Two curricula, 14 levels and one system: how Nwananga Christian School uses Escola360

The school

Nwananga Christian School, also known as Escola Cristã Nwananga, is one of the largest and most respected private schools in the country. It is in Maputo, in the municipal district of KaMpfumo, at Avenida Eduardo Mondlane, 1487, and takes students from preschool to the end of secondary. It was founded in 2015 and has been an Escola360 customer since 2017, almost from the start of its history.

It is a Christian, bilingual school, teaching in Portuguese and English. It follows the National Education System and, alongside it, prepares students for Cambridge exams. Its motto says a lot about how it works: "Mais que uma escola, somos uma família" ("More than a school, we are a family").

The day starts at 7.15 am and, besides lessons, the school offers a sick bay staffed by nurses, a library, its own uniform and extracurricular activities. All of this is a service to families, and all of it has to be organised, charged for and communicated.

The challenge

A school of this size, with standards this high, does not fit into notebooks, spreadsheets and separate systems. Four features make it particularly demanding to run.

The answer was to put the whole school on one system: the school office, the teachers, administration and finance, the leadership and the families all work from the same data, each with the access their role requires.

School office and enrolment

Enrolment season used to be the most demanding time of the year for the school office. Today it starts outside the school: families complete the online pre-registration, with the student's details, the parents' and guardian's details and health information, and the school office handles each application inside the system, even at the busiest times.

1. 1
   Online pre-registration

   The family fills in the details from home, with no queues and no paper forms.

2. 2
   Review by the school office

   Each application is reviewed and confirmed in the system, with the student's history in view.

3. 3
   Enrolment or re-enrolment

   The year's fees apply according to the level and to whether the student is new or already at the school.

4. 4
   Family access

   The proof of enrolment comes with the details the guardian needs to follow their child from day one.

Student and guardian records, lists of enrolled students, class summaries and batch printing all come from the same place. The documents the school issues, such as the certificate of promotion to the next grade, carry the school's identity and are prepared during the same visit.

In Escola360:Enrolment and admissionsSchool office documents

Marks, mark sheets and report cards in two curricula

Each term, every subject has two continuous assessments (AS) and one term test (AT). The teachers themselves enter the marks for their classes, straight after each test. The system works out the averages and academic leadership can see, class by class, who has entered their marks and who has yet to. Closing a term's mark sheets used to take more than two weeks; today, once the marks are entered, the mark sheets are ready straight away.

The school expects a lot of its students, and each term's results are in front of the leadership on performance dashboards by class, by subject and by teacher.

In Escola360:Grades, mark sheets and report cardsPreschool and nurseryManagement dashboard

Tuition fees and treasury

The administration and finance team manages the monthly tuition fees and every other item the school charges for: registration, insurance, uniform and whatever else comes up during the year. Each payment is tied to the right student and each family's position is always up to date, with invoicing authorised by the Mozambique Tax Authority. Uniforms and materials come out of stock controlled in the same system, and whatever is sold goes straight onto the student's account.

The payment methods the school records today:

When the family pays at the bank, the proof of payment is attached to the payment. That way, the treasury checks it and the guardian sees their position updated.

In Escola360:Tuition fee managementTreasury and expenses

The team

Teachers, leadership, school office staff, nurses and support staff each have a record in the system, linked to what they do at the school: a teacher is linked to their classes and subjects, and each user sees only what their profile allows. The team also uses the staff app day to day.

In Escola360:Human resources

School life

A school that sees itself as a family looks after what happens outside the classroom. That care is on record too.

In Escola360:Health, behaviour and activitiesSchool library

The families

Transparency and closeness to families are values the school's leadership insists on living up to. At Nwananga, that means families who follow their child on their phone and a school that listens to what parents have to say. Students have their own app, with their timetable, assessments and the term calendar.

The school's rules, from timetable to uniform, from meals to assessments, are gathered in a set of frequently asked questions that any parent can consult when they need to.

In Escola360:Parent appParent communication

Nine years of building together

Nwananga did more than adopt Escola360. Since 2017, the school has brought its own demands to the table: two curricula, report cards in English, fourteen levels, services that go well beyond tuition fees. Each of those needs helped shape the system that now serves other Mozambican schools.

This long partnership is the best proof that Escola360 grows out of the reality of a real school, with teachers, a school office, a finance team and families who use it every day.

The people who use it every day

“Going digital reinforced what we have always demanded of ourselves: quality, transparency and closeness to families.

More than adopting Escola360, we had the opportunity to take part in building it, contributing our experience to the development of a solution aligned with the reality of schools in Mozambique.

Today, the platform is part of how our school runs every day, and it is a solution I recommend to other school leaders looking to make their management more efficient, organised and modern.”

Oelza Massinga · Principal

What comes next

The new generation of Escola360 keeps everything Nwananga already does and adds tools the school can switch on at its own pace.