EdTech · School Management Platform
Newton
Classroom
Building the operating system for modern schools - from fragmented spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups to a unified platform serving 50,000+ users across 30-50 institutions.
- Role
- Product Manager
- Platform
- Web + Mobile
- Scope
- Platform Owner, 8+ modules
- Scale
- 50K+ users, 30-50 schools
50K+
Active users across teachers, parents, staff, and leadership
Platform-wide adoption
8+
Core modules shipped end-to-end - from admissions to analytics
Admissions · Academics · Fees · Attendance · HR · Transport
30-50
Schools migrated from fragmented legacy tools to Newton
Institutional adoption
The problem they were living with
Schools were running on a patchwork of tools that were never designed to work together. Attendance lived in Excel. Parent communication happened over WhatsApp. Fee collection was tracked in ledgers. Admissions were managed via email threads.
Each tool worked in isolation. Data didn't flow. Leadership had no visibility. Teachers were drowning in admin. Parents had to chase the school for basic information.
When COVID hit, this brittleness became a crisis overnight. There was no digital continuity - no way to move learning online without rebuilding from scratch.
- ✕Operational overload from manual admin and duplicate data entry
- ✕No single view for leadership to track enrolment, fees, or performance
- ✕Fee collection delays and errors due to fragmented financial tracking
- ✕Parent communication gaps - critical updates buried in WhatsApp groups
- ✕Zero digital continuity when schools moved online during COVID
- ✕Legacy ERPs too rigid and expensive for growing institutions
The vision: one platform, every stakeholder
Newton Classroom would be the operating system for a school - a single platform that brought together people, processes, and data, improving academic delivery, financial transparency, and daily efficiency for every person it touched.
Admissions
Enquiry → application → enrolment, fully digitized
Academics & Assignments
Centralized classroom workflows; higher teacher adoption
Attendance
Daily tracking simplified; compliance reporting automated
Fee Management
Faster online collection, fewer steps for accountants
Teacher Dashboard
Improved daily visibility and productivity
Communication Hub
Automated alerts via app, SMS, and email
Reports & Analytics
Real-time data visibility for school leadership
HR, Transport & Records
Consolidated operational data across departments
The moment that tested everything
March 2020 · Critical pivot
Schools went home overnight. Learning couldn't stop.
When institutions closed abruptly, building a full video-classroom from scratch would have taken months - months no school could afford. I saw a faster path.
Ran rapid discovery - 1:1 interviews with principals and teachers to understand what continuity actually required.
Made the strategic call: integrate, don't build. Chose Google Meet integration over a custom video solution - cutting delivery time from months to weeks.
Launched an 'Online Classroom' experience inside Newton - seamless scheduling, live attendance, and assignment flow in one place.
Monitored adoption in real time, iterated on friction points, and communicated rollout progress to school leadership.
How I worked
01
Discover
User interviews, prototype testing, and continuous feedback loops with teachers, admins, and parents across schools.
02
Prioritize
Shipped highest-impact workflows first. Outcome-driven backlog: if it didn't reduce admin time or improve adoption, it waited.
03
Deliver
Iterative releases with tight QA loops. Each sprint reduced post-release bugs and improved support ticket volume.
04
Instrument
Tracked module adoption, onboarding drop-off, and feature usage. Evidence - not opinion - drove the next sprint.
What we shipped, and what it changed
Scale
Grew to 50,000+ active users across teachers, parents, staff, and leadership - spanning 30-50 institutions.
Platform growthAdoption
Increased module adoption across Academics, Admissions, Fee Collection, and Attendance - replacing the tools schools relied on before.
Behavioral shiftTeacher experience
Streamlined daily dashboard reduced context-switching and gave teachers back time spent on administrative tasks.
UX improvementOperations
Reduced manual admin workload and eliminated dependency on fragmented tools - one source of truth for school operations.
EfficiencyFinance
Improved fee collection speed and accuracy for finance teams; reduced reconciliation errors with online collection workflows.
Revenue opsQuality & growth
Reduced support tickets and cleaner releases through tighter QA. Platform reliability contributed to subscription growth and inbound demand.
Business impactScreenshots
A peek at the surfaces that shipped.
Where I'd take it next
Newton proved the foundation. The next layer is intelligence - using the data the platform generates to create proactive, predictive value for schools.
AI-powered analytics for leadership
Surface enrolment trends, at-risk students, and operational bottlenecks automatically - so principals spend time acting, not querying.
Automated fee insights & forecasting
Predict collection gaps, flag payment risks before they become defaults, and give finance teams forward visibility.
Deeper classroom & learning workflows
Richer assignment, assessment, and feedback loops that close the gap between what teachers assign and what students actually learn.
Student engagement scoring
Proactive signals for counselors and teachers - catch disengagement early using attendance, participation, and submission patterns.
Want to talk product?
Open to PM roles, advisory work, and AI-driven collaborations.
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