Introduction to Rehema School Prefects Electoral System

The KCSE 2019 Computer Studies project question is out. In fact, it has been out for almost two months as at the time of writing this blog post. I’m very, aren’t’ I? I always compare each year’s project with the previous year’s. This year’s project is a little rigid compared to last year’s. There are not really many options when it comes to design flexibility. Anyway, as is the expectation every time, you are required to computerise the operations of an entity, the entity here being Rehema School, a day secondary school.

2019 KNEC changes to assessment of KCSE Computer Studies project.

Here are the most notable changes that candidates need to be aware of. These are welcome changes and you can contact me for further guidance on how to go about them.

1. The project’s assessment will have two key milestones, which must be completed by March 31^st and July 15^th 2019.
2. At the end of each milestone, the subject teachers are expected to upload candidates’ scores and the pictorial evidence (portfolio) on the project portal. Each candidate’s pictorial evidence should show the candidate’s name and KCSE examination index number. 
3. The first milestone MUST be keyed in by March 31^st and the second milestone by July 15^th 2019.
4. The council (KNEC) will monitor the project progress and authenticity of scores at different times in the course of the project implementation. The school and individual candidates will be expected to compile and maintain a portfolio (file) of evidence on the progress of the project work to be presented to monitoring officers.

What you need to come up with Rehema School Prefects Electoral System.

1. A database management system: This can be Microsoft Access 2007, Microsoft Access 2010, Microsoft Access 2013, Microsoft Access 2016 or Microsoft Access 2019. For those using Linux and Macintosh operating systems, Libre Office and MS Access for Mac respectively will do. I presume most if not all schools use Microsoft Windows. I recommend Microsoft Access 2010 or higher. I do my development in Ms Access 2010 so the end product is compatible in Ms Access 2010 and higher. Ms Access 2010 also has some important features not available in Ms Access 2010., not forgetting that Ms Access 2007 is more than a decade old.
2. Creativity: You need to be able to formulate how to computerise those manual voting operations at Rehema School. Some of those operations such need to be consolidated while some need to be eliminated.
3.  Solid planning: You have to visualize on paper how you want your Rehema School Prefects Electoral System to look like first before embarking on the design lest you will meet endless obstacles. Even with a plan, you will meet a few obstacles but you will be able to go back and make corrections if you have a plan. In this case, a plan basically involves coming up with the tables and queries you need. Some obvious tables include a students’ details table, a teachers’ details table, electoral positions’ details table and a classes’ details table..
4. Security: You can achieve this through password-protecting your database as well as regularly backing it up. Once you reach a milestone, I recommend you save two copies of your Golden Wall School Inventory System and proceed with one copy. This way if you face hurdles in design or something happens like accidentally deleting a table or a query, you can always go back to the other copy and proceed from there.

  Core concepts of Rehema School Prefects Electoral System Project.

1.      The ability to store (in tables) details of students, teachers, classes, electoral positions and electoral positions.
2. The ability to register and store contestants/candidates and their proposers & seconders from the students table.
3. The ability to vet the candidates/contestants.
4. The ability to vote for the candidates by the students’ body.
5. The ability to tally the results at all levels and determine the winners.
6. The ability to generate relevant reports.