Schools (academies)

Schools (academies)

A school (or academy, depending on terminology) is a single educational establishment within a trust workspace. The trust is the workspace; each academy is a school within it.

Why schools matter

Schools are how the platform scopes:

• Per-academy queues — a Headteacher at one academy doesn’t need to see another academy’s pastoral tickets
• Per-academy reporting — “how many tickets per academy this term?”
• Per-academy branding — sub-themes within the trust theme (academy logo, colour accent)
• Per-academy assets/people — the asset register and people register both have a school_id
• Per-academy automation — automation rules can fire only for tickets from a specific academy
• Per-academy compliance — Estates compliance is tracked per academy

If your trust is a single school, you still have one school in the platform — many features assume the relationship.

What a school carries

• Name + short name + slug
• DfE URN — for ESFA reporting and integrations
• Phase — Primary / Secondary / All-through / Sixth-form / Special / SEN
• Address — the registered postal address
• Headteacher — links to a person record
• DSL — Designated Safeguarding Lead; links to a person record
• DPO — Data Protection Officer
• Pupil count — auto-derived from the people register (pupil records are entered in the platform; the Wonde sync covers staff/schools/rooms only)
• Active — disable a school during pre-opening or post-closure phases

Adding a school

When the trust takes on a new academy:

1. Create the school record with name + URN + phase
2. Set up the people register (staff via Wonde MIS sync; pupils entered directly)
3. Set up the estates structure (sites + buildings + rooms)
4. Configure department-level overrides if the academy has its own helpdesk team
5. Configure per-academy SLA policies if needed
6. Onboard the leadership team to the platform

The whole process for a new academy of ~50 staff is roughly a day for IT, plus ongoing data quality.

Closing a school

When an academy leaves the trust (transfer to another MAT, closure, merger):

1. Mark Active = false with a closure date
2. Export the academy’s data for handover (see php artisan school:export {school_slug})
3. Reassign or close any open tickets owned by that academy
4. Disable the academy’s staff identities (or transfer to the receiving trust if applicable)
5. Archive the school record (don’t delete)

Archived academies stay in reports for historical comparisons — useful for “how did we do compared to before this academy left?”.

Multi-academy operations

When a piece of work touches multiple academies (a trust-wide refresh, a cross-academy training day), don’t create separate tickets per academy — use one ticket scoped to the trust, with each academy as a watcher. Reports on multi-academy work still aggregate correctly.