First Look at My Eikaiwa Management System

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If you're an English school owner in Japan, you probably get spam email from companies offering school management systems. That's exactly what I'm going to do, minus the spam, of course!

Eikaiwa School System A sneak peek at my Eikaiwa School System (using dummy data)

Your very own custom-built school system

Instead of spreadsheets and paper records, I'll design a database with a control panel that acts as a command center for your school. With it, you can manage all your students, teachers, lessons, billing and much more, all in one place. It will be designed specifically for the needs of your school, hence the extortionate fees I'm planning to charge. :D

Just some of the features you could have:

  • Mark a student in today's Grade 3 class as absent, move them to a make-up lesson, and send a notification to the teacher.
  • Instantly print a teacher's schedule for the week with trials, make-ups and absences marked on it.
  • Adjust a student's fees with discounts, legacy pricing, referral discounts, etc.
  • Calculate your school's monthly earnings, taking into account taxes and discounts - all with one click.
  • Work through a sales funnel: inquiries → trial lessons → sign-up. Never lose an email from a potential student again!

A Teacher Schedule Example teacher schedule - auto-generated, ready for printing

Getting back to my roots

You might wonder how I, an English teacher for over 25 years, could make such a system. Well, I'm not just a pretty face! I have a computer science degree, and despite coming to Japan after graduation, I continued to program. I made a number of educational websites, I created HotaruCMS, the open-source framework that once powered JapanSoc.com (a popular site among foreigners here in 2008), and I even published a video game.

Programming has always been my passion, and now at 50 years old, it's time I made a career out of it, or at least try to supplement my school income.

School Sign Up Form Notice that the system supports Japanese

An enterprise-grade system with ongoing support

So what exactly is this thing? It's not a Wordpress site. It's a high-performance admin panel built with Filament - a toolset powered by Laravel, the same enterprise-grade framework used by Pfizer, BBC, and Nike.

As for the cost, I know eikaiwa schools aren't rolling in money. I'm thinking of charging a flat monthly fee, equal to the tuition fee of two students, give or take a few limbs.

The fee would cover your VPS hosting, security updates and bug fixes, and my ongoing support. As your school grows and your needs change, I'll tweak the code and add new features whenever you need them. I'd like to be your technical partner, not just a one-off developer.

Edit Course Form You can edit pretty much everything

Gauging interest

It's early days. I've already built a demo system which I intend to put online soon. It's a lot of work for me to build a custom system, so I could only take on one client at a time. Only when each school has its admin panel up and running, could I consider adding an additional school.

So contact me if you'd like to be first in line! :D