The judges’ results are in (as they say on all the best reality TV shows!) and in this case the judges are the schools themselves.
And, truth be told, the results are not very pretty reading for ESS SIMS, whose fall from grace continues. From a market-dominating 84%+ a few years ago, they are now down to just 43.5%, and this is from a market share of 48.6% in the last English schools’ census returns! The figures show that ESS SIMS now have just 9,586 schools in England, losing 1,116 in the last 6 months alone.
Arbor and Bromcom continue to be the big winners again, increasing their school numbers significantly since the Spring census (Arbor +1,329 and Bromcom +440).
So, where are SIMS losing all these schools? Actually, it seems to be across all phases. Since the Spring census they have lost 764 primaries (-9.66% of their previous total), 262 secondaries (-12.51%), 73 Special schools (-14.23%) and 17 PRU’s (-9.3%).
The Key Group, with three MIS in their stable, Arbor, Integris and Scholarpack, now have a combined total of 9,444 schools and a market share of 42.87%, narrowly missing out on overtaking SIMS as the market leaders.
Although The Key Group have an overall increase of some 856 schools, both Integris (-232) and ScholarPack (-241) have lost significant numbers, many of whom appear to now be using Arbor, which is not surprising and still means that Arbor have picked up around 800 schools from providers outside of their group.
In the smaller providers, Compass are leading the way, moving from just 8 schools in the Spring census to a creditable 30 schools now. It seems that schools are liking their offering and choosing them over some of their bigger rivals and it will be interesting to see how they fare over the next few months. The other provider gaining schools is IRIS Ed:gen, who have gained another 4 schools across this period.
SatchelOne are also now showing up in the figures, having gained their first school and we look forward to seeing their growth as we move forwards.
All the other providers continue to lose schools to the big two contenders. Pupil Asset lost 106 schools, bringing them down to just 220 schools now. SchoolPod are down by 34 schools, Horizons are down by 14 and SchoolBase down by 6, leaving them with just 3 schools.
The size of the churn since the Spring census has been alarming, with almost 1,800 schools changing their MIS provider in this time.
With a very large number of schools having their renewal dates in March 2025, it was expected that the next census, in Spring 2025, would be the one that showed the biggest churn, but it seems that many schools have made the decision earlier than anticipated.
Having said that, there are still a very significant number of schools with fast-approaching renewal dates and we wait to see what the market looks like when we receive the Spring 2025 figures…
