Al Huda is an Islamic organization based in East London that serves both adults and children through weekday and weekend programs.
In this story, Naila Shoaib, Director of Admissions, shares how Al Huda transitioned from manual administration to DreamClass as the organization expanded its programs and campuses.
With Qur’an at the center of its curriculum, Al Huda supports learners across multiple pathways: Arabic language, translation, explanation, memorization (Hifz), and proper recitation (Tajweed). Alongside education, the organization also supports parents through workshops and operates in a multi-floor building that includes prayer space.
As Al Huda continues to grow—expanding facilities and working to bring additional campuses under one system—administration has become just as important as teaching.
Before DreamClass: Excel, Word Tables, and Repeating the Same Work Everywhere
Before adopting DreamClass, Al Huda managed attendance, reports, and finances through Excel sheets and Word tables. This setup required constant manual work: creating attendance sheets, preparing reports, calculating percentages, fixing spelling mistakes, and re-entering student names across multiple documents.
The process also depended heavily on who had access to which file. If a document wasn’t stored correctly, staff couldn’t access it unless they had the right device or drive. On top of that, not everyone was comfortable using formulas—so the burden often fell on a few people to correct calculations and maintain consistency.
As Naila explains, “Not everybody was well trained in putting the formula… and I had to go manually and open all the documents and put in the formulas for them.”
Even simple changes, like when a student joined or left, turned into a time-consuming task because the student had to be removed from multiple sheets—attendance, reports, grading documents, and group lists—one by one.
When Manual Tracking Impacts the Community
Over time, the administrative limitations started to affect learners and families directly—especially around attendance and certification.
Al Huda requires students to maintain 80% attendance to receive a full certificate at the end of the year. But in the old system, students and parents couldn’t easily track their progress. Instead, they had to contact the admin team repeatedly—especially in the first and second term—asking for attendance summaries and calculations.
As Naila puts it, “They have to keep coming to us and asking, ‘What is my attendance now?’”
With close to 300 adult learners at the main campus alone, this created a constant flow of follow-ups that pulled the admin team away from more meaningful work.
Fees were another major pressure point. Payments came in through multiple channels—cash, bank transfers, checks—and sometimes even workplace-issued checks that didn’t match the parent or student name.
Reconciling those payments took time and created uncertainty, especially when teams needed to confirm whether a payment had arrived and who it belonged to.
Searching for a System That Was Affordable and Actually Fit Their Reality
Al Huda initially looked for local systems in the UK, but many were designed for environments where education is free and fee management isn’t central—or they were priced at a level that only colleges and universities could realistically afford.
The organization needed something practical: a system that could centralize records, reduce manual repetition, and support fee tracking without being expensive or overly complex. A key reason DreamClass stood out was the ability to test the platform properly before committing.
As Naila highlights, “The trial period was very important… to see if this would work for us or not.”
Moving to DreamClass: Gradual Adoption with Real Support
The transition was not instant for everyone—and Al Huda didn’t expect it to be. With a staff team of around 62 people, not everyone had strong technical confidence. Naila estimates that only a portion of the team was already comfortable using digital tools beyond basic Microsoft Office.
Still, DreamClass allowed the organization to adopt the platform gradually. They started small—testing a few classes for attendance and fees during the trial—and expanded as confidence grew.
Naila credits the learning resources as a major support system during the transition: “DreamClass already had videos and a lot of things ready… and we could explore each and everything.”
Today, Al Huda has their campus classes running in DreamClass and is preparing to bring additional campuses into the same environment.
What Changed: Centralized Records and Less “Chasing” for Answers
With DreamClass, Al Huda moved away from scattered spreadsheets toward a centralized student record—where attendance, fees, and progress live in one place.
Instead of manually rebuilding reports and recalculating attendance percentages, the team can now access the information quickly. Parents and students also benefit from clearer visibility, reducing the number of inbound questions and freeing the admin team to focus on supporting the community.
Naila describes the direction of the change clearly: the organization is still learning and expanding features—like grading and report creation—term by term. But the foundation is now stable, centralized, and scalable as Al Huda grows.
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Growing with Confidence Across Campuses
Al Huda continues to expand its programs, campuses, and facilities—while aiming to keep operations manageable for staff and consistent for families. With DreamClass supporting admissions, attendance, and fees in one place, the organization is building a structure that can scale without returning to manual repetition.