Report cards in Excel, the first software teachers used

In 2019 I changed schools and joined Musamvu TVET School in Ngoma District, Eastern Province, to study software development at Level 4. After my first term, my mother bought me an HP laptop and a modem. For the first time I had my own machine and my own connection.

That changed what I paid attention to.

The problem everyone accepted

Report cards at the school were made largely by hand. It took teachers a long time, and the reports that reached students sometimes had errors in them.

Teachers carried that workload every term, with the tools they had.

Building where the teachers already were

I didn't start with a web application. Teachers already used Excel, so I built a report-making system inside Excel using its built-in functions and formulas.

Teachers entered marks. The workbook calculated totals, averages and positions and produced the reports, consistently and without manual arithmetic.

On 23 July 2019 I published a video guide that walked teachers through using it. The system worked successfully through the second term.

The full-year report

In the third term we went further. Teachers needed a full-year report that brought all three terms together, so I added it and published a second guide on 4 November 2019.

From that work I got my first agreement for software I had built: the school would pay half of my school fees.

The next step

That same term I presented a plan at the parents' meeting. The Excel tool had proved the idea. The next version would be fully digital, built with web technology, and would cover far more than reports.

That plan became RASMS: Roger's Advanced School Management System.

What I took from it

Prove the idea with the simplest tool. An Excel workbook won the teachers' trust before any web system existed, and it became the specification for the web version.

Train people, don't just hand them software. The video guides mattered as much as the formulas. A tool nobody knows how to use is not a solution.

Get paid for value, even as a student. Half of my school fees was a real agreement for real work. It taught me early that software that solves a real problem has value people will pay for.