For forty years, SIMS was the default management information system in English schools. That run ended in July 2025, when Arbor overtook it to become the most widely used MIS in the country. SIMS is not going away: it is moving from the on-premise SIMS 7 that schools have run for decades to a cloud platform, SIMS Next Gen, and existing users are being migrated across. But being asked to move anyway has removed the one reason most schools stayed, which was avoiding the upheaval of a switch. If you are going to migrate data and retrain staff regardless, it is the obvious moment to look at what else exists. This guide compares the realistic alternatives, Arbor, Bromcom, the independent-school systems, and the bespoke route, on the things that actually decide an MIS: cloud readiness, migration, census output, and five-year cost.
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The shorthand version that circulates in staffrooms is out of date, so it is worth setting the facts down plainly. SIMS was built and owned by Capita for around 25 years. In a deal completed in 2021, Capita sold its Education Software Solutions business, which includes SIMS, to the private equity firm Montagu. SIMS now sits inside ParentPay Group. It was not bought by The Access Group, a separate education software company that the two are often confused for.
On the latest October census-based figures, the English market is no longer a one-horse race. Arbor is in roughly 9,800 schools, around 37 per cent of the market. SIMS is in roughly 7,600, around 28 per cent. Bromcom is in roughly 4,900, around 18 per cent. The remaining share is spread across systems used mainly by independent and specialist settings. The direction of travel is consistent: schools are moving off legacy on-premise software towards cloud platforms, and SIMS lost the top spot it had held since the 1980s.
This matters for one practical reason. Choosing an MIS partly on "everyone uses it" no longer points only at SIMS. The familiarity argument, the pool of staff who already know the system, the local authority support built around it, now applies to more than one product.
SIMS Next Gen is the cloud successor to SIMS 7. Through 2026 the product is being reshaped for the cloud: access moved to a new home.sims.co.uk gateway in January 2026, and the spring 2026 school census is intended to be the last run in SIMS 7, with future returns moving to Next Gen.
Two things follow. First, if you are a SIMS school, doing nothing is still a decision, and a legitimate one: you can stay and follow the migration. Second, the migration is itself the disruption schools previously switched providers to avoid. Moving from SIMS 7 to Next Gen means new screens, retrained staff, and re-pointed integrations, which is most of the cost of moving to a different system entirely. That is why review activity has risen. The question is no longer "is it worth the upheaval of leaving SIMS", it is "given that there is upheaval either way, what is the best place to land".
Best for: Primary schools and multi-academy trusts wanting a cloud-native MIS with strong trust-level dashboards.
Arbor is the system that took the number one spot. It is cloud-native, which means it was built for the browser rather than adapted to it, and that shows in the trust-level reporting: a multi-academy trust can see attendance, behaviour and demographic data rolled up across every school without exporting from each one separately. It covers the core MIS functions a state school needs, including the census return, attendance, behaviour, assessment and communications, and it absorbed the primary-focused ScholarPack and Integris user bases, both of which are being discontinued and moved into Arbor during 2026.
The limitation is the same as its strength: it is a product, with a product's assumptions. Schools with unusual workflows adapt to Arbor rather than the other way round, and the deepest secondary timetabling and cover requirements are often still handled by a specialist tool alongside it.
Best for: Secondary schools and trusts that prioritise attendance management and live data.
Bromcom has been in the sector for over thirty years and is cloud-based with a strong reputation in secondary schools and in attendance and behaviour reporting. It offers a single MIS-plus-finance platform, which appeals to trusts that want pupil and financial data closer together. Its pricing is among the more transparent in the market, published as a base charge plus a per-pupil rate, which makes it one of the few products you can budget for without a sales call.
The limitation is reach: a smaller installed base than Arbor or SIMS means a smaller pool of staff who already know it and fewer third parties building around it, though both are growing.
Best for: Independent and international schools outside the state census and funding framework.
Independent schools have different requirements: fee billing rather than the DfE census, admissions on their own timeline, boarding management, and inspection by the Independent Schools Inspectorate rather than the standard Ofsted framework. iSAMS is the established full-function MIS for this market, covering admissions, timetabling, finance, boarding and a parent portal, with multi-school and international capability. Tes Engage, SchoolBase and HUBmis are also compared in this segment. A state school does not need these systems; an independent school usually will not be well served by a state-sector MIS.
