Practical guides
School management software: seven questions to ask before choosing
Poorly chosen school software is often abandoned after one term. These questions help you sort through the offers, whether you run a primary school or a bilingual secondary school.
The Bikus Group team6 min read
Demos all look alike: smart dashboards, well-presented report cards. The differences show up later, when you enter second-term marks or need to trace a disputed payment. Here are the questions that make the difference.
1. Does it handle both systems?
The French-language system marks out of 20 with coefficients, in sequences and terms. The English-language system marks out of 100 with letter grades. A bilingual school must be able to do both, with report cards in the right language.
2. Who can change a mark?
The right answer: the teacher enters, management approves, and every correction leaves a trace with its author and reason. Without that workflow, a mark can change without anyone knowing.
3. Can a payment disappear?
A payment should never be deletable: it is cancelled with a reason. Every payment received should produce a receipt, and the list of arrears should calculate itself from actual payments.
4. Do parents have access?
A family area that works on a phone saves dozens of calls to the office: marks, report cards, payments, absences, timetable.
5. Does it need a permanent connection?
Online software can be used from anywhere and updates itself. But if your school has no reliable connection, ask whether a version installed on a computer exists.
6. Who enters the starting data?
Students, classes, payments already received: this is the heaviest part, especially mid-year. Ask whether the publisher provides an import template, or does the data entry for you.
7. How do you pay, and can you leave?
Prefer a free trial to a promise, a clear subscription to a large upfront payment, and check that you can export your data if you stop.
Our answer: Kalasi
We built Kalasi around these seven questions: French and English programmes in the same school, marks approved by management, payments cancelled with a reason, a parent and student area, an import template and Excel exports. The trial is free for 30 days, then subscriptions start at 15,000 FCFA a month. And if the year has already started, our team migrates your data for you.
