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 SIMS 7, the on-site product schools have run for decades, to a cloud platform called SIMS Next Gen. Existing users are being moved 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 real choices. Arbor, Bromcom, the independent-school systems, and a system of your own. It compares them on the four things that decide an MIS. Readiness for the cloud, the move itself, the census return, and the cost over five years.
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The shorthand version that circulates in staffrooms is out of date, so it is worth setting the facts down plainly.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 is the same everywhere. Schools are leaving old on-site software for cloud platforms. SIMS lost the first place 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. One argument for SIMS was that people knew it. Staff knew the screens, and the local authority gave support around it. That argument now applies to more than one product.
SIMS Next Gen is the cloud successor to SIMS 7. The product is being rebuilt for the cloud through 2026. Access moved to a new home.sims.co.uk gateway in January 2026. The spring 2026 school census is planned as the last one in SIMS 7. Later returns move 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. A move from SIMS 7 to Next Gen brings new screens, staff who must learn them again, and connections that must point somewhere new. That is most of the cost of moving to a different system. That is why review activity has risen. The question has changed. It is no longer whether a move away from SIMS is worth the trouble. There is trouble either way, so the question is where 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 was built for the browser, and not changed later to fit it. That shows in trust reporting. A multi-academy trust can see attendance, behaviour and pupil data added up across every school, without an export from each one. It covers the main MIS jobs a state school needs. The census return, attendance, behaviour, assessment and messages to families. Arbor also took on the users of ScholarPack and Integris, two primary products. Both close during 2026 and their schools move into Arbor.
The limitation is the same as its strength: it is a product, with a product's assumptions. A school with an unusual way of working changes to fit Arbor. Arbor does not change to fit the school. The hardest secondary timetabling and cover work often still needs a specialist tool next to it.
Best for: Secondary schools and trusts that prioritise attendance management and live data.
Bromcom has worked in schools for more than thirty years. It runs in the cloud. It has a strong name 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 prices are among the clearest in the market. Bromcom publishes a base charge plus a rate for each pupil. You can therefore budget for it without a sales call.
Its limit is reach. Fewer schools use it than Arbor or SIMS, so fewer staff already know it and fewer other companies build around it. Both numbers are growing.
Best for: Independent and international schools outside the state census and funding framework.
An independent school needs different things. Fee billing instead of the DfE census. Admissions on its own dates. Boarding management. Inspection by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, and not by the usual Ofsted rules. 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: a school or trust that wants one system it owns and can keep growing. Not a product whose limits a vendor sets.
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. We build it on the engage.re graph. Everything a school records is held as data that describes itself. A pupil, a lesson, an attendance mark, a safeguarding concern, a payment. 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 writes every action to a signed log that nobody can change. The KCSIE audit trail and the finance audit trail are therefore already there. Nobody has to build them in a hurry. Every change to the school data is measured. The school can therefore see whether its work changes anything. Did the attendance work move attendance? Did the reading programme change results? The system shows which effort caused the change. 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. The school owns the code outright. There is no per-pupil renewal, and no sale of the vendor that moves you to 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.
Schools are not leaving SIMS because the screens are old. They are leaving because the data is locked to one product, and every other tool in the school holds its own copy.
That is what makes the move expensive. The pupil record must be mapped again for each system. Every join between products must be built again. The work is the same whichever product you choose next.
A system on engage.re holds each record type once, in a shared dictionary, with a permanent identifier. Attendance, finance, safeguarding and catering all read the same pupil. There is no second copy to map.
That also decides what the next move costs. The school owns the code, the data and the instance, so it can leave without asking. We explain why that changes the whole software market in what does an interoperable software market look like. We set out what a system of your own costs to run in what does it cost to own and run your own systems.
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 fee plus about £7 to £11 for each pupil, so a large secondary pays more. The old SIMS has usually cost more again. The MIS, in other words, is rarely the big number. The cost that grows is the set of separate tools a school runs next to the MIS. Our school software costs guide covers it.
A bespoke system inverts that arithmetic. It is a single cost for a system you own outright. No per-pupil fee rises with the roll. No renewal grows with the number of parts you switch on. Changing software is the expensive part of an ordinary system. On the engage.re graph it stays cheap for the life of the system. A new function is added as data in days, by the school itself, from the documents we hand over. The system keeps growing without the next invoice. We break the numbers down in the school software costs guide.
The School Management Software hub shows what a build of your own looks like in practice. It sets out what the build covers, what it costs, and how it handles the 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. It is strong in primary schools and in trusts. Bromcom is strong in secondary schools and in 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 makes the census return and holds the same data. It joins the MIS to safeguarding, finance and wraparound care in one structure the school owns. It sits on the engage.re graph, so a core system is ready in weeks. New functions then arrive as data in days, and the school keeps adding them itself. See the school software costs guide.
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