AIT Horizon: the leadership dashboard for school and trust IT
See your whole IT picture. Finance, compliance and strategy — one dashboard.
AIT Horizon gives headteachers, business managers and trust leaders a single, clear view of everything we look after for you: what your IT costs, where it stands against national standards, and exactly what the next five years should look like.
It isn't software we sell. Horizon is included with our school IT support service — one of the four platforms every AIT school gets as standard, because we believe leaders shouldn't have to chase their IT provider for answers they should already have.
Trusted across the UK
Built by your IT support team, not a software company
We're a UK-wide school IT support provider first. Support, installations and connectivity are what we do all day, every day — and Horizon exists because the schools we support kept asking the same fair questions: What are we actually spending on IT? Are we compliant? What's coming next year?
Rather than send another spreadsheet, we built the answer into our service. Every school and trust we support gets Horizon included — no licence fee, no add-on, no upsell. It's simply how a modern IT partner should report to the leaders it serves.
If you're comparing school IT support providers, this is the difference to look for: not a bigger brochure, but a partner who shows you your own data, keeps it current, and plans ahead with you. Horizon is included with our service, not sold on top.
See how Horizon fits into our IT support for schools.
One dashboard, three views
Horizon shows the right level of detail to the right people. Three views, one consistent picture.
Executive view
Designed for CEOs, CFOs, headteachers and governors. A top-level summary of spend, compliance status and strategy progress across your whole school or trust — the five-minute read before a board or governors' meeting. No jargon, no ticket noise, just the position and the plan.
Schools view
For trusts and federations: drill into any individual school. Compare an academy's device estate, budget position and standards compliance side by side with its sister schools, so central teams can target support and funding where it's needed most.
Support view
The operational layer for school business managers and IT leads: the detail behind the headlines — device inventories, licence registers, policy documents and the working data that keeps day-to-day decisions grounded in fact.
IT Finance: know your numbers, five years out
The IT Finance module turns your IT estate into a financial plan a bursar can actually use.
Five-year projections. Horizon holds your full hardware inventory with age and expected lifespan, then projects replacement costs across the next five years. Instead of a nasty surprise in Year 3, you see it in Year 1 — and can smooth the spend across budgets. For example, a two-form-entry primary might see that 32 classroom laptops and two interactive panels fall due for refresh in the same year, around £21,500 — so Horizon lets leaders bring half the laptop refresh forward a year and split the cost across two budgets. (Figures illustrative.)
Hardware refresh planning. Every device is tracked against its refresh cycle. Horizon flags what's ageing, what's out of warranty and what's simply not worth repairing — so replacement decisions are planned, not reactive.
Software licensing. Renewal dates, per-pupil costs and overlapping subscriptions in one register. Schools regularly discover they're paying twice for tools that do the same job; Horizon makes duplication visible before renewal, not after.
When it's time to act on a refresh plan, the journey continues in AIT Ordering: quote, purchase order and delivery tracking in one place, against a curated education catalogue — so the plan in Horizon becomes kit in classrooms without a paper chase.
Illustrative data
Financial reports your board will actually read
Horizon generates clear, board-ready financial reports: annual IT spend summaries, cost-per-pupil breakdowns, budget-vs-plan comparisons and refresh forecasts. Export them for finance committees, trustees and governors — or walk through them live in a termly service review with your AIT account contact.
Because the reports come from the same data we use to support you day to day, there's no re-keying, no version confusion and no "we'll get back to you". The numbers are already there.
Trust-level finance is a core part of our work with multi-academy trusts.
RAG standards tracker: compliance at a glance
Green, amber, red — that's all a governor should need to see.
Horizon's RAG compliance tracker maps your school against the standards that matter in education IT — including the DfE's digital and technology standards for broadband, wireless, switching, cabling, cyber security and filtering & monitoring — and shows each one as a simple RAG status with a plain-English note on what would move it to green.
For safeguarding leads and governors, that means filtering and monitoring compliance evidence is on hand when Ofsted or your safeguarding review asks — not buried in an inbox. For trust leaders, the Schools view rolls RAG status up across every academy, so central teams can see which sites need attention before an audit finds out first.
Read more about safeguarding and filtering and cyber security for schools.
