A language school, its practice tools and its teachers on one platform
Live classes, self-serve practice, placement testing and visa-interview preparation, one platform, four languages.
Context
Paddington prepares students in Myanmar for study abroad. It runs as a school: employed teachers, scheduled classes, real cohorts, and sells practice tools students use on their own. Students arrive needing different things: some a full course, some a placement test, some practice before an exam, some preparation for a visa interview.
The problem
Which platform do you run a school on when you also sell practice by the test? Course marketplaces assume teachers own and price their own courses, which is not how a school with employed staff works. Subscription platforms assume steady monthly billing, which is not how students buy, they buy in bursts, in the weeks before an exam date. Neither handles the rest of what students need either: a placement test to work out where they should start, and preparation for the credibility interview that stands between them and a visa. And both assume a student holds an international card, which most of this intake does not, a card-only checkout would have turned away the majority of them at the last step.
What we did
We treated the two businesses as two businesses. Courses belong to the school, priced and scheduled by administrators, taught by employed teachers with their own portal for schedules, submissions and grading. Practice runs on a balance of points students top up and spend. What each activity costs is an administrator setting rather than a number in the code, which matters more than it sounds: the cost of running AI moves, and pricing that needs a developer is pricing that never gets adjusted.
What we built
A platform running the school day to day, with self-serve preparation alongside it.
Courses run the way a school runs them
Courses owned and priced by the school, delivered to scheduled cohorts with capacity, enrolment, attendance and live lessons.
A teacher’s own workspace
Teachers see their schedule, their cohorts and their lessons, and mark student submissions in one place rather than across email and spreadsheets.
Placement before enrolment
A sectioned placement test, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary and a spoken section, puts students at the right level from the start, which is the difference between a course that works and a refund conversation.
All four skills, not just the easy ones
Reading, writing, listening and speaking, each charged against a points balance with hints priced separately. Reading and listening are marked instantly; writing and speaking are the ones most platforms quietly skip, because they cannot be marked by comparing against an answer key.
Questions in the formats the exam uses
Multiple choice, true/false, gap fill, short answer and extended essay, with answers held as a set rather than a single value so a question can have more than one correct response.
Speaking, transcribed as the student talks
The browser streams speech to a transcription service live, so a student sees their own words appear while answering. The recording is then queued for assessment and written feedback, rather than blocking the page while a model listens.
Visa interview preparation
The same voice pipeline drives practice for the credibility interview students face when applying for a study visa: course knowledge, finances, accommodation and career plans, ending in a PASS, REVIEW or FAIL verdict. It is the step most preparation courses leave them to face alone.
Pay the way students actually pay
Stripe for international cards, and Dinger and Myanmar QR for the students who do not have one. Each gateway sits behind a common interface, so supporting the next one is a new adapter rather than a new checkout.
Payment state comes from the gateway, not the browser
A student closing the tab mid-payment is the normal case, not the edge case. Confirmation arrives by webhook and moves the record through pending, processing and settled, so what the platform believes always reconciles with what the gateway actually took, with a health endpoint to show the webhook is still being delivered.
Pricing and promotions the team controls
Administrators set the cost of every activity, along with packages, coupons, discounts and referrals, without waiting for a release.
Four languages
English, Burmese, Thai and Chinese, so the interface is not one more obstacle for a student whose English is the thing being taught.
Results
The school and the self-serve products share a platform without either bending to fit the other. Teachers work in one place, students arrive at the right level, and practice pricing keeps pace with what it costs to provide.
More work
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