Ideas from building a school platform.
Writing on school operations, data and security — the decisions behind the product, and what running a school actually demands of software.
What we write about.
If one of these is a live question at your school, ask it directly — you will get a considered answer rather than a link.
Why one record per student matters more than any feature
The argument for a connected record: what a school can see when attendance, fees and results describe the same child, and what it cannot see when they do not.
In progress
The ninety-second register
Attendance is taken thousands of times a term. Every extra click is multiplied by every class, every day — so register design is an operations problem, not a UI preference.
In progress
What bursars actually need to see
Collection against expectation, arrears that are worth chasing, and the difference between a report that looks thorough and one that supports a decision.
In progress
Capabilities beat role bundles
Why "Teacher" is a poor unit of permission, how capability-based access lets a school invent its own roles, and the escalation trap that has to be closed.
In progress
Tenant isolation you can prove
Enforcing isolation at the data layer rather than in the interface, and how to write a test that actually demonstrates one school cannot reach another.
In progress
Configuration over customisation
Every school is different. The choice is whether that difference lives in settings or in a private branch of the codebase — and only one of those scales.
In progress
Get these as they publish.
No sequence, no drip campaign — an email only when there is genuinely something worth reading.
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