SchoolMaster School management App: myChild wants to transform parent-school relationships

This post follows my previous post on Why tablets could potentially change education in Africa that was widely shared. So I’ve decided to write more on EdTech or Education Technology which is a place where Technology meets the classroom.

This is yet another product review because it’s in the line of education and it’s called myChild. It’ s a web based application or portal(and there’s an android app too) by SchoolMaster Solutions through which parents get to know everything that’s going on with their kid while he/she is at school.
I’ve been speaking with the founders via email including Wilson, the product developer about the application who then gave me some pseudo login credentials for reviewing purposes.

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How it works

Login page of the myChild application

The school from which your child studies acquires the SchoolMaster Solutions school management software. The child’s details are fed into the system, then an identifier(username and password) linked to that child is given to the parent. The parent goes to the Parent’s website/portal then logs in using these credentials. That’s it. You can then view your child’s academic performance, financial statement, school events, message the school and a lot more features.

What we liked
The system has some really impressive features that enable it accomplish it’s primary objective — which is to help Parents to track the performance and status of their children. The system keeps track of the student’s report card right from the time they joined that particular school. That’s impressive because compared to “our days” when we used to come back home with paper report cards ONLY, it was so easy to lose them especially for those terms you didn’t perform well. The system also alleviates the tendency of some students forging report cards to impress their parents.

The system also automatically sends out SMS/email alerts to parents about key events once the school adds one. That would be a no-excuse-feature for those parents that [supposedly] forget to attend their kid’s school’s sport event, visitation days, PTA meetings and the like. Even though academics are the most vital (at least to me), the parent surprisingly can also view whether or not their child had a disciplinary or health case.

What I didn’t like

Records(figures and numbers) , however important they are, aren’t always fun to read and understand. Even though the guys at SchoolMaster Solutions have already done a pretty good job with helping parents keep track of their children’s performance, it would be easier if those marks where broken down into pie charts, bar graphs or line graphs. These data visualization tools can make users make sense of data in an instant compared to scrolling through pages of excel-style records. For instance, with a line graph having a positive gradient(straight line going up), I can instantly know  that my child is improving in his/her performance. After a quick glance, i can then get into the specifics.

What we would like

The system lacks a direct connection between parents and their children’s teachers. I would love to for instance directly know the teacher I can message and get in touch with in case I need to find out more details on the child’s academic decline in a specific subject and how to resolve it.
 

What’s in the pipeline

 I was reliably informed that the following features will be added to the system;
  • A Nokia Mobile app (Symbian OS) will be released mid-September.
  • National examination (UNEB/Cambridge) results view.
  • SMS keyword based information retrieval for parents without internet access.

Conclusion

Uganda already being a regional education hub in the East African Community, these innovations further strengthen it’s foothold.
This school management system smoothens the parent-school relations well enough.  The system directly benefits mainly the school administration and the parents which is perfectly fine but not much the students. By this, I mean software that will enable students to study, do their home or revision and improve the standards of education overall.
For those that would need more information on the system, contact Ivan Sserunkuma ([email protected], [email protected], +256782822131) or  visit their website which is psm.co.ug.

 

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