The problem
An edtech company, backed by a group that runs tuition centres for primary and secondary school students in Singapore, wanted one platform its centres could each run as their own. Parents and students got little feedback between lessons, attendance was hard to track, and teachers had no quick way to see which students needed more help.
What we built
One platform with a separate interface for each of its four users: teachers, centre managers, parents and students. Everyone logs in to the same app and lands in their own centre's version, with that centre's branding. Teachers and managers work on laptops, and parents and students use native mobile apps. Attendance is recorded on the platform, analytics flag students who are falling behind so teachers can step in early, and students earn tokens for consistent work that they can redeem. The hardest part was keeping each centre's data separate while running them all on one system. Centres also wanted to customise as much as possible, so part of the work was agreeing what could be customised and what had to stay shared.
What changed
The platform was in trial across 10+ centres and 500+ students when I handed it over in 2020.
Technical notes
Multi-tenant architecture: one app serving every centre, with each centre's data kept separate and its branding applied at login. React Native apps for parents and students on iOS and Android, a React web app for teachers and managers; Node.js and MySQL back end.