Last reviewed: 24 October 2026
Every growing school eventually hits the same wall. The fee spreadsheet has five versions, report cards take a week to compile, and parents call the office to ask about balances. A school management system, often sold as a “school ERP”, promises to fix all of that. Some do. Others lock a school into a tool that doesn’t fit how it actually works. This checklist helps you judge any system, from any vendor, on what matters to a Kenyan CBC school.
On this page
First: do you need an ERP yet?
Under about 150 learners, good templates plus a website and an M-Pesa paybill often do the job at a fraction of the cost. A full ERP pays off when several people need the same data at once: the bursar, class teachers, the head and parents. If only one person touches the data, start smaller.
The CBC test
- Does it record assessment by learning area, strand and sub-strand, using the four performance levels (Exceeding, Meeting, Approaching and Below Expectations)?
- Can teachers attach comments per competency, not just a mark?
- Does it support junior school SBA records that feed into KJSEA, and pre-primary records that are mostly observational?
- Will it adapt when KICD or KNEC adjusts formats? Ask how quickly the last change was rolled out.
The fees test
- Does it reconcile M-Pesa paybill payments automatically using the admission number as the account reference? Or will someone still type them in?
- Can it handle term fees, optional extras (transport, lunch, trips), sibling discounts and bursaries?
- Can parents see a statement without calling the office?
The people test
- Can a teacher with an ordinary Android phone enter marks on patchy data?
- How long does training take, and is it in person or video only?
- Who answers the phone in exam week?
The data test
The Data Protection Act, 2019 applies to learner and parent data. Ask where data is hosted, who can access it, how backups work, and, most importantly, whether you can export everything in Excel or CSV if you leave. A vendor that won’t answer the export question clearly is a warning sign. See our data protection guide for schools.
The money test
Pricing is usually per learner per term, a flat annual licence, or a one-off build plus hosting. Compare the total over three years, including setup, training, SMS credits and hosting. Ask for references from schools of a similar size and call them yourself.
A sensible rollout order
- Learner register and admissions.
- Fees and M-Pesa reconciliation, where you get the fastest payback.
- Assessment and report cards.
- The parent portal.
- HR, library, transport and inventory, as needed.
Rolling out in modules means staff learn one thing at a time and you see value before you commit further.
Building to fit instead of buying off the shelf
Some schools prefer a system built around their own workflow, starting with only the modules they need. Anademy by Ananke Digital takes that approach. Their CBC school ERP is scoped and built on order, module by module, with full data export. Use the checklist above to compare it with any other option, then request a demo or quote.
One more tip: ask any vendor for a two-week trial using your own data for one class. How teachers react in that fortnight tells you more than any brochure.
Anademy = Ananke + Academy: school systems by Ananke Digital.