I recently visited a school on the Cape Flats in Cape Town, South Africa, as part of a marketing campaign for a new school management project.
I had a meeting with the teachers to understand how they manage the administration of their school as well as how much money they have for administration systems. I showed a system that many of the privileged schools used and they were amazed and excited to see how a good system could help them turn their manual, paper-based system to an efficient and automated machine.
The first question was “How much does a system like that cost” and as I was explaining that some systems can cost up to R120,000 per annum there was complete silence. Of course, I knew that they could never afford something this expensive. Even when I mentioned R15,000 per annum there was still complete despair and disappointment.
The vice principal explained that their entire school budget for a school of over 500 students was less than R700 000 per annum. I was shocked as at my kids schools the budget for administration alone is more than 3 times this.
When I asked if they could afford R5,000 for a system they were not even sure that this was possible. They were discussing the option of them raising R5,000 themselves in order to pay for a system. Unfortunately, the system does not cost R5,000 but I have committed to funding the project for them and they have committed to funding R3,000.
We now have more schools in the same area in very similar circumstances that need to introduce management solutions like this in order to free up the time of teachers. They cannot afford administrators or administration tools. My goal is to raise money to fund at least another 5 schools OR maybe even 500.
The cost per school is R25,000 to R28,000 which includes an annual license fee and set up fee. This is almost half the normal cost. We require the school to also contribute between R3,000 and R5,000. We will assess the school budget and current spend in order to establish how much they can contribute.