Q&A: Everything you need to know about running your school efficiently and paperlessly with Service Cops’ School Suite system Schools have re-opened in Uganda after about two years of lockdown due to COVID-19. Managing operations does not have to be a hustle anymore. Patrick Muhumuza, head of operations at Service Cops talks about School Suite, a product developed to ease school operations and monitoring of children by parents

What is School Suite about?

We came up with School Suite by looking at most schools; the way they manage their day-to-day operations. Most schools in the country rely on paper-based systems, they have to track hundreds of papers e.g receipts, admissions, enrollments, teachers, staff, management and all those so many papers and files. So, we looked at how we could digitise the operations of a school and we introduced the School Suite, a one central data management point where a school administrator can see the various departments or various operations that are going on in the school. School Suite is in a nutshell, a school management system.

The system has so many features, such as;

• Teacher and staff management

Here, the school administration can enter the records of the teachers, their qualifications, the positions. Not just the teachers, but also the non-teaching staff, eg workers in the kitchen, and every other department in the school. 

• Attendance management module

Here, you’re able to track students’ roll calls, but digitally. We have an attendance management module that allows the use of QR codes. Here, you can scan QR codes of students to track their attendance both by class and also by subject. Other features are: timetable management, fees management, class and subject management report cards generation and so many others.

We are also in the process of adding a parent portal, where a parent can monitor performance and the details are about the students or kids.

With such a system, you have that visibility on the school. One of the benefits that the school enjoys; is you don’t have to check papers to make your decision.

Also, some schools report to various stakeholders e.g., the directors who are not on site, education offices, government and so on. School Suite simplifies that reporting in the table to extract their reports seamlessly through the system.

Who is your target market for School Suite?

We are in a digital world, especially post COVID-19. Our target market is schools that have paper-based systems and wish to change to improve their management and have quick decision-making based on data that is provided by the system. Any school that is interested in improving the monitoring of their processes to run an efficient paperless system, and to make sure that everything is digital.

How can an individual or institution access the product?

School Suite is web-based; we don’t have to come to the school and install anything on a computer. School Suite can be accessed from anywhere, via the webportal at www.schoolsuite.co.ug whether you are in the office or out of the office. Parents, teachers and students also access the system via that web portal.

But in terms of initial setup, we need information about the school, the students, the staff, that information what we use to set up the school profile. We capture details such as the school name, the location address, the administrators, their contact information, etcetera. One other feature about the system is that it also has an inbuilt SchoolPay digital payments integrator. So if the school also needs to collect school fees digitally, with mobile money and other channels, we provide that capability. Such schools simply share their bank information and we set them up.

What are the costs involved?

What we want to do right now is to make sure that we assist schools in this digital migration. So now, we are providing the school system free of charge. We will however have a free version with basic features that help a school to manage their students, teachers, receive and monitor payments, and so on. We will also have a premium version with advanced features that include an integrated e-learning platform that allow teachers and students to interact via web conferencing or virtual collaboration modules, the video, the audio chart, whiteboards, and so on.

At the moment, we are running an offer of free full access to all the schools that register on the platform.

How safe is it to use the system? Are there any risks?

The potential risk would be loss of data in the school, maybe one day wake up, and the data is not there but we’ve already addressed this because the way we develop our systems at Service Cops is that we follow an ISO framework. ISO is the International Organisation for standardisation, which provides a framework that every company, regardless of which area you operate from, which guides your development of systems and how you maintain them. We develop all our systems based on an ISO framework. That means these systems are safe to be used in any country. In addition, all data is stored safely and backed up so that we avoid such risks of data loss.

The data is also encrypted so that no one should access things that they’re not supposed to access. The system is very secure; there are little, or no risks involved in using the system.

Does this product apply to village schools?

Absolutely, the target market is every school in the country especially the rural schools, because these schools normally rely heavily on paper-based systems. We launched this solution in the northern region in the sub-regions of Acholi, Lango, West Nile and the district of Kiryandongo.

We have so far managed to onboard more than five hundred schools on the platform in that area. And they are beginning to digitise their processes, capturing the students in the system, and using the system for learning. During the COVID 19, lockdown schools were relying on the school Suite for their lessons. So, teachers would log in and conduct lessons online.

Is anybody collaborating with you on this product?

We are currently partnering with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) on a project to digitize school management in the areas of Acholi, Lango, West Nile and Kiryandongo. We have also partnered with MTN to zero-rate the School Suite URL. As long as you have an MTN internet device, you can access School Suite without necessarily having data bundles. MTN is helping to see that learners and teachers can access the school platform without having data cuts.

And of course, the schools that we are working with are also partners in this. We collect a lot of feedback on how they use the system and what other fields need to be captured.