MIS Support for Schools — Arbor, Bromcom and SIMS
Your Management Information System holds everything that matters: pupils, attendance, behaviour, assessment, safeguarding records, census returns. When it slows down, breaks, or needs to move to a new platform, the school stops with it.
AIT provides MIS support and migration for schools and trusts across the UK — Arbor, Bromcom and SIMS — delivered by the same team that already looks after school networks, servers, broadband and devices. Because your MIS never fails in isolation, and neither should your support.
Trusted by schools across the UK
Why get MIS support from your IT partner, not another supplier
Most MIS problems aren’t really MIS problems. A census return that won’t submit, a sync that silently stops, a login screen that hangs at 8:45am — the cause is just as often the server underneath, the broadband connection, the browser policy, or the integration in the middle. A standalone MIS helpline can only see one piece of that picture.
One team, whole picture.
Our engineers support the MIS and the infrastructure it runs on. When something breaks, there’s no triangle of blame between your IT company, your MIS supplier and your broadband provider — one call, one team, one fix.
Education-only, since 2000.
We work exclusively with schools and trusts. Census week, results day, admissions rounds and Ofsted calls are our calendar too — so support is planned around the moments your MIS matters most.
Support first, always.
MIS help is part of how we support schools day to day — not a bolt-on product with its own invoice and its own queue. If we already provide your IT support, your MIS questions land with people who know your school.
Support for every major school MIS
Arbor support
Arbor is now one of the most widely used cloud MIS platforms in England, and moving to the cloud changes what “MIS support” means: fewer server worries, more questions about workflows, permissions, integrations and getting real value from the data. We help school office teams and leaders with day-to-day Arbor queries, user and permissions management, single sign-on, third-party app connections, census preparation and staff training — plus the network and device environment Arbor depends on to run smoothly in every classroom and office.
Bromcom support
Bromcom's strength is breadth — MIS and finance in one cloud platform, which is exactly why trusts choose it and exactly why setup decisions matter. We support schools and MATs running Bromcom with configuration, reporting, user management, integration with the rest of your software estate, and the connectivity and hardware that keep a fully cloud MIS responsive at the front desk. For trusts standardising on Bromcom across multiple schools, we help plan the rollout school by school so no site is left mid-move at census time.
SIMS support
Thousands of schools still run SIMS, and it still needs looking after properly: server health, database backups, patches and upgrades, FMS, and the annual rhythm of census returns and end-of-year procedures. We keep on-premise SIMS environments healthy and secure, support hosted SIMS setups, and — when the time is right — help you weigh up staying put against moving to a cloud MIS. No pressure towards a migration you don't need; no scrambling when you decide you do.
MIS migration: SIMS to Arbor, SIMS to Bromcom — done properly
Changing MIS is one of the biggest operational changes a school can make. Done well, it’s a fresh start. Done badly, it’s a lost term. Our migration service manages the whole journey:
Scoping and selection support.
We help you compare platforms against how your school actually works — not against a sales demo. Honest, vendor-neutral advice on Arbor, Bromcom and staying with SIMS.
Data audit and cleansing.
We review what's in your current MIS before it moves. Duplicate records, incomplete contacts and years of accumulated clutter get cleaned up now — not imported into your new system.
Infrastructure readiness.
Cloud MIS platforms live and die by your connectivity. We check broadband capacity, wireless coverage and device readiness before go-live, so the new system is fast from day one. (See broadband for schools.)
Migration and parallel checks.
Data is transferred, then verified against the source — pupil records, attendance history, assessment data and safeguarding-critical information checked before anyone relies on it.
Integrations rebuilt.
Cashless catering, parental engagement apps, safeguarding software, library systems, timetabling — every connection re-pointed and tested against the new MIS.
Training and go-live support.
Office staff, SLT and teaching staff trained on the workflows they'll actually use, with hands-on support through the first census and first reporting cycle on the new platform.
As a guide, a single-school migration typically runs over one to two terms from decision to settled go-live, timed around census dates — we’ll give you a real plan for your school, not a generic timeline. (Timeframe illustrative; every migration is scoped individually.)
The systems around your MIS
A modern MIS sits at the centre of a web of connected services, and most day-to-day frustration lives in the joins. We support the whole chain:
Single sign-on and identity
staff sign in once, securely, across MIS, email and cloud platforms. (See AIT Cloud.)
Parental engagement and payments
apps and payment systems fed cleanly from MIS data.
Safeguarding systems
record-keeping tools that depend on accurate MIS pupil data, alongside our safeguarding and filtering service.
Cashless catering and library systems
kept in sync so pupils aren't locked out at lunchtime.
Timetabling and cover
data flowing both ways without manual re-keying.
Connectivity underneath it all
cloud MIS means no internet, no MIS. Our broadband and network services are built for that dependency.
MIS support for every kind of school
Primary schools
small office teams who need answers fast, not a call queue. We're the phone-a-friend for every MIS question, big or small.
Secondary schools
complex timetables, options, exams and assessment demand deeper MIS expertise and rock-solid infrastructure underneath.
Multi-academy trusts
standardising your MIS across the trust? We plan and deliver phased migrations school by school, and support the estate centrally afterwards.
Independent schools
admissions, billing and parent communication workflows that go beyond the state-sector standard setup.
How MIS support works day to day
MIS support is delivered through the same helpdesk that handles everything else we do for your school — one number, one ticket system, engineers who can see your whole environment. Existing customers raise and track MIS tickets through the Customer Portal, alongside every other request. Issues are prioritised by impact (see our ticket priorities) — a school-wide MIS outage on census day is treated very differently from a report-formatting question, and both get the response they deserve.
MIS support FAQs
Both. Many schools are moving to cloud MIS, but thousands still run SIMS — and it deserves proper support, not end-of-life neglect. We maintain on-premise SIMS environments (server, database, backups, upgrades, FMS) and support hosted SIMS, for as long as SIMS is the right choice for your school. When you're ready to consider a move, we'll give you honest, vendor-neutral advice.
As a rule of thumb, allow one to two terms from decision to settled go-live for a single school — scoping, data cleansing, migration, integration rebuilds, training and post-go-live support, timed to avoid census pinch points. Trust-wide programmes are phased school by school over a longer period. Every school gets a specific, dated plan before anything moves. (Timeframes illustrative — we scope each migration individually.)
No, and this is exactly why migrations need doing properly. Core records transfer to the new platform and are verified against the source before go-live. Where the new MIS structures historic data differently, we agree with you what transfers, what's archived securely and retrievably, and how statutory retention requirements are met — before migration day, not after.
MIS support works best as part of a full support relationship, because so many MIS issues are really network, server or connectivity issues underneath — that’s the whole point of getting it from your IT partner. Talk to us about how you’re supported now and we’ll recommend the right shape; start with our IT support for schools page or call 0115 9170 197.
Yes — this is one of the most common projects we run for multi-academy trusts. We audit what each school runs today, help you select a single platform against trust-wide requirements (central reporting, finance, growth plans), then deliver a phased migration programme so every school moves at the right moment in its own year — with central visibility for the trust team throughout.
Talk to us about your MIS
Whether you need day-to-day support for Arbor, Bromcom or SIMS, or you’re planning a move between them, start with a conversation — no obligation, no sales script.
Call 0115 9170 197 or speak to our team.