Running a Group of Schools
The second campus, and everything it changes — a group as a record in its own right, head-office roles that span schools without granting any one of them, one module set and one bill for four campuses, the cross-school numbers that only exist once there is something to compare, and the read-only role that sees all of it without reaching into a single classroom.
The second school is not twice the first one
It is a different job. One school is run by people who are in it; two are run by people who are in neither, and everything that used to be a conversation in a corridor becomes a question about access, standards and money. Who at head office may look inside a campus they do not work at? Does every school choose its own modules, or does the group decide once? Whose bill is it? And the question that motivates all of them: what do the four schools look like next to each other, which is a thing no single school’s dashboard can ever show. This walkthrough follows one decision — a school joining a group — from head office into a member campus and back out to the numbers it makes possible. Every screen is the real application.
On this page
A group is a record, not a spreadsheet
The first thing to establish is that a group is a real object in the platform rather than a reporting convenience. It has its own name, its own short code, its own branding, its own members and its own lifecycle — and a school belongs to it explicitly rather than by being on a list somebody maintains.
The portfolio you start from
Every group this person belongs to, with the number of schools in each and the role they hold in it. For an operator with one trust it is a single row; the page exists because the role in each group is the fact that decides everything they can do next.
Creating one
Name, short code, contact details and address, in one form — and the person who creates it becomes its Owner. The short code matters more than it looks: it is what distinguishes the group’s own identity from any one school’s in the places both appear.
The membership roll
Which campuses are in, each with its plan, its status and its population beside the others. Adding a school is an explicit act performed here — the school does not opt in, and it does not happen by naming convention or by sharing a domain.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “A group is a record, not a spreadsheet” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Who at head office may do what
This is the part multi-school operators get wrong, usually by giving the head-office finance officer a school administrator account at every campus. That works, and it grants far more than intended. A group membership is a different kind of grant: it spans schools, and it carries nothing inside any of them.
The three roles a group has
Owner, Admin and Viewer — a deliberately short list, because the group workspace does a small number of things and a longer list would be pretending otherwise. Every management control on every page in this walkthrough is gated on one of these.
Making the grant
A person, and a role. That is the whole form, and the brevity is the point: this grant says nothing about which schools, because it applies to all of them, and nothing about which modules, because a group role is not a school role. The finance officer who gets Viewer here can compare four campuses and cannot open a single pupil’s record in any of them.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “Who at head office may do what” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
One module set, and one subscription behind it
The commercial reason groups exist. Four schools individually choosing modules and paying invoices is four negotiations, four renewal dates and four different products called by the same name. A group decides once — and then the walkthrough goes and looks at what that feels like from inside a campus that has not been switched over yet.
The default set, and pushing it down
A group subscription with one billing interval, one next-billing date and one volume-discount position — and underneath it, the set of add-on modules every member school is meant to run. Changing that set is one decision; applying it is a second, made per campus, which is what keeps a group from silently reconfiguring a school overnight.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “One module set, and one subscription behind it” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And what it looks like from inside one campus
The handoff. Everything above was decided by people who do not work at Bright Future Academy, and this is the screen its own administrator opens to find out where they stand. A resource page that stopped at the group workspace would be describing half a relationship.
The campus that has not moved across yet
Bright Future Academy is in the group and is still paying its own bill — the state most schools are in for a term or two after a trust forms, and the state this screen exists to make legible. It says so plainly, explains that billing is currently managed at school level, and points at the workspace where that changes. Nothing is hidden and nothing has been done to the school without telling it.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “And what it looks like from inside one campus” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The questions that only exist once there are several
And now the payoff, which is not administrative at all. A single school’s dashboard can tell you that attendance is 94%. It cannot tell you that the campus down the road is at 88% with the same intake, which is the only version of that number anybody can act on.
Cross-school analytics
Population per campus, and the spread of schools by status, plan and member role — computed on the server across every school in the group rather than assembled from four exports. It is the one view that is impossible without the group record, and the reason most operators want one.
And the lifecycle only an Owner holds
Profile, branding, and the three actions that end things: suspend, reinstate, delete. They live behind the Owner role alone, and suspending a group is deliberately reversible — because a trust in a dispute needs a pause, not an amputation.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “The questions that only exist once there are several” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The same page, in the hands of somebody who may only look
One last frame, because a capability model is only believable if you are shown it working. This is the same analytics page, opened by a member of head office who holds a Viewer role in the group and no role at all in any of the four schools.
Read-only is a real role, not a cut-down product
The identical component, the identical figures, and not one control that would change anything — because the server answered this caller with a capability set in which every flag is false. Nobody built a second, simpler screen for the finance officer; they were given a role, and the screen adapted.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “The same page, in the hands of somebody who may only look” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
Run your whole school on one connected platform
Start with the base package, switch on the modules you need, and give every parent, student and staff member a single place to log in.