EDUNAMTEXT

An instant communicator tool for the schools to communicate to the parents on a weekly basis through a text message.

There is a high failure rate in our country's education system (of more than 40%) and we noted through experience that guardians are not highly involved/updated on the academic related affairs of the learners and the guardians tend to blame the poor performance on teachers. We also noted that the method of communication to the guardians in our schools are through the traditional method of printed letters. Our solution is therefore is also to replace the traditional method of communication to the guardians (through letters) with the instant and effective method of communication (The EDUNAMTEXT) and also get the guardians involved with the learner’s academic progress through weekly updates in the form of a mobile text and stop with the blame game that guardians have on teachers. The solution with our EduNamText platform covey’s information instantly and effectively directly to guardian’s mobile phones on a weekly basis and it cater for parents in other towns or constantly traveling with work and the tool caters for all mobile phones as there is no need of a smart phone or downloading of an application.The added features to the edunamtext template makes guardians be more involve in their child's educational affairs as it does not convey general information and guardians will be updated to the core on a weekly basis regarding test/assignment results, test/assignment dates, attendance of the learner, learner’s behavior, parents meeting or any other school announcement the school wishes to convey. 

In a nutshell, the EduNamText communication tool will help Teachers communicate directly to guardians mobile phones, making the communication channels easier/effective for teachers to reach the guardians plus the blame game will now go away from guardians as they will update the guardians on every educational aspect. Sine the Ministry of education in our country banned corporal punishment in our schools, learners misbehaving has increased drastically and teachers are having a difficult time giving class.  This platform will also help teachers curb misbehaving issues in our schools. Since the learners will now be aware that their guardians will be notified instantly directly on their mobile phones regarding misbehaving at school, learners are likely not to misbehave. This will help teachers give class in an orderly manner. The solution will change the world as we are creating a platform that will include all the guardians and also yield good results of learners at the school resulting in an increased educated AFRICA.

What makes the edunamtext tool innovative is the fact that information will now be conveyed instantly and effectively directly to guardians mobile phones via SMS instead of printed letters that might not even reach the parents mobile phones. This SMS template is designed to make guardians be more involved in their child's educational affairs as it sent's core educational information ranging from test/assignment results, test/assignments dates, attendance of the learner, behavior of the learner, parents meeting or any other school announcement the school wishes to convey on a weekly basis.

The text messaging platform where information (academic affairs/records, parents mobile numbers etc.) is loaded onto is an online platform. Once information is loaded onto the platform, a text message is created and it pulls the data from the information loaded into the platform into the text message specific to each pupil. Bulk text messages are delivered instantly to parents mobile numbers within less than 5 seconds and they are updated on a weekly basis on all the academic affairs of their children.

We are planing on implementing the EduNamText communication tool in every school nation wide in both our primary and secondary schools. We have about 1700 schools in our country. We planning on capturing 80%  market of the 1700 in our first year of operation. We want to monitor the implementation process for a full year first in our Namibian market before launching it in another country. 

Our vision is to become the largest educational text platform nationally and international. We want to successfully implement this initiative this year country wide in both our primary and secondary schools. Once it is a success, we then scale it out to other countries. There are 27 major towns in our country, so there is a possibility to employ administrators at each school. Our next market is South Africa, which is one of our main targets. 

We have done pilot studies in October/November 2017 at a Primary School (MARTTI AHTISAARI) and a Secondary School (A. SHIPENA) both located in Windhoek. We have therefore decided to test launch our idea at the above schools (as they are familiar with the idea through the pilot studies) and we have gone live with the above schools. We have started by having a detailed session with teachers and parents providing the service to ALL the parents for a free trial of 2 weeks so that we give an equal opportunity to ALL the parents to subscribe to our service. 

We are doing a two week free trail at a primary school and secondary school. Marti artisari primary school has 1100 learners, while Ashipena has 1200 learners, so basically we have an administrator (teacher) at each school that collects the information from each teacher and then sends us the information every Friday, we upload it on our online system and sends out the SMS to the guardians every week.

In the next 12 months, we are planning to have a market of 80% from the total 1700 schools in our country. We will have an administrator (Teacher) at each school that collects the information every Friday for us, we then communicate it to the guardians instantly (administrators are paid for data collection). The effects we are trying to solve is the high failure rate and the non-involvement of parents/guardians in pupils school affairs.

The fact that both our directors are highly qualified individuals with experience in finance, logistics, marketing,administration, education sector. Mr Risto was a part time lecturer at Center for training and projects development,giving lectures in marketing and logistics modules. Mr Petrus is a qualified Chartered accountant with 6 years experience as Senior Audit manager for Grand Namibia Chartered accountants.

The SMS/text messaging Platform to be available to participating parents or schools that are willing to get the service by subscribing with a PREPAID semester fee of N$ 50 per parent/learner. The N$ 50 per semester (In Namibia we have three/3 school semesters for Primary and Secondary schools) will cater for the weekly mobile text messages to be sent out to the participating parents. The profits will be made by the differential of the prepaid subscription fee of N$ 50 and the costs of sending out the text messages and the operating costs associated with the service provided (Salaries of employees etc.). The variable costs amount to N$ 19.80 per subscribing parent per semester (for the 16 text message). The markup on our service per customer is approximately N$ 30.2

With the prize money, we can iron out all the logistical/marketing constraints we are currently facing plus the valuable connections that comes with the prize money.

Currently most of the barriers are already iron out, we need funding to advertise the idea to our target market (guardians) plus to pay for logistics.