Ekati is a school management platform built for Cameroonian schools, universities and vocational training centres. One installation serves many of them at once, and each one keeps its own learners, its own fees, its own results, its own colours and its own website. Nothing crosses from one school to the next.

It is made for four kinds of people. A school owner reads it to see the whole school at a glance: how many learners, how much money, how the results are going. A secretary lives at the counter, registering learners, receiving files and printing receipts. A teacher uses it to teach, to mark work and to record the hours actually taught. An apprentice, learner or parent opens it on a phone to follow lessons, results, timetables and fees. Nobody has to read the whole thing — each of those people needs one or two guides, and each guide is written for them.

The same platform also runs a public store where anybody can buy a course or a book, a place where a school buys its own subscription, and a real website for every school on it. That is why some parts of this handbook sound like a shop and other parts sound like a school office. It is one system, and it serves one school at a time.

Every school on Ekati declares a program mode, and it is the setting that decides more than anything else you will do in the first week. It chooses how your year is cut up, what your classes are called, which mark weighting Ekati offers you, what a fee looks like by default, and which report card is printed. Four are available.

University

The year splits into two semesters of about eighteen weeks each. Classes are levels — Level 100 up to Level 400 — rather than forms. Marks follow a weighting such as 30 % continuous assessment and 70 % exam, or 60 % theory and 40 % practical. Fees run at about 250 000 XAF a year, and the university record itself, the transcript with its grades and its credits, is kept here.

Vocational

The unit is a cohort such as 2026, which runs through two terms and two semesters, and the cohort is split into Group A and Group B. Marks weigh theory against practice — 40 % theory and 60 % practice, or half continuous assessment and half trade test. Fees run between 150 000 and 200 000 XAF a year. A learner who reaches the completion threshold is issued a vocational certificate from the class board.

Basic education

The year splits into three terms, and each term into six sequences of six weeks: five weeks of teaching and one week of evaluation. Classes run from Day Care and Nursery through Primary 1 to Primary 6. Marks are the APC competency pairing, continuous assessment 30 and exam 70, and a fee structure normally starts around 35 000 XAF a year.

Secondary education

The same three terms and six sequences, with classes from Form 1 up to Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth. Fees run from about 75 000 to 95 000 XAF a year. This is the mode where the report card matters most, because the page a parent receives has to look like the one the ministry expects — and Ekati supplies the official bilingual layout for you.

Getting the mode right is worth more than any other first-week decision. Choose it wrongly and you will be renaming classes and reshaping the calendar later, with results already recorded in between. You can change it afterwards from your school settings, but the clean year is the one where it was right from the start.

Your sub-system is the language your school teaches and writes in. It is worth choosing deliberately, because in secondary education it decides whether your classes are called Form 1 or 6ème — and that name follows the learner onto the report card for the whole year.

Anglophone

Everything is written in English: the interface, the subject list and the report card. Classes are named Form 1, Form 2, Form 3, Form 4, Form 5, Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth.

Francophone

Everything is written in French, and the bulletin Ekati proposes already carries the bilingual ministry header used in Cameroon. Classes are named 6ème, 5ème, 4ème, 3ème, 2nde, 1ère and Terminale.

Bilingual

Both, and the reader chooses. Each subject, each page and each report card can be written twice, and a bilingual school is offered both sets of class names and both subject catalogues. Write a subject in the language it is actually taught in, and leave the other field until the class that needs it exists.

You do not have to decide everything in one go. Ekati never replaces what you have already typed: adding a French title beside an English one leaves the English one in place, so a school can start in the language it speaks and become bilingual over a year, one class at a time.

Before the year opens

The school creates its academic year and the terms inside it, opens its classes, adds the courses and prices each class for the year. New staff are given accounts and roles, and every teacher is attached to the courses they will teach. The logo, the colours and the message printed at the foot of every receipt are set once here, so that everything produced afterwards already carries them.

At registration: the counter

The secretary registers each learner in Enrollments. The price for that class and that year is copied into the learner’s file, the first instalment is taken, and a receipt is printed in the school’s colours before the family leaves the desk. Learners who come from outside follow the public application form on the school’s website instead, and are enrolled when the file is approved.

Every week: teaching and marking

The timetable decides who is in which hall. Teachers find their own classes under My Courses, enter continuous assessment marks in Grade Entry, clear the pile of submitted work, and record the hours they actually taught in their execution logbook. Learners open lessons on a phone, sit quizzes and hand in assignments. Parents see the same lessons and the same fees from their own account, and nothing belonging to another family.

End of term: the results come out

Teachers submit their marks, the head of school publishes the class broadsheet, and the term results are printed — one page per learner, on the design the school made. Messages go out from Messaging, aimed at a role, a class or the whole school, rather than sent from a personal phone. Anyone still carrying an unpaid instalment shows up in the finance screens as arrears.

End of year: the record closes

At a university this is when learners declare their courses for the coming semester on Form B, and whether their fees are settled decides whether the declaration is accepted. At a secondary school it is the certificates, next year’s classes and next year’s prices. Either way the year’s figures are read, exported and closed before the next one opens — which is what makes the following September cheap.