Glasgow based SchoolCloud, part of the Tes group since February this year, has won the awards due to the success of their incredibly popular online parents’ evening software and the growth of their business over the last year.
The story of the creation and evolution of the company is extremely compelling and was sure to impress the Bett judges. Robbie Beattie and Marcus Fields, the co-founders were asked to solve a school-wide issue of room double bookings while they were at school. They spent the summer developing the very first product ‘Room Booking System’. Not only did their school find it a winning solution, but they even gave them the grand sum of £100 for it. Equipped with their first income and some valuable guidance from entrepreneurial parents, they launched their business from the playground in 2006. Today, over 7,500 schools use SchoolCloud to help them with their parents' evenings, school events and room booking. This growth was rewarded with the BETT ‘Company of the Year’ (Less than £3m turnover) Award.
The business evolved to support school events and most significantly parents’ evenings, historically a huge administrative burden for schools and a logistical headache for parents. Then, significantly, during 2020 SchoolCloud brought video capability to the application, allowing for remote parents’ evenings to take place during the pandemic, winning them the Bett ‘Innovator of the Year’ Award.
Even without the challenges of Covid, their sophisticated software allows parents juggling multiple children’s schedules, childcare, work or travel commitments and even separated parents, to be able to participate in parents’ evenings remotely. Schools’ feedback says that this has revolutionised the way parents’ evenings run, making them more professional, efficient, and much more time effective for all parties involved: teachers, parents, and school staff.
Tes was thrilled to bring SchoolCloud into the group in February, as it complements and further widens the software solutions Tes offers to schools, including timetabling, pupil management, wellbeing survey tools, recruitment, and online safeguarding and compliance training.
Marcus Fields, Co-founder of SchoolCloud, said at the awards, “We’re absolutely elated to have been recognised by the wider education sector with these two awards amongst so many great finalists. When the pandemic started, we knew SchoolCloud was in a unique position to step-up and help schools through very challenging times. The innovation we launched looks set to change the way parents’ evenings are run forever. ”
Robbie Beattie, Co-founder of SchoolCloud added “It has been a very challenging time for schools, we’re so happy at SchoolCloud to have been able to help them this year. Creating innovative products combined with excellent customer support has always been our winning formula. We’re very grateful to the Bett Awards for this recognition.”
SchoolCloud have been previous recipients of Bett Awards, including 'Company of the Year' at the awards in 2014 & 2017.
Rod Williams, Chief Executive of Tes, said: “We are delighted at the Bett award wins today, they demonstrate what an incredibly innovative and dynamic company SchoolCloud is. When Tes acquired the business earlier this year, we had great belief in Robbie, Marcus and their team, and this is a further reinforcement of how technology can be used to improve and truly revolutionise how schools work”.