Let's build student, parent and teacher apps for your tutoring centre

The mock exam runs on Sunday, the answer sheets are scanned on Monday, and the results reach parents as a PDF on WhatsApp on Tuesday evening. Meanwhile parents call one by one to ask how many questions their child got right, and the front desk repeats the same answer thirty times. Nobody can see which topic the student is actually stuck on. Those three days are the real problem the app solves.

How many separate apps does this need?

  • 01

    Student app (iOS + Android)

    Class timetable, mock exam results with mistake analysis broken down by learning objective, practice-question tracking, homework submission, study-session booking and offline access to lesson videos.

  • 02

    Parent app

    Entry/exit and absence alerts, mock exam scores and ranking progress, counselling meeting notes, outstanding instalments and a payment screen; the student's private areas stay off limits.

  • 03

    Teacher and counsellor app

    Taking attendance, study-session calendar, one-to-one meeting records, score reports by class and by student, homework assignment, plus catch-up lesson planning and classroom change notifications.

  • 04

    Admin panel (web)

    Enrolment and branch management, instalment and promissory note tracking with collections, uploading mock exam results against an answer key, question-to-objective mapping, fee and occupancy reports, user permissions.

What the app includes

  • One parent alert for a student missing at roll call
  • Jump from a wrongly answered question straight to its lesson video
  • In-house and per-branch mock exam ranking with score-trend chart
  • Placement test results assigning students to level groups and classes
  • Homework photo upload with teacher approval and per-item feedback
  • Scholarship and sibling discounts applied automatically to the installment plan
  • Due-date reminder to the parent plus card payment in the app
  • Instant class-wide notice for make-up lessons and room changes
  • Shuttle boarding and drop-off notifications sent to the parent
  • Daily question target and per-subject solving-time tracking
  • Counselling session log: summary for parents, private notes hidden
  • Tracking issued coursebooks and worksheet packs per student

State of the sector

In exam preparation, the competition is no longer just the tutoring centre down the road; students spend their time at home on free question-practice apps and video platforms. Parents want to see what their money is buying week by week, not at the end of term. In a centre without an app, an absence is noticed the next day, mock exam analysis stays in a teacher's notebook, and payments are chased by phone. Those gaps come due at renewal time: with no concrete progress data to look at, parents decide on price. An app is the tool that makes the work a centre already does visible.

Metrics that matter here

  • Enrolment renewal rate — A parent who can see the progress chart and the study-session record does not question continuing; the end-of-term conversation is backed by data.
  • Absence rate — Arrival notifications and a start-of-class alert mean a student who did not turn up is spotted the same day, so unreported absence drops.
  • Overdue instalment rate — Showing the balance on the parent's screen with automatic reminders largely ends the front desk chasing payments by phone.
  • Mock exam attendance rate — Exam announcements and curiosity about results bring students in; if attendance falls, both the analysis and the ranking lose meaning.

Common mistakes in this sector

  • Giving parents the same screen as students When one app is opened to two roles, the student realises their messages and ranking are being read by a parent and stops using it. Data entry stops, and so does the analysis. The roles have to be designed separately from the start.
  • Uploading mock exam results as PDFs A PDF renders on screen but nothing can be computed from it: no ranking, no learning-objective analysis, no progress chart. Unless results are entered as question-level data, the app becomes an expensive file store.
  • Launching during the September enrolment period Enrolment, placement testing and the first mock exams all fall in the same few weeks, and a faulty attendance screen shipped then turns into hundreds of parent phone calls. Launch should be pulled forward to early August, with only minor updates during the season.
  • Leaving payments and instalment tracking out of scope When the paperwork stays with accounting, parents cannot see what they owe and the front desk makes reminder calls. The module with the most concrete return is left out, and the app is seen as nothing more than a noticeboard.

Regulation and compliance

Private tuition institutions fall under Turkey's Law No. 5580 and the MEB (Turkish Ministry of National Education) Regulation on Private Educational Institutions; official enrolment, institutional and staff processes run through MEBBİS, and the app does not replace it. Because most students are under 18, data processing must rest on the parent's explicit consent under KVKK (Turkey's data protection law, aligned with GDPR), and access to exam results and counselling notes must be limited by role. Fee refunds on withdrawal are set out in the regulation, and the balance screen in the app should reflect that calculation. Fees require an e-Arşiv invoice (part of Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system), and promotional SMS requires İYS consent.

The real challenges in this sector

  • From answer sheet to score: the answer key changes after the fact

    A mock exam result is never a single number. Booklet A/B differences, cancelled questions, the blank-versus-wrong distinction and branch-level ranking all have to be calculated at once. We keep the raw answer strings separate from the answer key and tie score calculation to a job that runs the moment the key is locked. When a cancelled question is entered later, every student's score and ranking is recalculated automatically — nobody fixes anything by hand.

  • A question-level data model for learning-objective analysis

    Telling a student “you're weak at maths” changes nothing; “you've got quadratic equations wrong in six mock exams running” does. That requires every question to be tagged with a subject-unit-objective code, and those tags to stay consistent across exams. We store results at question level, so the topic of a study session is set by the density of errors across the student's last three mock exams rather than by a teacher's hunch.

  • Account sharing and offline viewing for video lessons

    A student who pays one enrolment fee and watches the videos with five friends is direct lost revenue. A session limit tied to device identity, a single-concurrent-stream rule and the student number faintly watermarked over the video break that cycle. For watching without internet on the commute, videos are downloaded encrypted; when the term ends the key is revoked, so the file will not open even if it is still on the device.

