In their latest edition, SchoolsWeek published another article on the thorny subject of MIS companies paying referral fees to local authority teams that recommend their products.
According to the SchoolsWeek article, on page 17, councils have received thousands of pounds in ‘referral fees’ from Arbor in return for their schools switching to its management information system (MIS).
The three councils named in the article are:
- Buckinghamshire, who revealed that they had received an ‘annual recurring referral fee’ from Arbor but would not reveal the amount;
- Nottingham, who received just over £11,000 from Arbor over 2022 and 2023. They apparently also received just over £20,000 from ESS SIMS for what it said was ‘a rebate on additional products purchased by schools using SIMS’. SIMS pointed out that this was money given to the council after schools opted to receive support from them rather than from SIMS itself.
- Wokingham, who received a payment of around £9,000 from Arbor earlier this year after 23 of its schools signed with the company.
WhichMIS first raised this thorny issue in an article back in September 2023 and explored it further in a series of articles since then:
The difference between a referral fee and a kickback
MIS referral fees – comments from industry insiders
As we have said previously, it is not the payment of referral fees or support fees in and of themselves that is the issue here, but rather the need for transparency about these so that schools are aware of what fees the recommending local authority teams will receive, and can then decide if this is affecting the recommendation in any way.
We firmly believe that schools should always have the ability to choose the best solution for their needs and transparency from all can only help achieve this.
