Nedbank has introduced a range of digital offerings for schools in South Africa.
According to the bank, the solutions will help teachers, parents and learners complete financial transactions and also ensure that schools have to spend less time managing money and procurement.
The solutions include a procurement solution for schools brought in partnership with SchoolAdvisor. The solution allows staff to easily access price comparisons between suppliers as well as independent reviews of the quality of service and products each of these suppliers provide, saving schools significant time and getting them the best deal possible, says Nedbank.
The Nedbank suite of school solutions includes the Karri app, a mobile payment platform parents can use to make payments for their children's participation in school events.
The bank says the app makes it easy for teachers and administrators to remind parents about payment deadlines as well as to allocate the payments they receive, all without the need for learners to have to carry cash or for the schools to have to hold large sums of money on their premises.
Also part of the offering is TendoPro, a free education platform focused on helping learners improve their education outcomes. The platform allows learners to access supplementary learning and revision material online.
"Nedbank invested considerable time and resources into fully understanding the financial and operational landscapes of schools in our country and identifying the challenges they face in terms of procuring the items and services they need," says Mark Rose, head of new business development for Nedbank Business Banking.
There has been a move by companies in SA to solve challenges being experienced by the education sector through digital solutions.
BCX last year introduced a digital learning platform that provides free access to online educational content.
According to the company, learners, educators, school administrators and parents will be able to access maths and science learning material at BCXLearn.com, with no charge for the content.
Also, in April 2017, Vodacom partnered with the Eastern Cape Department of Education to supply a school management solution that aims to assist with the administration of 5 000 schools in the province.
The cloud-based Vodacom school management platform enables the department to use technology to better manage the sparsely distributed and remote schools in the province.
Moreover, last year, DataDiGEST, a Strand-based software developing company, created edly, a cloud-based platform which comprises of three apps which aim to ease teachers' workloads. The three apps are edly Attendance, edly Behaviour and edly Note! Edly Attendance and edly Behaviour enable teachers to capture class attendance and behaviour, while edly Note! sends instant reports to parents.
According to JP Lourens, software and solutions product manager for Kyocera Document Solutions South Africa, technology is rising to meet these challenges like budgets and an ever-shifting curriculum. Today, there are processes and technologies that can be implemented within the education space that can help to ease the strain. Technology offers an effective way of saving time, cutting costs and increasing general satisfaction in education, he notes.
Rose points out that education is a surprisingly competitive sector and schools work tirelessly to achieve a balance between attracting and retaining learners, delivering consistently good academic results, and offering effective learning and sporting facilities.
Schools that are successful in achieving this balance are typically those that are able to collaborate with their key stakeholders to invest in technology and other assets, and leverage digital solutions to enhance learning, he concludes.
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