The education sector in Uganda constitutes at least 5% of GDP. That is the equivalent of UGX 7.4 trillion. So yes schools are big business.
And yes, just like many startups in Uganda, schools too fail because of nearly the same reason as many other businesses. Some of these reasons include poor management, inefficient systems, poor cash flow and poor record keeping.
“Like any other business, schools need to manage school fees payments, manage teaching and non-teaching staff by allocating the proper amount of workload, as well as monitoring staff attendance,” says Patrick Muhumuza, the Head of SchoolPay Operations
Muhumuza says that the average school owner or manager is burdened by the complications with running manual processes, characterised by cumbersome paperwork that makes it difficult to accurately and timely maintain records on attendance, school fees collections, admissions, transport, etc.
Tracking the progress of teachers and evaluating the effectiveness of teachers’ work becomes a challenge for the school administrator, while teachers are also struggling to monitor students’ activities including attendance, discipline, assignments, etc. Running a manual system, also makes it difficult for institutions to cope with their finances and track their fee collections and contributions on time
“The success of every school also relies on its ability to efficiently manage the learning process which in my view is a tripartite effort that involves managing and monitoring the interaction between the teacher and the student on one hand, but also the parents/guardians being able to have a non-intrusive monitoring of their children’s learning progress from class attendance as well as discipline,” says Muhumuza, adding: “How well the teacher-student-parent relationship is managed, holds key to running a successful education business.”
To help owners of education businesses efficiently run profitable businesses, Service Cops has developed a revolutionary product- School Suite
School Suite is a fully-fledged school management system that helps schools to digitize all their processes via one central data management portal, enabling real-time monitoring of the school’s key functions, thus enabling quick and data-backed decision making. School Suite helps in the management of day-to-day operations of schools allowing administrations to accomplish a lot, easily.
The system provides school heads, teachers, students, parents and other school stakeholders with tools and resources to support and enhance educational delivery and management. With the implementation of the School Suite in the school, stakeholders have a centralized dashboard view at their fingertips anytime any day, anywhere at any time.
Product features include learner management, teacher and staff information management, attendance management for teachers, staff and students, timetable management to track schedules of lessons, exams and other school activities. . School Suite also has a feature for Exam and report card generation management, library management and E-learning.
The E-Learning feature comes with live classroom capabilities which include video, audio, multi-user whiteboard, screen-sharing, recordings, chat, as well as work-sharing which fosters effective teacher and student collaboration This has allowed continuity of learning, which was disrupted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The SchoolSuite system comes with an inbuilt SchoolPay integrator to enable digital payments of School fees using the unique student numbers generated in the system.
“Key benefits of using School Suite include simplification of data collection and management; best student-teacher collaboration due to increased interaction and reduction of human labour and workload,” says Muhumuza.
Uganda’s Corporate Finance and Capital Markets Luminary, Miriam Ekirapa Musaali, Passes OnHe also says using the system by school owners and administrators, increases transparency between parents, teachers, and the students as parents can check on their children from time to time and keep track of their academic development via the system’s bespoke student portfolios that allow for remote access to student records pertaining performance, attendance and disciplinary records.
The fully-fledged Education management system has so far attracted the interest of over 542 schools across the country.
SchoolPay: Revolutionising, yet simplifying payment of school fees
SchoolPay is a web-based and mobile payment school fee and tuition solution designed for schools, universities and institutions of learning. The solution enables parents and students to make school fees and tuition payments using multiple payment channels which include mobile money, agency banking, Payway and the Banking Hall. Payments are made using a unique payment number provided to each student by their respective school or institution.
It also allows schools to monitor the payments in real-time and makes reconciliations. Guardians and parents are also able to monitor if the students have paid, bringing to an end the days of students misappropriating fees and or being conned.
For schools, SchoolPay creates one central place to manage tuition fees, thus eliminating the need to maintain multiple school collection accounts with many payment providers. Schools no longer have to issue bank slips, thus making huge savings on stationery costs, while creating convenience for parents.
For parents, guardians and students, the platform creates a unique students’ code that can flexibly be used across multiple channels- banks or mobile money. Parents, guardians and students can monitor outstanding fees and or payments history. It is that easy— no bank slips and or queues at the banks.
For banks and other payments solutions providers, it creates real-time reconciliation with the schools and has helped decongest the banking halls at the opening of the school terms. As such banks, are now able to accommodate and serve more clients, and of course, earn more revenues.
The solution that was launched in 2016, has become so popular with students that it has grown from 55,136 students; 28,670 transactions, worth over UGX11 billion to 2,946,000 students; 6.33 million SchoolPayments worth over UGX1.8 trillion!
Such has been the fame of SchoolPay that it has attracted the interest of strategic partners, such as the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) which has funded the development of SchoolPay solution into a fully-fledged enterprise platform that now extends to education finance, education saving, education wallet and micro-insurance among other products.
In Zambia, where Service Cops Limited has been running a subsidiary for the last one and a half years, SchoolPay, together with MTN Zambia also attracted funding from the Financial Sector Deeping Zambia and the Government of Zambia to run a SchoolPay pilot in a number of government schools. Following the success of the pilot scheme, SchoolPay and is now being expanded to another 1,000 government schools and the program is expected to be grown further to cover over 4,000 government schools.
For details on how to access this School Suite, contact Service Cops Limited on 0200502140 or support@schoolpay.co.ug