Policies, stored where leaders can find them
Acceptable use, online safety, data protection, disaster recovery — Horizon keeps your IT-related policies in one place, with review dates tracked so nothing quietly expires. When an inspector, auditor or new governor asks for a policy, it's two clicks away, not a search through shared drives.
Strategy Roadmap: a five-year plan, kept alive
Most school IT strategies are a PDF that's out of date the day it's approved. Horizon's Strategy Roadmap is different: a living plan, tied to your real inventory and your real budget.
The roadmap lays out your priorities — infrastructure, devices, cyber security, digital learning — across a five-year timeline, with each initiative costed from the IT Finance module's projections. As work completes, the roadmap updates; as budgets or DfE guidance change, we re-plan it with you. Leaders always know three things: what's done, what's next, and what it will cost.
An illustrative trust roadmap might show: Year 1 — wireless upgrade across three schools (£48,000); Year 2 — begin a rolling staff device refresh (£35,000/yr); Year 3 — cyber accreditation across all sites; Years 4–5 — classroom AV renewal, smoothed at roughly £30,000 a year. Every line is a conversation we have with you, not a target we set for you. (Figures illustrative.)
The roadmap is the deliverable at the heart of our IT vision and digital strategy service.
Illustrative data
One of four platforms — all included
Horizon is one of four platforms we've built in-house for the schools we support. Together they cover leadership, service transparency, delivery and procurement — and every one is included with our service, not sold on top.
AIT Horizon
The leadership dashboard: Executive, Schools and Support views, IT Finance with five-year projections, RAG compliance tracking, policies and the Strategy Roadmap. (This page.)
Helpdesk Reporting
Full transparency on the support you receive: an Executive overview, KPI Insights and Training insights, per-trust filters so central teams see every school, and an AI Assistant to interrogate your own support data in plain English.
AIT Atlas
Our internal operations platform — people, projects, schools and technology managed in one system, from CRM and engineer rotas to fleet and HR. "Navigate. Manage. Deliver." You benefit every time an engineer arrives on time with the right kit and the full history of your site.
AIT Ordering
Procurement without the paper chase: browse a curated catalogue, raise a quote, convert it to a purchase order and track delivery to your door — with supplier management handled by us.
See all four together on our platforms hub.
Who Horizon is for
Multi-academy trusts
Roll up finance, compliance and strategy across every academy; drill into any school in two clicks.
Primary schools
A clear, jargon-free picture for heads and business managers who wear ten hats — with budgets planned years ahead, not termly firefighting.
Secondary schools
Standards compliance, device estates at scale and a costed roadmap SLT can take to governors.
Independent schools
Finance-first views for bursars: cost per pupil, licensing control and five-year capital planning that stands up to scrutiny.
Already with us?
Horizon lives in the Customer Portal — your one login for all four AIT platforms: Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Ordering and support access.
Frequently asked questions
It's included. Every school and trust on an AIT support agreement gets Horizon as standard, along with Helpdesk Reporting and AIT Ordering. We don't licence our platforms separately or sell them on top of a contract — they're part of how we deliver IT support for schools across the UK.
Horizon is built on the live inventory, licensing and compliance data we maintain for the schools we support, so it's only available as part of our service. If you'd like to see what that looks like for your school or trust, get in touch or call 0115 9170 197 and we'll walk you through it with example data.
We hold a complete, continuously maintained inventory of your hardware and software. Horizon applies expected lifespans and refresh cycles to that inventory and projects replacement and licensing costs across the next five years. You see the peaks before they arrive, and we help you smooth them — bringing some refreshes forward, pushing others back — so spend stays predictable. All projections are planning figures, reviewed with you at service reviews.
The tracker maps your estate against the DfE's digital and technology standards — including broadband, wireless, switching, cabling, cyber security and filtering & monitoring — alongside your own policy review cycle. Each item shows a simple red/amber/green status with a plain-English note on what's needed to reach green, and trusts can view RAG status per school or across the whole group.
That's up to you. Typically, heads, CEOs, CFOs and governors use the Executive view; trust central teams use the Schools view to compare academies; and business managers or IT leads work in the Support view. Access is granted per person through the Customer Portal, and we'll set roles up with you at onboarding.
Ready to see your whole IT picture?
Since 2000 we've grown to support 249 schools and 20 trusts across the UK with a 75-strong team — and every one of them has Horizon included. Book a walkthrough and see your finance, compliance and strategy the way your leaders should: on one dashboard.