Hi Everyone!

I'm an esl nursery teacher in Cambodia. My school just started a few months ago. None of the local teachers in my department have training or experience of teaching and they are a bit in the dark how to assess the kids' academic progress.

So, blind leading another, I did a draft of a table of the things of learning targets (rows), with tick boxes under categories (columns) like "cannot do", "needs lots of help", "can do well" etc for each subject category (Maths, English, Science, Art, Morality): There is a one table for each child and the teacher just needs to place a tick in the right column. I showed this to one of my bosses and he said I need to make a database with all the information on the paper, with input and report forms... He never asked me if I know how to do it!

Well, I don't, but I have read a little about relational databases since then; however my knowledge and understanding is very weak. I have identified the following tables: Department, Course, Subjects, Students, Teachers: most students study under more than one department, occasionally more than one subject in the same department. Teachers can also work under two departments.

The question is how to link these tables i.e. how to choose foreign key, secondary key etc. (Primary key would be Department ID, Student ID, Teacher ID and so on) I am guessing there has to be a linking table?

Our school is small and are all still feeling our way - still developing the curriculum for kindergarten! - but I am hopeful the school will grow in the future: I want to make a database keeping in mind that more tables might be needed later.

You may wonder why don't I just ask someone local? The problem is that I don't know many schools here that teach about databases and none that can do than in English! I am ashamed to admit that I can hardly speak the local language, but I am in English speaking environment all day, work 12 hours a day (often more) and I live alone so my chances of learning are not that great. Weekends I do all the housework and when I go shopping, everyone speaks English in the supermarket.... So I was wondering if anyone would know how to design a small relational DB like I need?

 

Thank you very much David, My question is still relevant. By developing a database for my school I could help many more by giving it away, as is. I'm not in this country to make money but to help it's development, from ground up so to speak, by my tiny contribution.

 

I cannot open the file. It doesn't seem I have Access any more and Open Office cannot open it either.