School Management System

Digitalization of paper and Excel-based administration. Bilingual interface (Japanese/English) designed for teachers with limited technical knowledge.

School Management System
  • Role: Full-stack Development (Laravel, Inertia/React) & Localization
  • Tech: Laravel, PHP, MySQL, Inertia, React, Blade, Docker/Sail

Challenge: "Digital thresholds" and "language barriers"

At a particular school, attendance, grades, and a management of visa expiration dates were tracked entirely on paper and in Excel. With an increasing number of foreign students, staff were bogged down in administrative red tape, which came at the expense of education.

A secondary problem was that many teachers were not digitally proficient, which led to the dilemma: 'a complex system won't be used anyway'.

Solution: Design for "everyone"

- Simple screen design: Minimal input fields and clear buttons, so that even teachers with little technical knowledge don't get lost.
- Phased implementation: Building functions step-by-step, making them available internally, and only adding the next function once the team was used to it.
- Multilingual support: An interface in English and Japanese, so that students could also check their subjects and attendance themselves.
- Feedback rounds: Actively listening to 'this is unclear' and continuing to improve the user interface.

Key features

- Multi-step registration flow with validation.
- Attendance registration and history (directly linked to visa management).
- Automatic generation of certificates (PDF) in Japanese/English.
- Management of payments.
- Role-based permissions and automatic logging (security).

Technical details

- Laravel + Inertia/React: The comfort of a Single-Page Application combined with the clear routing of a traditional application.
- Short, consistent menu texts: Texts in English and Japanese kept short and uniform to prevent layout problems.
- Phased release: Functions rolled out per module to spread the inconvenience for the staff.

Result: "We can use this"

- Administrative work reduced by approximately 40%.
- Time to issue a paper certificate reduced from 30 minutes to 3 minutes.
- Positive feedback from teachers ('we can use this') and stable operation.
- Significant reduction in data entry errors.

The focus was not on flashy features, but on making daily administrative work easier.