Choosing a school platform is a multi-year decision.
How a migration actually runs, and the questions worth putting to any vendor — including us. Use these whether or not Schoolspine ends up being the answer.
Moving a school without losing a term.
The hard part of a migration is almost never the import. It is discovering that your records disagree with each other — and that is far better discovered in week one than in week nine.
01
Before you start
Gather what you already have: the student roll, staff list, class and subject structure, fee categories, and last term’s results. Spreadsheets are fine. Paper is workable. What matters is that one authoritative version exists for each.
02
Reconciliation
This is where migrations actually go wrong. Two lists that disagree about a child’s class, duplicate records under slightly different spellings, guardians recorded on some students but not others. We surface every conflict before anything is written.
03
Structure first
Academic years, terms, classes, streams and subjects go in before people do. Get the shape of the school right and the records drop into it cleanly.
04
People, then history
Students, guardians and staff, then the historical records that hang off them. Historical results and attendance are optional — some schools bring three years, some start fresh.
05
Parallel term
Run Schoolspine alongside your existing process for one term. It costs a little duplication and it means nobody is trusting a new system with the only copy of anything.
Eight questions for any vendor. Including us.
Put these to every platform you are considering. If a vendor cannot answer one of them concretely, that is the answer.
01
Can one school’s staff ever see another school’s data — and how is that enforced?
02
Can a parent reach a child who is not theirs?
03
Who can change a published mark, and where is that recorded?
04
Can we define our own roles without a code change?
05
Can we configure grading and terms to how we actually operate?
06
What happens to our data if we leave?
07
Is the vendor certified, or working towards it? Ask for the report.
08
Who answers the phone when something breaks during exams?
In production.
Releasing over the coming months. Until each lands, ask us directly and you will get the answer from a person.
Documentation
Module-by-module reference for administrators and teachers.
Help centre
Searchable answers for day-to-day tasks.
Product videos
Short walkthroughs of the workflows staff use most.
Demo environment
A populated school you can explore without booking a call.
Prefer to ask a person?
You will hear back, usually within a working day.
See it with your school's own data.
We will walk you through Schoolspine against a real workflow from your school — an admission, a term's results, a fee cycle — and answer the hard questions about migration and security.