ESchool (BranoEdu)

BranoEdu turns photographed exam scripts and handwritten mark sheets into verified scores, then manages results, CBT, fees, and school portals in one multi-tenant platform.

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Inspiration

ESchool (BranoEdu) was inspired by a very practical problem in our community. In Rano Local Government Area of Kano State, some schools still prepare student report sheets manually using pen and paper. Teachers calculate Continuous Assessment (CA), examination scores, totals, averages, grades, and positions by hand before transferring the results to report sheets.

This process takes a lot of time, increases the risk of calculation and transcription errors, and makes it difficult to preserve and analyse students' academic records over time.

We initially developed ESchool to help solve this problem locally. To make the technology accessible, we offered the platform free of charge to public schools within Rano Local Government Area, and we intend to continue providing the core platform free to these public schools as part of our contribution to the community.

As we worked with the system, we realised that digitisation completely is becoming a challenge to them, abandon workflows they are already comfortable with. This inspired one of BranoEdu's most important ideas: allowing a teacher to complete a familiar broadsheet paper mark sheet, photograph it using a mobile phone, and have the system intelligently extract the marks for review and result compilation.

What it does

ESchool (BranoEdu) is a multi-tenant school result and academic management platform designed to simplify how schools capture, compile, publish, and manage student results.

Schools can manage:

  • Students, classes, subjects, sessions, and academic terms
  • Teachers and their assigned classes and subjects
  • Continuous Assessment (CA) and examination scores
  • Automatic totals, averages, grades, and positions
  • Class broadsheets and individual report cards
  • Result publication and verification
  • School-specific branding and result templates
  • Teacher access through a mobile application

Teachers can enter scores in different ways depending on the school's level of digital adoption:

  • Direct score entry on the web platform
  • Score entry through the teacher mobile app
  • Bulk import using templates
  • Printable class broadsheets for handwritten entry
  • Printable subject-specific mark sheets
  • AI-assisted extraction of marks from photographed handwritten sheets

For example, the system can generate a complete class sheet containing every student's name, admission number, and registered subjects with separate CA and Exam fields. A teacher can print the sheet, fill it using a pen, and later photograph the completed pages with the mobile app.

The images are uploaded to the server, where the system extracts the student and subject marks, validates the values, assigns confidence scores, and presents them for human review before updating the official result records.

If marks already exist, the downloaded sheets can also be pre-filled with the existing scores.

BranoEdu is designed as a multi-tenant platform. Each school has its own isolated students, teachers, results, settings, branding, and access permissions. Schools can use a platform-provided subdomain or connect their own custom domain.

How we built it

The web platform was built using Laravel and Filament, which provide the backend, administrative interfaces, authentication, school tenancy, result management, reporting, APIs, permissions, and platform administration.

The teacher mobile application was developed with React Native and Expo. It allows teachers to access their assigned classes and subjects, enter results, work with cached data, and capture mark sheets using the phone camera.

The production architecture includes:

  • Laravel
  • Filament
  • PostgreSQL
  • Redis
  • Docker
  • React Native / Expo
  • Background queue processing
  • AI-assisted image and structured-data extraction
  • Paystack integration
  • Custom-domain tenant resolution

For photographed mark sheets, image processing is performed asynchronously so that large uploads do not block the rest of the platform.

The AI workflow is given information about the expected students, subjects, and score structure. It extracts admission numbers, subject identifiers, CA marks, examination marks, and confidence values.

However, AI-generated results are not allowed to silently overwrite academic records. Extracted scores are validated against the school's configured score limits and are presented for teacher or administrator review before they are applied.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was designing a system that works in the real environment of schools rather than assuming every school already has perfect digital infrastructure.

Some teachers are very comfortable with web and mobile applications, while others still prefer paper-based score sheets. We therefore had to design BranoEdu so that both groups could use the same platform without forcing one method of result entry.

Photographed handwritten sheets introduced additional challenges such as:

  • Different handwriting styles
  • Poor lighting
  • Blurred photographs
  • Tilted pages
  • Corrections and overwritten figures
  • Similar student names
  • Missing or unclear subject codes
  • Preventing extracted marks from overwriting correct existing scores

We addressed these problems by using admission numbers and stable sheet identifiers, validating score ranges, tracking extraction confidence, detecting conflicts, and requiring human approval before uncertain marks become official results.

Multi-tenancy was another major challenge. A commercial platform serving several schools must guarantee that one school's students, teachers, results, configuration, and files are completely separated from those of another school. This required tenant-aware queries, role-based authorization, school-specific module controls, and secure domain resolution.

We also worked through production deployment challenges involving PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker containers, background queues, reverse proxies, HTTPS, file uploads, and data migration from earlier deployments.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are particularly proud that BranoEdu does not require a school to become completely paperless before benefiting from digital result management.

A teacher can:

Print a familiar result sheet → fill it with a pen → photograph it → review the extracted marks → compile the results digitally.

This provides a realistic bridge between traditional school workflows and modern technology.

We are also proud that the platform is not limited to a single school. It has evolved into a multi-tenant system capable of supporting multiple independent schools while maintaining separate users, students, academic records, settings, and branding.

Most importantly, the project began as a solution for our own community. We have made ESchool available free to public schools in Rano Local Government Area of Kano State, and we intend to keep the core service free for those public schools while developing the platform into a sustainable commercial service for other schools.

What we learned

One of our biggest lessons was that successful digital transformation is not always about replacing an old process immediately.

Sometimes the better solution is to build technology around the way people already work and gradually make the process easier.

Instead of telling teachers that handwritten score sheets are obsolete, BranoEdu makes those sheets part of a digital workflow.

We also learned that AI accuracy alone is not enough when dealing with academic records. Confidence scores, validation, audit trails, human review, and the ability to detect conflicts are essential when automated systems interact with sensitive student results.

From an engineering perspective, the project gave us practical experience with:

  • Multi-tenant application architecture
  • Mobile and web application integration
  • AI vision workflows
  • Asynchronous processing
  • PostgreSQL and Redis
  • Secure APIs
  • Custom-domain routing
  • Offline-friendly mobile workflows
  • Production deployment and migration
  • Building software for users with different levels of technical experience

What's next for ESchool (BranoEdu)

Our next goal is to expand ESchool into a modular academic platform while keeping the core result-management experience simple.

Planned modules include:

  • AI-assisted marking of essay examination scripts
  • CBT examinations
  • Question banks and examination generation
  • School-fee collection and digital receipts
  • Parent portals
  • Attendance management
  • Lesson planning
  • Advanced student-performance analytics
  • Additional communication and school-management tools

Schools will be able to enable only the modules they need.

We also plan to continue improving the photographed mark-sheet workflow so that teachers can capture several pages directly from the mobile app, automatically detect poor-quality images, extract scores more reliably, and quickly review any values that need human attention.

Our long-term vision is for BranoEdu to become a practical, affordable school technology platform that works for both highly digitised schools and schools that are only beginning their digital transformation—while continuing to support public schools in our local community.

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