Questions schools ask before they commit.
The ones that come up in every first conversation, answered plainly. If yours is not here, ask us — we would rather answer it once in writing than twice on a call.
The platform
What is IEMS?
IEMS is a school management platform: one system for admissions, the daily register, the timetable, marks and report cards, fees, staff records and the parent portal. It ships as 23 modules on a shared data model, so a school turns on the ones it needs and never re-enters the same learner in two places.
Who is it for?
Primary and secondary schools — independent, government fee-charging, special-needs and boarding — plus school groups running several campuses on one account, and colleges and universities on the Higher-Ed side. Every role has its own view: the principal, the office, teachers, the school nurse, learners and their guardians.
Do we have to take the whole system at once?
No. The core foundation — learners, admissions, academics, attendance, timetable, the parent portal and messaging — is required, because everything above it reads from that one record. Everything else is optional and can be switched on mid-session without re-entering anything.
Does it work when the internet does not?
The daily register does. A teacher can open it, mark it and save it with no connection, and it syncs when one returns — a refused save is kept and shown to the teacher rather than dropped, because losing a morning’s register is worse than the delay. The rest of the platform needs a connection; pages are built to load on a slow one.
Is there a mobile app?
Not yet on the app stores. Everything works in a phone browser today, including the parent portal, and the pages are built for a low-bandwidth connection on an inexpensive Android — which is what most guardians are reading them on.
Where it runs
Which countries do you run in?
South Africa and Nigeria today. We are not live everywhere the platform can be configured, and the country pages say which is which — because a curriculum pack that has not been checked against that country’s own authority is not an alignment claim we will make.
Is our curriculum already loaded?
Your country’s pack is pre-loaded — grades, subject lists, assessment weighting and the grading scale — so a school is not asked to type in its own curriculum. How far each pack has been validated differs by market, and every pack states its own status rather than implying it is finished. South Africa’s CAPS pack is checked against the department’s own documents.
Data and privacy
Where is our school’s data stored?
In the European Union, under a regime recognised as offering equivalent safeguards, and processed under your own country’s data-protection law — POPIA in South Africa, the NDPA in Nigeria, the Data Protection Act in Ghana and Kenya — with a data processing agreement per school. South African hosting is planned. We will say so here when it is done, and not before.
Who can see a learner’s records?
Only the people whose job needs them. A teacher sees the learners in their own classes rather than the whole school roll; counselling notes and the clinical record are restricted further still; and a guardian sees their own children and nobody else’s. Sensitive fields are encrypted, and every change to a sensitive record is written to an audit log with who made it.
What happens to our data if we leave?
It is your data. You can export learner, financial and academic records, and we delete our copy on request — subject to the retention periods the law requires for financial and academic records.
What it costs
Can we start with a few modules and add more later?
Yes — that is the design. The core foundation is required, everything above it is optional, and modules can be switched on mid-session without re-entering anything.
Do we pay per guardian or per staff member?
No. Pricing is per learner. Guardians, teachers, administrators and the governing body all get accounts at no additional cost, because a system half the school cannot log into is not worth running.
Can you import what we have now?
Learner lists import from a spreadsheet, which is where most schools are starting from. Talk to us about anything more involved — previous school reports, historical fee balances — before you commit.
Getting started
How do we get started?
Set your school up online in a few minutes — you choose your country, your curriculum pack and your package, and the grades, subjects and public holidays for your market are created for you. There is no card required to look around first. Import your learner list from a spreadsheet when you are ready.
What support do we get?
Help by email, and a named contact for onboarding on a group or district account. Schools joining from another system should talk to us before committing — learner lists import from a spreadsheet, and anything more involved is worth planning rather than discovering.
Still not answered? Ask us directly — we reply to every school that writes in. Contact
See it with your own school’s data.
Set your school up, import a class list and take a register — it takes minutes, and there is no card required to look around first.