Best for: Schools and trusts that want one system they own and can keep growing, instead of a product whose limits are fixed by a vendor.
This is where the comparison stops being like-for-like, because a bespoke system from ESRE is not a custom version of the products above. It is built on the engage.re graph, an architecture in which everything a school records, a pupil, a lesson, an attendance mark, a safeguarding concern, a payment, is held as data that describes itself. The consequence is the thing no MIS vendor offers: the system is not finished when it is delivered. It evolves, and the school is the one that evolves it.
Two capabilities come built in that no school MIS has. The graph records every action automatically in an immutable, signed log, so the KCSIE audit trail and the finance audit trail exist by architecture rather than being assembled under pressure. And because every change to the school's data is measured, the school can see, for the first time, whether what it does actually works: whether the attendance intervention moved attendance, whether the reading programme changed outcomes, with the effort that caused the change identified. That is efficacy, and a stack of separate subscriptions can never show it, because none of them share the data required to see it.
The system runs on secure UK servers the school controls, and the school owns the code outright: no per-pupil renewal, no acquisition that moves you onto a platform you did not choose. The full picture is on the school management software hub.
| System | Best For | Hosting | Census Output | Pricing Model | You Own It? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arbor | Primary, MATs | Cloud-native | Yes | Annual, per-pupil | No, subscription |
| Bromcom | Secondary, attendance | Cloud-based | Yes | Base + per-pupil (published) | No, subscription |
| SIMS Next Gen | Existing SIMS schools | Moving to cloud | Yes | Annual licence | No, subscription |
| iSAMS | Independent, international | Cloud-based | Not applicable (fee-based) | Annual licence | No, subscription |
| Bespoke (ESRE) | Workflows no product fits | UK servers you control | Yes, built to spec | One-off capital cost | Yes, outright |
Whichever destination you choose, the migration mechanics are similar, and getting the timing wrong is the main avoidable risk.
Every option above except one is a subscription, and the running rates vary more than schools expect. Arbor publishes a flat £1,500 a year for a primary and £2,000 for a secondary, so cloud MIS can be genuinely cheap. Bromcom charges a base plus roughly £7 to £11 per pupil, so a large secondary pays more, and legacy SIMS has historically been pricier still. The MIS, in other words, is rarely the big number. The cost that adds up is the stack of separate tools a school runs alongside it, which is the subject of the school software costs guide.
A bespoke system inverts that arithmetic. It is a one-off cost for a system owned outright, with no per-pupil fee that rises as the roll grows and no renewal that scales with the modules switched on. Because it is built on the engage.re graph, the expensive part of conventional software, changing it, is cheap for the life of the system: new functions are added as data in days, by the school itself using the documentation we hand over, so the system keeps growing without the next invoice. We break the numbers down in the school software costs guide.
If you want to see what the bespoke route looks like in practice for a school, the School Management Software hub sets out exactly what a bespoke build covers, what it costs, and how it handles census, KCSIE safeguarding and trust reporting.
For state schools and trusts, Arbor and Bromcom are the two largest cloud alternatives. Arbor became the most used MIS in England in July 2025 and is strong in primary and trusts; Bromcom is strong in secondary and attendance. Independent schools compare iSAMS, Tes Engage and SchoolBase. A bespoke system is a fourth route for schools whose workflows no product fits.
No. SIMS is supported and migrating users from SIMS 7 to SIMS Next Gen. You can stay. Many schools review the market now only because the migration removes the disruption-avoidance reason for staying.
Yes. Pupil records, attendance, SEN, assessment and behaviour data export from SIMS and import into Arbor, Bromcom or a bespoke system. Plan the move around your census and exam calendar, never just before a return is due.
Yes. It produces the census output, holds the same data, and connects the MIS to safeguarding, finance and wraparound care on one architecture the school owns, built on the engage.re graph so a core system stands up in weeks and new functions are added as data in days while the school keeps evolving it itself. See the school software costs guide.
Speak to us about your school system · +44 7494 618 651 · Mon to Fri, 9am to 6pm