SAFSMS

Bristol Academy is located in the Karu area of Abuja, Nigeria with a population of about 338 students and 70 staff in total. The school was founded in September 2002 with a vision: to take the lead in education industry in producing students who are sound morally, educationally, socially, economically and are capable of becoming leaders of tomorrow.At the end of each term, students results were compiled by teachers, printed and packaged for parents – usually by a deadline for school report collection. Nearly 13 years after the school was founded, the management of the school noticed a huge gap in the system that needed to be filled. The Challenge Bristol Academy was in need of an up to standard method for result compilation and distribution. Result computation often took days – calculating results manually per subject for each child and then trying to find averages and grades was taking a toll on the teachers and an alternative became necessary.  Secondarily, the school also wanted to be able to communicate with parents easily  and effectively in large numbers. Solution In 2015, Bristol Academy opted for SAFSMS. Since then, Bristol Academy has used SAFSMS to compute student results. After computing, the school prints results in bulk and then invites the parents for collection. Although there is also the option on the platform to send results directly to parents, this is the system which works better for the school due to administrative reasons.  "There has been great improvement.” says the school Principal, Mr. Mathew Iorgba ” We now have easier access to students results, including every CA & Assessment. You can sit at home and see what the students are doing”Compiling Student results would usually take each teacher in the school entire days, now the task is completed in a matter of hours using SAFSMS. The software has also helped with communication to parents. Mr. Iorgba discloses that the school has plans to give parents access to the SAFSMS Parents platform so that they can login and view their children’s results and also print at their own convenience. This feature is already available on SAFSMS & Mr. Iorgba says the school is just about to take advantage of it. “That is the next step.” He says “I believe we are under-utilizing the software, because there are many features we are not taking advantage of – so we’ll start from there” The school also just recently started to make use of the accounting module, which is also a part of their subscribed package. Already the school accountant Mrs. Anyanywu said “SAFSMS makes it (accounting) a lot easier” “It is much better than paperwork. You can easily see all the payments that have been made including out-standings, part and complete payments so it is much easier to gather information. With one click you can have it all.” Improvements  Although the school admitted that using the software has come with it’s own new challenges, for example on days where the connectivity was poor, teachers would have to wait before they can start computing results but Mr. Iorgba says “I have so much trust in SAFSMS. Goja (the school’s assigned support staff) is always there when I call him – even on a Sunday night!”