Education Usage scenario

Running a 600-pupil private school: enrolment, tuition fees and parent portal

A 600-pupil school handles enrolment, fees paid by mobile money, grades and absences on a phone, with a parent portal and a dashboard.

Describe your project See the solution

Project overview

This scenario illustrates what we build; it is not a client reference.

This scenario shows how a 600-pupil private school can handle enrolment online, track tuition fees paid by mobile money, let teachers enter grades and absences from their phone, notify parents by SMS or WhatsApp and give the head a dashboard.

Client challenges & requirements

A private school in Conakry has 600 pupils, from nursery to upper secondary. Every September, enrolment is done on paper forms, later copied into an Excel workbook. Tuition fees are paid in cash or by Orange Money to the accountant's phone, and matching payments to the pupil list takes days. Grades stay in the teachers' notebooks until report cards.

Parents learn about an absence or a summons when the child gets home, or not at all. On any given morning, the head does not know how many pupils are up to date with their fees.

Main objectives

Enrol or re-enrol a pupil online, with one file per pupil

Record every fee payment, in cash or by mobile money, and know who is up to date

Let teachers enter grades and absences from their phone, even without network

Notify parents by SMS or WhatsApp and give the head an overview

Project solution

The web application is built with Laravel and PostgreSQL, used on a computer in the office and on a phone everywhere else. The online enrolment form creates the pupil's file, which the family completes from their phone. Fees are split into instalments. An Orange Money or MTN MoMo payment is recognised through the provider's API and matched to the pupil with no re-entry. A cash payment is entered by the accountant, with a receipt sent to the parent by SMS.
Teachers use a Flutter app to take attendance and enter grades, even without network: the data is sent when the connection comes back. If a pupil is absent, the parent receives an SMS the same day. If a report card is published, the parent receives a WhatsApp message with a link to the portal. The head opens a Metabase dashboard: pupils per class, fees paid and overdue, absences of the week, class averages.
We start small

Enrolment and payments first, grades and absences the following term.

Indicators to track

Share of enrolments done online
Time between a payment and its matching to the pupil
Amount of overdue fees
Share of absences reported to parents
Time spent producing report cards

Tech stack

Application web: Laravel Livewire PostgreSQL
Application mobile: Flutter (Android, iOS) Mode hors connexion
Paiement: API Orange Money API MTN MoMo
Messages: Passerelle SMS API WhatsApp Business
Tableau de bord: Metabase

Frequently asked questions

No. SMS works on every phone and carries the essentials: absence, payment received, report card available. The web portal and WhatsApp add to it for families with a smartphone. The school chooses the channel family by family.

The accountant enters the payment in the application and the parent receives an SMS receipt with the amount and the remaining balance. Each entry keeps the date and the name of the person. Reconciliation with the cash box is done from the application, no longer from the notebook.

The app keeps attendance and grades on the phone and sends them as soon as the network is back. The teacher sees what has been sent and what is waiting. Nothing is lost if the phone switches off in between.