  • Three-way resource conflicts in study-session booking

    Opening a study-session slot requires three resources to be free at the same time: the teacher, the classroom and the student's own timetable. A single calendar table will not solve this; we lock the intersection of all three server-side before opening the booking. If two students pick the same slot in the same second, the second one sees the three nearest alternatives rather than an error. When a teacher calls in sick, that day's sessions drop into the catch-up queue.

  • Parent notifications during the arrival crush

    Arrivals bunch up between 17:30 and 18:00; hundreds of students pass through the turnstile in twenty minutes, and every pass means a notification to a parent. Tying the notification synchronously to the card read creates a queue at the door. We write the passes to a queue and send notifications in batches in the background; when the turnstile loses internet, records accumulate on the device and sync afterwards. Parents stop calling to ask whether their child arrived, and get a single alert at the start of class for a child who did not.

Required integrations

  • Syncing student, branch and fee records with your existing school management software via API or file transfer
  • iyzico, PayTR (Turkish payment providers), Craftgate or a bank virtual POS for instalment collections; multi-instalment and recurring payments on enrolment fees
  • Connection to a GİB (Turkish Revenue Administration) accredited integrator for issuing e-Arşiv invoices (tuition invoices made out to the parent)
  • Bulk SMS service compliant with İYS (Turkey's marketing consent registry): absences, exam announcements and instalment reminders
  • Feeding entry/exit records into the app from turnstile, QR or RFID card access systems
  • Video hosting and CDN plus live lesson infrastructure (Zoom, Google Meet or an open-source server)

Who this page is for

  • Single-branch course preparing students for national entrance exams

    Attendance, parent alerts and mock exam analysis are enough; branch logic, live classes and layered permissions would be scope you never use. Launch with Phase 1 and add the installment screen during the term.

  • Regional institution or franchise with several branches

    The real issue is per-branch permissions and comparison: cross-branch ranking on the same mock exam, a branch manager seeing only their own students, one central answer key and shared announcements. Sync with the course management software belongs in scope from day one.

  • Newly founded boutique course, coaching or private tuition centre

    With few students the value is one-to-one tracking rather than attendance automation: coaching session logs, daily question targets, homework feedback and tutoring bookings. Turnstile integration and video infrastructure should stay out of the first release.

A phased plan that splits the budget

  1. 1

    Phase 1 — Attendance, absence and parent communication 5-7 hafta

    The core of the student and parent apps plus the panel: student, branch and class records, timetable, roll call and entry-exit notifications, announcements and a homework list. This is the most repeated daily work and it runs on its own, ending the constant “did my child arrive” calls. The role and permission model later phases rely on is built here.

  2. 2

    Phase 2 — Mock exam analysis and installment collection 4-6 hafta

    Processing mock exam results against the answer key, mapping questions to learning objectives, rankings and progress reports, alongside installment plans, balance screens, reminders and card collection. Analysis shows parents the value, collection brings money back to the school; shipping them together stops the app being a noticeboard. Neither can be wired up before Phase 1's student records exist.

  3. 3

    Phase 3 — Tutoring slots, video lessons and counselling 4-6 hafta

    Tutoring reservations at the intersection of teacher, room and student timetable; lesson videos and live class links; counselling records with a parent-facing summary. These need the most design work and change most often, and neither the tutoring topic nor the video suggestion is meaningful before the first two phases have collected data. This phase can go live mid-term.

Typical scope and timeline

Typical scope: student and parent apps, a teacher/counsellor app and a web admin panel. Attendance and entry/exit notifications, processing mock exam results against an answer key, question-to-objective mapping and progress reports, study-session booking, homework tracking, instalment and collections screens. Optionally a video lesson module, live lesson links, store assets and the release process.

Estimated timeline: 10-16 weeks

Off-the-shelf or custom build?

Topic Off-the-shelf Custom build
Connecting to your course management software If a connector for your automation already exists, it is done in a day; if not, student and installment lists get moved by hand or by spreadsheet. Sync is written against whatever API or file export your system actually offers, and branch, level and installment fields follow your own naming.
Matching analysis to your own question bank A packaged product imposes its own objective list; when it does not match your publisher's unit naming, the report gets read but never used in teacher meetings. Objective codes follow the same scheme as your worksheets and mock exams, and cancelled-question or booklet A/B rules follow your own exam setup.
Per-student subscription versus one-off development A monthly fee is light at the start and lowers risk, but when it scales with student count the cost grows as the school grows and the contract is renegotiated every year. Development is paid up front and what remains is hosting and maintenance; doubling the student count does not double a licence fee.
Getting ready before the term starts If you decide in mid-August, a packaged product is the honest choice: setup takes a few weeks and store updates and support stay with the vendor. Custom work is split into phases: the first ships attendance and parent alerts in time for the term, with exam analysis and collection added during the year.

Sector glossary

Net score (“net”)
The score used across Turkish exam prep: correct answers minus a fraction of the wrong ones. Success is discussed in “nets”, parents ask how many nets, and rankings are built on it.
Learning objective (“kazanım”)
The smallest measurable unit of the national curriculum. Every question is tagged with one, so a student's weak area is not “maths” but a specific objective code, and tutoring topics are chosen from it.
Etüt (extra tutoring slot)
A short focused session with a teacher outside regular lessons. It can only open when teacher, room and the student's own timetable are free at the same time, so it is handled as a booking, not a class.
Booklet A/B
Exam booklets with the question order shuffled to deter copying. The same answer string means different things per booklet, so which booklet a student received must be recorded before results are processed.
Kur (level group)
A student group formed by placement test result. A student can move up mid-term, which changes their timetable, class and sometimes fee, so the app must carry the change along with its history.

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