Monduli District was among Tanzania districts that was not using Best Grade software. It was very hard for the schools to handle academic and Administrative tasks especially generating parent forms (student report cards). Teachers were spending a lot of time preparing these academic tasks, not only spending a lot of time but also costs and the occurrence of errors in the computation was very high. A remarkable seminar training conducted on September 02, 2020 changes everything in handling academic and administrative tasks, Best grade software seemed as a solution at the right time to deal with academic tasks. In this Remarkable seminar training, Mr. Issa Mteki who is representative of Best Grade in Tanzania, trained 30 schools in the district. All of the schools attended the training had access to electricity as well as Computers but lacked adequate software or simplifying their tasks.

The whole day seminar training was coordinated in collaboration with District educational Director Mr. Nelson Milanzi, who is the representative of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. It was serious and amazing training, the Best Grade software & learning materials were distributed to every one attended .Some regions in Tanzania already adopted Best Grade software to be used in schools to perform academic tasks. All schools trained shifted and adopted the software since they experienced how it  is very useful and simple to use.

Best Grade is looking to expand its activities in Tanzania and continue trainings at the regional level across the country. We are happy to provide free training to interested districts. For more information, please reach us at contact@bestgrade.org. Or download Best Grade at www.bestgrade.org

Since 2010 Best Grade has been used by schools in Rwanda. Before its introduction secondary schools were under pressure to handle their academic and administrative tasks. Best Grade appeared as a solution to the management obstacles that schools were facing. The free software program has been used to automate tasks such as the creation of report cards, student lists, and other relevant forms that were previously performed by hand.

 
In July, Moise Ruhinda, a Best Grade Associate, trained 52 schools in the Ngoma district. Many of these schools have just recently gained access to electricity and computers. Others have been using computers for some time but lacked an adequate software program to help manage their school.  The full day training was coordinated in conjunction with the local Director of Education, who are representatives of the Ministry of Education. Best Grade provided the software and expertise, and local administrators were in charge of providing a facility and publicizing the event.

 
Hundreds of schools across Rwanda use Best Grade and have been formally trained or have discovered the program own from our website, www.bestgrade.org. Many schools that we train switch to Best Grade even in the middle of the academic year, because they find the program very useful and easy to use.. Thanks to the product, schools are able to save money and time and improve the quality of their services.

 
Best Grade is looking to expand its activities in Rwanda and continue trainings at the regional level across the country. We are happy to provide free trainings to interested districts. For more information, please reach us at contact@bestgrade.org. Or download Best Grade at www.bestgrade.org .

Since 2010 Best Grade has been used by schools in Rwanda. Before its introduction secondary schools were under pressure to handle their academic and administrative tasks. Best Grade appeared as a solution to the management obstacles that schools were facing. Now, with the support of IT Specialists LTD, Best Grade software has been distributed to schools in Eastern and Western Province over the last couple of months.

Thanks to IT Specialists LTD’s efforts, Project Best Grade has expanded into Nyagatare and Rwamagana districts in Eastern Province, as well as Gakenke and Gicumb in Northern Province.

As September approaches and schools start work on their year end records management, IT Specialists are expecting to see a large number of schools adopting Best Grade.

Best Grade is currently being used by a variety of schools across the country.  Last year Best Grade Associates visited a group of schools in the Southern and Northern Provinces. While introducing the product they discovered that, though some schools were in the middle of the academic year, they switched to Best Grade because they found it easy to use. Many schools in rural areas are converting their primary schools into nine year programs. Project Best Grade is determining a strategy to approach these schools to enhance their work through ICT.

Best Grade is proving itself by positively impacting Rwandan education. Thanks to the product, schools are able to save money and time and improve the quality of their services.

Gayaza High School, an institution at the forefront of promoting education technology in Uganda, is a Best Grade partner working to connect schools to a common management platform.

So far, the Uganda Communications Commission the Uganda Communications Commission has provided computers to over 800 rural schools through the Rural Communications Development Fund Program. Gayaza is further pushing for the distribution of printers (see proposal) so that rural schools can see greater managment improvements through the use of ICT.

Gayaza is seeking the support of other schools in Uganda to help promote the program. Mentoring and teacher training programs will be made available free of charge for schools interested in using Best Grade to manage attendance and enrollment, print report cards, process evaluation reports, and perform other administrative tasks on a single electronic platform.

Schools switching to an electronic system will free up teacher time for lesson planning and student interactions at the end of a term. Monetary savings will include the cost of purchasing report card booklets and providing transport and lodging for Head teachers traveling to Kampala for printing.

Gayaza is proposing a five rural schools-to-one-printer model, where a printer is placed in a central school and the other four schools print report cards from there. Under this model a school’s financial contribution would be in the range of Sh. 300,000.

If you would like to help out please like this post on Facebook and forward this information to rural schools. If you would like more information about the proposed program, including mentoring and training opportunities, get in touch with:

Ronald Ddungu, Deputy Head teacher, Gayaza High School +256772433879,ronaldddungu@yahoo.com

Open-source products challenge dominant commercial products across nearly the entire software spectrum.  Firefox rivals Internet Explorer as the browser of choice.  OpenOffice rivals Microsoft Office as the productivity suite of choice.  Gimp rivals Photoshop, as Thunderbird does Outlook.  The list goes on and on.

The arena of school management software may be where the next open-source battle is waged, with SchoolTool, an open-source program, at the forefront.  The SchoolTool project is supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Mark Shuttleworth, the South African famous both for being the creator of the Ubuntu variety of Linux and for joining the club of multi-millionaires-turned-space-tourists.  While SchoolTool is not the only school management program that is available for free, the SchoolTool project is the largest single collaborative effort to design an open-source school management system.

