Education

Digital Transformation for a Five-School Trust

One platform and one parent app for admissions, attendance, fees and reports across every campus.

• Tools replaced

  Separate systems and apps consolidated into one platform and one parent app.

• Admin time saved

  Estimated reduction in office time spent on attendance calls and fee chasing.

• Parent app adoption

  Share of families actively using the parent app by the end of the first term.

• Fees paid online

  Share of termly fee payments made by card in the app, up from none.

Summary

Brookfield Schools Trust consolidated admissions, attendance, fees, assessments and parent communication for five schools and roughly 4,800 pupils onto the campus school management platform we built with them over nine months.

Lessons learned

• Standardise processes before software. Agreeing a common attendance and fee process across campuses took several workshops but made configuration far simpler.
• Treat migration as a project of its own. Three trial migrations, each checked by school office staff, caught data issues that would otherwise have surfaced on go-live day.
• Launch the parent app with a reason to download it. Opening online fee payments on day one drove adoption much faster than messaging alone.
• Go live between terms. A summer cut-over gave staff time to learn the system before pupils returned.

For schools earlier in the process, our articles on school management software features and school management software cost are good places to start.

• Engagement

  • Client

  • Industry

  • Duration

  • Team

  • Services

• Technologies

  • ASP.NET Core

    ASP.NET Core is our default framework for secure web applications and REST APIs: fast, cross-platform and well suited to complex business logic and integrations.

  • Angular

    Angular development for large, form-heavy enterprise applications where consistent structure, strong typing and long-term maintainability across teams matter most.

  • PostgreSQL

    PostgreSQL is our open-source database of choice for SaaS platforms and cost-sensitive systems, with strong reliability, JSON support and vector search for AI features.

  • Flutter

    Flutter lets us ship polished iOS and Android apps from one codebase, with smooth custom UI and near-native performance, often at lower cost than two native apps.

The challenge

Brookfield Schools Trust had grown from one school to five over eight years. Each school joined with its own systems, and the trust had never had the time or budget to bring them together. By the time we started, staff were using six separate tools:

• a legacy student information system at three schools and spreadsheets at the other two
• a standalone fee invoicing tool with no online payment
• two different parent messaging apps
• paper-based admissions forms scanned into shared drives

This created real, daily problems:

• Attendance follow-up was manual. Office staff phoned parents of absent pupils each morning, often taking until mid-morning to complete.
• Fee collection was slow. Parents paid by bank transfer with inconsistent references, so finance teams spent days reconciling payments and chasing arrears.
• Parents were confused. Families with children at two schools used different apps and logins for each.
• Trust leaders lacked data. Comparing attendance or admissions across schools required weeks of spreadsheet work each term.

The trust needed one system that every school would use in the same way, while respecting genuine local differences such as timetables and fee plans.

Our solution

We delivered a multi-tenant school management system with a web platform for staff and a mobile app for parents.

One platform, configured per campus

Each school is a tenant with its own timetable, term dates and fee plans, but all share the same core processes agreed in workshops with heads and office managers. Trust leaders get cross-campus dashboards for attendance, admissions and fee collection.

Attendance that follows itself up

Teachers take registers on a tablet in under a minute. Unexplained absences automatically trigger a push notification and SMS to parents, who can reply with a reason directly in the app. Office staff only deal with the exceptions.

Fees and online payments

Finance teams build fee plans with sibling discounts and bursaries, generate termly invoices in one batch and track arrears. Parents pay by card in the app, and payments reconcile automatically.

Admissions and reporting

Online admissions replaced paper forms, with document upload and status tracking. Gradebook data flows into termly report cards, published to parents in the app.

Technology

The platform runs on ASP.NET Core with Angular and PostgreSQL on Azure. The parent app is built with Flutter for iOS and Android. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, with role-based access and audit logging for safeguarding-sensitive records.

What we built

Key features

• Multi-campus tenancy

  Each school keeps its own timetables and fee plans while sharing common processes and trust-wide reporting.

• Automated absence follow-up

  Unexplained absences trigger parent notifications within minutes of registration closing.

• Online fee payments

  Parents pay invoices by card in the app, with automatic reconciliation for finance teams.

• Digital admissions

  Online applications with document upload replace paper forms and scanned files.

• Unified parent app

  One app and login covers every child across every school in the trust.

Delivery

How we delivered it

• Process workshops

  Ran workshops with heads, office managers and finance to agree common processes across all five schools.

• Platform build

  Built the staff platform and parent app in fortnightly sprints, demoing to a school-staff steering group.

• Data migration trials

  Completed three trial migrations of pupil, attendance and fee data, each checked by school office teams.

• Summer go-live

  Went live across all schools during the summer break with training sessions for every staff role.

• First-term support

  Provided on-call support and weekly improvement releases through the first autumn term.

Gallery

Inside the solution

• Trust-wide attendance overview

• Parent absence reply

In the client's words

• Parents now have one app instead of four, and our office teams have stopped spending Monday mornings chasing absence calls. The migration was the part we worried about most, and the trial runs meant there were no surprises on go-live day.

Project

Related projects

• Smart Education ERP

  A unified education management platform for schools, colleges, universities, and multi-campus institutions, covering admissions, attendance, timetabling, fee management, examinations, academic records, and parent and student portals in one integrated system.

• Fleet Logistics Tracking App

  A driver app and dispatch dashboard for a regional delivery company, with live vehicle tracking, digital proof of delivery and optimised route sequencing.

• Clinic Appointment Mobile App

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Solutions

Solutions used

• School Management System

  An all-in-one school management system for admissions, attendance, timetables, fees, exams and parent communication, configured for single schools and multi-campus groups.

• Custom SaaS Platform

  A production-ready SaaS foundation — multi-tenancy, authentication, billing, admin and APIs — that we customise into your own software product, so you launch sooner.

• HR Management System

  HR management system for employee records, leave, attendance, onboarding, performance reviews and payroll data, with a self-service app that employees actually use.

Services

Services involved

• School Management Software Development

  School management software development for schools, school groups and academies: admissions, attendance, timetables, fees, exams and parent communication in one secure system.

• Web Application Development

  Custom web application development for portals, dashboards and line-of-business systems, built with ASP.NET Core, React and Angular and designed to scale with your business.

• Mobile App Development

  Mobile app development for iOS and Android using Flutter, .NET MAUI or native Swift and Kotlin — from product strategy and UX to App Store release and ongoing updates.

More results

Other case studies

• Retail Chain POS Modernisation

  How a 60-store retail chain replaced ageing on-premise tills with an offline-capable cloud POS, cutting checkout times by 35% and ending overnight price syncs.

Bringing your schools together?

See how one platform can replace the patchwork of tools across your campuses.

See how one platform can replace the patchwork of tools across your campuses.