and Interviews. The entire
process of collecting data is scheduled to take a maximum of 4weeks. Questionnaires will be
availed to respondents in the first one and half weeks, and with the issue of allowing them
enough time to fill the questionnaire, they will be collected by the end of third week. In the
meantime, interviews shall be done on the 2nd and 4th week.

Instruments
i.

Questionnaires
The questionnaires will be made up of both the open-ended and closed questions. Openended questions will yield in-depth responses along with description or explanations that are
based suited for this study. This will also give varied responses to similar questions from
varied respondents and thus can be used to gauge or group the valid and invalid information.
The questionnaires will be piloted first so as to give room for any necessary changes to be
made and to make it more flexible and reflexive before actual deployment.

ii.

Interview
Interviews will be administered to individual respondents with appointments made in
advance. The will consist of mostly open-ended questions.

10

Data Analysis
The data will be analyzed depending on the acceptance of the system; the percentages of
acceptance of the E-enrollment with the percentages of rejection. A Statistical Package for
Social Sciences (SPSS) will be used to analyze the data collected.
Group

acceptance%

Principals/head-teachers
Teachers
Data entry clerks
Ministry ICT officials
Ministry education Directors within the ministry

11

%
%
%
%
%

rejection%
%
%
%
%
%

Workplan
The project has to be submitted within a certain project timeline for approval by the panel,
and its after this one is allowed to proceed. As a rough guide the project will be divided into
the following timeframes:
Activity
3Weeks
Investigation
analysis
Design
and

5Weeks

3Weeks

2Weeks

3Weeks

coding
Testing
Implementation
Training
Post
implementation
review
Table 1: Work plan

BUDGET
The following shows the estimated budget for the entire project research:
Data collection process

12

3Weeks

Printing cost:
510 pages x Ksh.5 = Ksh.2550
The number of pages is derived from the questionnaires and interviews sheets that will be
printed. A single Questionnaire is estimated will have 3 printed pages and the total number of
questionnaires will be 166 copies (for both piloting and actual administering of
questionnaire). The Interviews sheets will be 12 in total with only one printed page each. The
cost per printed page is currently charged at sh.5 per page. Thus the total cost is as shown
above.
Commuting expenses
These are costs incurred during travelling to schools identified and to the ministry of
education head-quarters offices for purpose of this research.
10 schools xsh.500= sh.5000
1.1

Equipment cost:

For easier and convenient development of the system we will need a new high quality
computer/laptop. The cost for a new computer for development is roughly estimated to be;
Sh.60000
1.2

Software Purchase/License cost:

The software in this case are the computer programs that will be used for development of the
system and data analysis that is MySQL server/PHP myAdmin and IBM SPSS respectively.
Though both can be acquired for free, the free versions do not offer all functionalities that
will be required. MySQL server requires the purchase of the license as well as IBM SPSS.
This is necessary to allow for testing of the functionalities and system integrity once
developed. The cost for acquiring the licenses is as follows:
Sh.18000 for MySQL Standard Edition Subscription (1-4 socket server)
Sh.20000 for IBM SPSS Statistics Standard Authorized User (License + SW Subscription &
Support for 2 months).
Thus total cost for the licenses is 18000+20000=38000

13

This follows that for the success of the research the total cost estimated is:
Total Cost = 2350+5000+60000+38000
=Ksh. 105,350

CHAPTER FOUR
DESIGN SPECIFICATION
USE CASE DIAGRAMS
The architecture of the application is explained using Unified Modeling Language Diagrams.
Unified Modeling Language (UML) provides IT professionals with a common design format
to build and develop computer applications using the design view of the application. Use
Case Diagram demonstrates the functionality of each individual unit in the system. These
diagrams help in better visualization of the functional requirements which includes the
relationship between actors and the use cases.
Figure below describes how communication takes place between the students and
administration of the school. The user sets up the application in their machine and then hosts
it to be accessible from any point. Students are able to access the content if they have their
login rights. Both the school admins and students are differentiated based on their logins.
Similarly, the data is fetched from the Parse web server and then through the web server to
the user. The web server acts as an intermediate for the interaction between the students and
the school for data exchange. The users should always be connected to the internet in order to
interact with the web server through the web services.

14

Use case diagram

Cours
e

15

In Figure below, all the ovals represent the functionalities of the students and admins, there
are some common use cases between students and admins such as registration, login, and
course selection are initially made by student. Apart from these common features between
admins and students, admins also have some specific functionalities like, adding or deleting
students

Class Diagram
The Class diagram for the application consists of the interfaces, methods, variables and
relationship between them. Figure below is the class diagram for doctor module which
Class Diagram for Admins Module

16

Sequence Diagram
A sequence diagram describes how the communication happens between the user,
application, and cloud data. Figure below describes the user sequence with the application
and how the application handles the user request.

Student Inputs user &

password

courses

17

Sequence Diagram for User interaction with application

User Interaction
The main activities in the application are the user registration page, login page, landing page
for doctors and patients after login, landing page for student after registration.

Below is the login screen for both the Admins and the students.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE APPLICATION MODULES

Registration & Login
This module provides the functionality to register with the application before they login and
use the services available. There will be a link provided in the landing screen for registering
with the application.
In this activity the user has to give details such as first name, last name,
After successful registration, the user can login into the application with his/her credentials,
the application validates both the username and password given by the user and also checks
the role of the user and navigates appropriately to the corresponding screen.
18

TESTING AND EVALUATION

In this phase the functionality is tested on a personal computer.
This chapter deals with testing each module of the application with positive and negative test
cases, first lets start from registering with logging in as an admin.

Login
Negative Test Case: Supplying the wrong password on admin account will result to a
negative result.

b. Positive Test Case: Here is a successful

login for the admin. For this to happen the admin ensures they give the correct user name and
password as they login. Password here is case sensitive.

19

20

CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
The major goal of this application is to create online interaction between students and school
admins. Generate population of students as at a given date and time as required my
management of the school or the ministry of education.

Future Works
This app can be improved in the future by adding the following functionalities:

21

APPENDIX II: GANT CHART

This will be used to indicate the time by which the project is expected to be completed. It has
been summarized according to the number of days.

Table 2: Work plan

22

References
1

Richards Ayodele, Julia Krallinger, Paulo Mori,A systematic literature review on use
of technology in diabetes management among nurses by (2012)

Odero and Margaret, Effect of Online Registration on Exam Performance in Kenya

Certificate of Secondary Education Enrolment. A Case of Sotik District, Kenya(2013)

Jonathan P. Weiner, Susan Yeh, and David Blumenthal, The Impact of Health
Information Technology and

e-Health on the Future Demand for Physician

Services(4,2013)

23