Nearly 400 schools have joined action over “legally questionable” contracts proposed by Education Software Solutions (ESS), a major school information management systems (SIMS) supplier.
It comes after ESS wrote to schools in November stating it would extend its contracts from one year to three years, giving schools until the end of February 2022 to sign up or find an alternative.
Now a total of 397 schools have signed up to take collective action, led by national law firm Stone King.
The law firm says the contract renewal notice puts “great pressure” on schools, which it says is “legally questionable”.
Graham Burns, a partner at Stone King, said: “Having a fully supported management information system in place is essential for the proper running of a school.
“There has been no consultation with schools and trusts before the announcement was made to move to a three-year contract cycle, and the trusts have not been given a sufficient period of time to run a compliant procurement process and potentially migrate to another provider.
“We are supporting the trusts to negotiate a sensible, amicable and, most importantly, a fair outcome with ESS, which allows the trusts to continue to operate their schools without disruption.”
SIMS contract concerns
Hundreds of school leaders attended briefings held online by Stone King this month about concerns around the new contracts. Heads say the timeframe left them with little room to find an alternative or commit to the terms.
Stephen Morales, chief executive of the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL), previously told Tes that the tactics used by ESS SIMS were “aggressive”.
“We don’t want a situation where a single provider has a monopoly over the system and we don’t want school leaders feeling backed into a corner with no choice,” he said.
The Department for Education issued a statement in November asking schools to “pause before signing” the new SIMS contracts but have this week given the green light for customers to go ahead if they wish to sign-up.
ESS was taken over by ParentPay Group in August. The sale came after Capita sold ESS last year to Montagu Private Equity for £400 million.
ESS SIMS wrote to its customers last week saying: “Over the coming months, we’ll communicate more about our vision, roadmap and the functionalities that our customers will have access to.”
It says part of its new product will include a cloud-based service whereas currently schools access the system on site, not remotely.
It added: “No school is being forced or automatically moved on to a three-year contract. We are no longer offering one-year renewals for core SIMS and FMS (financial management system) products, but no school is obliged to accept this variation in our terms.”
Andy Bennett, chief executive of ESS SIMS, is stepping down from the role in December and Mark Brant, who also heads up ParentPay, will be the new chief executive. This was announced internally to ParentPay employees in September.
Andrew Neubauer, chairman of ParentPay, told Tes this week: “We don’t think the term length is unreasonable or disproportionate. We are saying it is possible to look at this within the five months and it is not unreasonable.
“We had to take this difficult decision to move to three-year terms. We knew we would get some negative feedback on that, but it is the right thing for business, it is the right thing for SIMS, it is the right thing for the customers.
“You always get negative feedback when there is change. It is inevitable. A lot of what we have seen is our competitors making noise and encouraging people to make noise.”
When asked why they have not published a roadmap for the change, Mr Neubauer said “We have already announced that we will be delivering MAT dashboard and attendance functionality in early 2022 with learner and assessment developments to follow. We will make further roadmap announcements in the new year. By Q3 2022 we will be have expanded to 12 feature teams from the 4 we have today.”
He added: “Modern software development involves continuous delivery of new features and functions, with the roadmap adapting to feedback from customers as you go along, which is the way that Google, Amazon and all leading software business works these days.”
Mr Brant told Tes this week: “We are human and we are people that represent a business that is investing in the future of SIMS to support the education sector. We are very much committed to that. We have made clear statements of intent for how we plan to continue to invest in the software.”
He added: “There is no basis for legal action with the move to industry standard three-year agreements, which simply aligns us with many other providers.
“The DfE has today [last week] helpfully clarified that schools should proceed with the proposed contracts as normal, and that formal procurement is only necessary where the contract value exceeds £189,330.
“We will continue to communicate to our customers setting out their options, and the actions required should they wish to continue to use SIMS into the future.”
In a statement regarding Mr Bennett’s role as chief executive, Mr Brant said in a statement: “This long-planned departure was all part of ESS joining the ParentPay Group and subsequent integration.
“Andy has played an integral role in the merger between ESS and ParentPay Group and we want to sincerely thank him for his work and efforts.”
