Choosing school management software in Nigeria

Most school management software is bought in about a week and abandoned in about a term. The demo looks good, the modules are all ticked, the school pays, and by the middle of the next term the bursar is back in Excel and the register is back on paper. The software did not break. It just never survived contact with how the school actually works.

This is a checklist for avoiding that - written from the failure modes, not the feature lists.

1. Does one entry reach everywhere it should?

This is the whole point of a system rather than a folder of spreadsheets, and it is the fastest thing to test in a demo. Ask them to enter a single score, then ask to see it appear - unretyped - in the broadsheet, the position, the report card and whatever the parent sees.

If a score has to be entered once for the class list and again for the report card, you have bought four spreadsheets with a login page. Everything else on this list matters less than this.

2. Who sees what, and can you prove it?

A teacher should see the classes they teach. A parent should see their own child and no one else's. The bursar should see fees. This sounds obvious and is where most systems are weakest, because access rules are invisible until they fail.

3. What happens at the end of the session?

Every school system looks fine in its first term. The questions that matter are about the second year:

• How does a whole class get promoted to the next class - and can a repeater be held back in the same operation?
• What happens to an SS3 cohort that leaves? If there is no graduation step, they stay on the roll forever, keep appearing in class lists, and keep counting towards whatever you are billed on.
• If a student transfers out mid-term, is their history kept? A system that deletes a student destroys their results.
• Can you still print last session's report card next year?

4. Does it work on the phone the school actually has?

Not "is there an app". Most Nigerian schools run on mid-range Android phones and intermittent data. The real questions:

• Can a teacher mark attendance on a phone, standing up, in under a minute?
• Does a form save as it is filled, or lose everything when the network drops halfway?
• How large is a page? A dashboard that assumes broadband will be abandoned quietly rather than complained about.

5. Is the pricing something you can predict?

Per-student pricing sounds fair and punishes growth in a way schools rarely model. Per-module pricing sounds flexible and means the thing you need in term two costs extra. Both are workable - what matters is whether you can state next year's bill today.

Ask directly: what does this cost when we grow by fifty students? What does it cost if we switch on the module we did not buy? If the answer needs a call, budget accordingly.

6. Whose data is it, and can you get it out?

The single question most likely to be met with silence. A school's records outlive any software decision, so before signing:

• Can you export your students, results and fee records yourself, without asking anyone?
• In what format - something a spreadsheet or another system can read, or a PDF that is technically an export and practically useless?
• If the school stops paying, what happens to the data?

7. Will the people who must use it, use it?

The most capable system in the world fails if the teachers quietly keep their own notebook. Signals worth taking seriously:

• How many clicks to do the single most frequent task - entering scores for one class?
• Can a teacher who missed the training work it out from the screen?
• Is there one obvious place to do each thing, or three places that half-do it?

The questions to actually ask in a demo

1. Enter one score and show me every place it appears.
2. Log in as a parent and try to reach another family's child.
3. Promote a class, hold one student back, and graduate the leaving year.
4. Do all of that on a phone, on mobile data.
5. Export my students and results, right now, while I watch.
6. Tell me next year's price if I grow by fifty students.

A system that handles those six comfortably will still be in use in year three. One that fumbles two of them will be back in Excel by term two, whatever the feature list says.