With the aim of being a universal school management application, SchoolTool is not designed specifically for schools in sub-Saharan Africa.  For practical reasons the project has focused its design and development efforts in Europe, North America, and elsewhere.  Nevertheless, the project does have roots on the continent.  The fact that Mark Shuttleworth is African is one point of connection.  Furthermore, in terms of basic needs sub-Saharan Africais one of the few regions of the globe where there is an immediate and clear demand for such a product.  The vast majority of schools in North America, Europe, and parts of Asia havebeen using management systems for years, with customized, legacy systems that would be costly to transition from.  In contrast, most schools in sub-Saharan Africa still do their record-keeping the old-fashioned way: with paper and pen.

But will SchoolTool succeed in Africa?  In its current form, the answer is no.  SchoolTool’s fortunes may be representative of those of open-source as a whole, which for economic reasons should be more strongly-embraced in Africa, but in reality faces obstacles towards adoption.  The typical reasons why Africa doesn’t really “do” open-source are myriad, ranging from Microsoft conspiracy theories to the constraint of internet access, to publicity issues, to piracy (In the words of a colleague, “There’s already a great free photo editing program; it’scalled Photoshop.”).

One overlooked factor may be that some open-source programs may not be meeting the needs of potential-users across the continent.

SchoolTool’s ability to overcome the following obstacles will dictate the project’s future success or failure on the continent.

Linux

With technical exceptions to this rule, SchoolTool is only available in Linux.  SchoolTool is for Linux, while the vast, vast majority of schools in Africa don’t use Linux.  Before you can use SchoolTool you need to install Linux.  And before you can promote SchoolTool you need to promote switching to Linux, which is more a challenge and constraint in and of itself.

Installation

SchoolTool is installed in a few steps, but there are caveats.  One of those steps happens to be determining what version of Linux you’re using.  Another is going to the terminal and… it doesn’t matter.  Many new users won’t want to bother.

The Internet

Installing SchoolTool on a computer without internet access is a herculean task.  This is an issue for schools, since most administrative computers in schools in sub-Saharan Africa aren’t connected to the internet.

Ease of Use

Only a low to moderate amount of tech knowledge is necessary to use SchoolTool.  But how intuitive is the interface compared to commercial products?  Just one example: the program is launched by opening a web browser and typing http://localhost:7080/ into the address bar.

Resolving Problems

If a user runs into a serious problem with the system there’s no easy way to solve it.  What happens if the system becomes unstable or corrupted?  What if a computer breaks down?  There’s no easy way to port out student information and no on-the-ground tech support in case of a problem.

Unfinished Development

Many open-source products are not all things to all people.  Out of the box, SchoolTool cannot be used effectively by schools across Africa.  Customizations for different educational systems haven’t been completed yet.  Developers in individual countries may charge for tailored versions of such systems, and at that point the comparative advantage of adopting SchoolTool over a regular commercially-available product is minimal.

If these limitations seem impossible to overcome, consider another open-source product of that has taken the continent by storm; Firefox.  It’s free, quick and easy to install and to use, and available on Windows and almost any other platform.  It is demonstrably superior to Internet Explorer 5 or 6, the status-quo option across the continent.  And the inconvenience of switching to Firefox is as close to zero as possible, which is not a bad proposition for new and reluctant adopters.

Two thousand and nine harbored the death of aid in Africa, at least in the public discourse. While notable figures have questioned the efficacy of aid efforts in the past new books such as Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo, challange the entire industry with a force previously unknown.

If aid is dead, what, then, will replace it as a popular concept? It would make sense to call a spade a spade. Current aid efforts fall under three categories: charity, government services, and investment. The line between the three is blurred but can be generally understood by this rule of thumb: if the same thing were done in the West, what would it be?

Beyond the realm of charity development agencies in effect do what the private sector or government or civil society are supposed to but cannot due to a lack of money or means. The solution has been to circumvent, co-opt, or support these entities in ways that are not the most efficient or effective.

Where does Project Best Grade fall into this mix? In the States software projects are neither charity, nor government services, nor modes of investment; they are plain, old private enterprise. The same could be said for Africa- our product has a number of for-profit competitors, though none has gained more than a half-dozen clients.

So why not be a for-profit enterprise? Firstly, because people are reluctant to change the way they operate and pay for that change at the same time. Demanding payment upfront would greatly reduce the project’s economy of scale and shrink the customer base to the richest and most technologically advanced schools. But beyond this fact there is a more general problem of payment. Schools collect a few thousand dollars a year in school fees and could easily afford software, but they can’t mail a check or send their credit card information over the internet because they don’t have either. Mobile phone banking is one possibility, but it is still just hype at the moment.

There is a solution to this, but it requires some creative thinking. Instead of working out payment methods with those without a payment system, why not find something with easy means who is happening to be looking for a way to get money to schools. In essence, one could do a charitable default swap: Organizations, for example, looking to award scholarships but which lack an efficient means of doing so could find schools who want to buy software but have no method of payment. Instead of paying for software, the schools would simply waive the school fees the following year for a certain number of children, and the organization looking to fund educations would direct their funds through Project Best Grade. In effect, schools would pay for Best Grade by offering free educations to students. Organizations would be accomplishing two goals; financing students and improving the quality of school administration. And Best Grade would effectively be 100% funded by local sources.

Any takers?