03Case study · School assessment SaaS
Prishta is continuous assessment (CAS) and report card software for schools in Nepal, from grade 1 to grade 10. I worked on it at Ektukra Digital Agency in September and October 2026, reviewing, fixing and testing the code and deploying it to prishta.com. It is a multi-tenant SaaS: teachers enter marks on a phone, the office reviews and locks them, and families read the finished report card online.
01The problem
Schools in Nepal run continuous assessment on spreadsheets: nine subjects, up to twenty learning objectives each, seventy students and an eight-band grading scale, held together by formulas that break whenever a child joins mid-term.
An empty cell quietly becomes a zero and drags a child’s average down. Report cards are formatted by hand in Word. And once a card has gone home, nothing stops a mark changing in the file behind it, or records who changed it.
Prishta replaces that workbook with one record that teachers fill, the office signs off and families can trust.
02The solution
Prishta is one API and one PostgreSQL database behind three front ends serving five audiences: a public site where a school asks for a demo, an operator console that creates and bills each school, and one school portal where a principal, a teacher and a parent each sign in.
The portal decides what to show from the account itself, not a menu choice, so a teacher never lands on a principal’s screens. It is the kind of SaaS product I like working on most: a real workflow, modelled carefully.
03Assessment modes
The grade decides the mode, not the school. A Grade 2 child is rated on learning objectives, and a Grade 9 student gets theory and practical marks.
| Grades 1 to 5: CAS | Grades 6 to 10: marks | |
|---|---|---|
| What a teacher records | A rating on each learning objective | Theory and practical marks per subject |
| Scale | 4 Excellent, 3 Good, 2 Developing, 1 Needs improvement | NEB letter grades A+ to NG, with a GPA |
| Framework | Nine CDC CAS parameters, up to 20 objectives a subject | Letter Grading Directive 2078, NG below 35% |
| Not yet assessed | Left out, never stored as a zero | “Not sat this term” is left out |
| School settings | Rename parameters, move the rating ceiling | Grade bands, full marks, a pass mark per subject |
04Review and lock
Five stages, each one recorded. A report card is built only from submitted marks, and the marks behind it lock the moment it goes out.
Subject teachers rate objectives or enter marks for their own classes, saved as drafts on a phone or laptop.
With every student done, the teacher submits. Marks turn read-only; remarks stay open.
The office approves the sheet, or returns it with a note saying what to fix.
One button builds the card, locks its marks and publishes it, in one transaction.
The parent is notified and reads the card online, in Nepali or English.
They live in the server, not the screens, so no button can get around them.
05Features
Each audience sees only what it needs: school management software built around marks first.
06Architecture
A TypeScript monorepo: one Fastify API, one PostgreSQL database and three React front ends, shipped as Docker containers. Every school is a tenant, and the design protects that boundary first.
Every record carries its school, and every request is checked against the school in the caller’s token. A refusal is a 404, not a 403, so nobody can probe another school.
Dates are stored Gregorian and shown in Bikram Sambat first, from an almanac table for BS 2070 to 2098, because Nepali month lengths are published, not calculated.
The browser prints report cards because it shapes Devanagari correctly, and ledger exports keep Nepali names readable in Excel.
07Engineering
Six decisions that shaped Prishta, each from how a Nepali school actually works.
01
An unassessed objective or a subject not sat is left out of averages, ranks and pass counts, and named in a warning. In a spreadsheet it becomes a zero that can turn a good student into an NG.
02
The master ledger freezes each section’s term and stores the whole class ledger, so a card reprints years later exactly as signed. Reopening needs a written reason, and is refused while its cards are with parents.
03
Nepal is UTC+05:45, so for almost six hours a day the UTC date is still yesterday, which once kept the morning register shut until 05:45. Every date check now uses Nepal’s calendar.
04
The first Bikram Sambat table drifted a day by BS 2075 and two from 2081, silently. It was rebuilt with tests against the published New Year dates, so a bad row now fails the build.
05
Many guardians have no email on file, and siblings share one phone, so neither can be a login. Parents use a code the school hands over, and see only the children linked to them.
06
The budget is 500 students in under two seconds. Each view loads in four indexed queries and does the maths in memory, and the suite measures under 300 ms. That is careful database design at work.
Prishta holds children’s marks, so access is narrow by default, as in the APIs and QA testing I do for clients.
08Pricing
Prishta is priced per student and billed yearly. The site lists a Starter plan at Rs 200 per student per year for primary CAS, a School plan at Rs 100 for grades 1 to 10 with locked marks and the parent portal, and a custom Network plan from 1,000 students.
Any plan can be tried free for 30 days with one class, with no payment details needed.
09Status
Prishta is live at prishta.com, brought to schools by Ektukra Digital Agency, where I work as a full-stack web developer.
Live, with a 30-day free trial
It is the most complete product I have worked on: five audiences, two assessment schemes, a ledger that cannot drift and 1,061 tests against a real database.
Related services
Each service page lists prices, timelines and how I work, and every starting price is on my services page.
More SaaS built for Nepal: Jhino, an app publishing SaaS, and Eknas, a loyalty program. Every project is in my web development portfolio, and more about me is on my about page.
What CAS is, how Prishta grades and locks results, and what it costs a school.
Ask me on WhatsAppPrishta is continuous assessment and report card software for Nepali schools, grades 1 to 10, live at prishta.com. Teachers rate objectives or enter marks, the office reviews and locks them, and families read bilingual report cards online. I worked on it at Ektukra Digital Agency, from code review, fixes and tests to the Docker deployment that serves prishta.com.
CAS is the Continuous Assessment System used in Nepali schools. Teachers assess learning objectives through the term instead of judging a child on one exam. For grades 1 to 5, the CDC framework uses nine CAS parameters and a 4-3-2-1 rating scale.
Yes. Grades 1 to 5 come set up with the nine CDC CAS parameters and the 4-3-2-1 rating scale, with up to 20 learning objectives a subject, each tagged to one parameter. A school can rename parameters, and marks already awarded are never rewritten.
Grades 6 to 10 use theory and practical marks, graded on the NEB letter bands from A+ to NG under the Letter Grading Directive 2078, with NG below 35%. Each subject has its own pass mark, and a subject not sat is left out of the average.
Not alone. Pushing a report card locks the marks behind it. Changing one needs the office to unlock it with a written reason, which pulls the card back from parents until it is pushed again. Every lock, unlock and change is in the audit log.
Yes. Names, objectives, remarks and subjects can be typed in Devanagari, and report cards print them correctly. Dates show in Bikram Sambat first, then AD. The parent portal switches between English and Nepali, and ledger exports keep Nepali names readable in Excel.
Yes. When the school pushes report cards, each family is notified and reads the card on the parent portal, with attendance, remarks and notices. Parents sign in with a school-issued access code, see only their own children and never see the class rank.
Prishta is priced per student and billed yearly. The site lists a Starter plan at Rs 200 and a School plan at Rs 100 per student per year, plus a custom Network plan from 1,000 students. Any plan can be tried free for 30 days with one class.
Yes. I build SaaS products and custom management software like Prishta for clients in Nepal and abroad. A first SaaS version starts from NPR 70,000 and usually takes 6 to 12 weeks, and custom systems are quoted per module. See SaaS development for details.
Send a short note about your school or product and your budget. I reply within one working day with questions or a first estimate.
Ujjwal RupakhetiReplies within one working day
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