The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information (MOEYI) announced on Friday that it has forged a partnership with MySchool Jamaica Solutions Ltd, one of the leading school management software (SMS) companies in Jamaica.

Under the agreement, schools islandwide will be facilitated with free access and full use of the MySchool Jamaica SMS beginning January 2020.

MySchool Jamaica is a powerful, easy to use School Management Software (SMS) that has been in operation as a server-based SMS in Jamaica for the past 15 years (currently operating in 125 schools island-wide). The SMS has been upgraded as of 2019 and is now cloud-based, more intuitive, with an improved architectural design set up to streamline the paperless operation of schools.

At the core of the SMS is its allowance of principals and teachers to use their mobile phones, tablets, and or computers to input specific school data. This includes homework, test and exam grades, attendance and disciplinary records, payment records, medical records, staff records, among many others. Using these inputs the SMS can, on demand, retrieve incisive, comparative and analytical reports for principals, thereby facilitating more data-driven decisions.

The SMS does not require real time Internet access, and so if a school does not have Wi-Fi in their classrooms the teacher simply enters the information in his or her device of choice and the app will sync the next time it comes within Wi-Fi range.

MySchool Jamaica was developed in Jamaica by Comsol Education’s CEO Gary Walker in 2004. The software was acquired in November 2018 by a technology investment company owned by entrepreneur Kimani Robinson who, along with Walker and team, spent the last 12 months rewriting the SMS to the cloud and improving the already loaded software with even more features, as well as a more modern, user-friendly interface. The new SMS will now be accessible to all teachers, principals, students and parents, on any Android or Apple device, via the SMS’s web and app platforms

“MySchool Jamaica will create a paradigm shift within the Jamaican educational system” stated Robinson. “The creation of a ubiquitous, home-grown SMS platform that offers all schools in Jamaica — and their permissible stakeholders — the ability to remotely update, view, analyse and compare school data, is historic for us as a nation and catapults Jamaica as a regional leader in the transformation of education through technology.”

Chairman of MySchool Jamaica, Dr David McBean stated that “while the SMS can reduce administrative work in schools by up to 50 per cent, the real game changer is the SMS’s Parent Access View via the platform’s web and mobile app. When fully deployed, Jamaican schools will engage one million plus parents and guardians daily, including those who live abroad, providing them with the most immediate and comprehensive academic overview of their children.

“MySchool Jamaica provides parents with an easy to use platform that will allow them to pay any school-related fees or contributions, to view yesterday’s math test scores, tomorrow’s or next week’s homework, report cards, holiday reminders, a teacher-initiated chat or update, a video message from the principal, to name a few. A school or teacher can urgently alert a parent to a medical emergency or disciplinary issue at school, all viewed by the parent in real time on their phone.”

Adding to Dr McBean’s comments, Robinson further stated that the MySchool SMS will use the platform to provide interactive information, advice, and opportunities to its potential audience of approximately 25,000 teachers, over 600,000 students, and one million plus parents on related matters such as insurance coverage for children and their families, mortgages, savings, investment options, other general financial education, health, wellness and other dietary best practices, and a host of other matters related to the holistic development and planning for the Jamaican student and their families

Chief education officer at the ministry, Dr Kasan Troupe, who has been leading the operations from the ministry, stated that “besides moving towards a paperless school environment and reducing the teachers’ admin work-allowing teachers to spend more time teaching and less time pushing paper — one of our other goals as a ministry is to create a more seamless and transparent environment between our teachers, parents and students. We believe that MySchool Jamaica takes us one step closer to achieving these goals and as such, we are looking forward to the island-wide implementation [of] the SMS starting in January 2020.”

Within weeks of its official launch in January 2020, MySchool will also offer several other e-services including the provision of e-learning courses (both audio and video), online practice exams, e-books, as well as a host of other content relevant for its user groups.