CONNECT YOUR SCHOOLS
IT Support for Multi Academy Trusts
Transform your IT networks across your Schools with The AIT Cloud. We provide bespoke IT Solutions to Multi Academy Trust’s which enable cost effective IT that seamlessly links between sites allowing reduced costs as well as collaborative, shared resources.
One IT partner for every school in your trust, wherever in the UK your schools are. AIT delivers the day-to-day support, installations and connectivity that keep classrooms running — and because we build our own platforms, your central team gets trust-wide finance, compliance and support visibility included with our service, not sold on top.
SPECIALIST SOLUTIONS
Strategy, Support, Solutions
We believe that IT Support should go beyond the traditional model of IT Support. Our team will work with your Multi Academy Trust to gain a holistic overview of all aspects of IT within your Trust; infrastructure, network, devices, connectivity and long-term strategic direction. AIT will work with your Trust and Schools to develop a long term IT Strategic Direction that encompasses all aspects of IT across your MAT, ensuring that you’re well-equipped to deal with the ever evolving IT landscape.
That holistic overview is what a trust should expect from a single IT partner. Our helpdesk, field engineers, installation crews and connectivity specialists are all in-house — one contract, one account manager, one team that already knows every one of your sites. From managed IT support and broadband for schools to structured cabling and multi-site security, the people fixing, installing and advising all work for AIT, not a chain of subcontractors.
And because trust leaders need evidence as well as engineering, every AIT trust contract includes our four in-house platforms — AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Atlas and AIT Ordering. They are part of the service, not products sold on top of it. The three your central team will live in are below.
RELATIONSHIPS THAT LAST
We know Multi Academy Trusts
We’ve worked with MATS across the UK to deliver expert solutions which fulfil their requirements and make sure our services are always improving and excelling. For us, it’s about creating a long-lasting relationship across the Trust that filters through to all your schools so we can create a harmonious partnership as your chosen IT provider.
Our team have extensive experience in delivering complex solutions to drive IT to the next level, and will be with you and your team every step of the way. AIT design service contracts around the individual needs of both the Trust and School to ensure that there is continued improvement, and lead the way in providing you with future-proofed solutions.
Trusts do not stand still, and neither does the support around them. When a new school joins your trust, our onboarding team runs a full audit of its infrastructure, connectivity, devices and existing contracts, agrees a day-one support plan with the central team, and brings the school onto the same standards as the rest of your estate — so growth strengthens your IT position instead of diluting it. Every phase of school is covered under one trust agreement: see how we work with primary schools, secondary schools and independent schools.
Every school, one picture: AIT Horizon
Running IT across a trust means answering the same three questions on repeat: what are we spending, where are the risks, and what is the plan? AIT Horizon is the leadership platform we built to answer all three from a single login — and it comes included with your AIT service.
Horizon gives your trust three connected views. The Executive view rolls every school up into one trust-wide picture of finance, compliance and cyber posture, with an academic-year selector so your CFO can flick between this year’s position and next year’s plan in a click. The Schools view drills down to any individual site — a head of school or business manager sees their own budget, their own compliance status, their own actions, and nothing they don’t need. The Support view shows what our team is doing about all of it.
IT Finance, five years out. Horizon’s IT Finance module holds a rolling five-year projection for every school — hardware refresh cycles, software licensing renewals and planned project spend — consolidated at trust level. As an illustrative example: a nine-school trust sees a combined £640,000 five-year projection on the Executive view; drill into a single school and Horizon shows a £48,500 device refresh falling due in Year 3 and £11,200 of software licensing renewing each September. Budget conversations at board level stop being guesswork, because every school’s numbers are built the same way.
Compliance you can evidence. Horizon’s RAG compliance tracker scores every school against the same checklist — filtering and monitoring, backup and disaster recovery, cyber standards and more — so a simple green/amber/red board shows exactly which site needs attention before an auditor or inspector asks. Trust policies live in Horizon too, tracked per school rather than lost in a shared drive. And the strategy roadmap turns your IT vision into a live, per-school delivery plan instead of a PDF that goes stale.
All figures shown are illustrative examples, not live data.
Ask for a Horizon walkthroughFrom quote to classroom: AIT Ordering
Central purchasing is one of the biggest financial wins of trust life — and one of the biggest administrative headaches. AIT Ordering is our procurement platform, included with our service, that gives your central team one place to run purchasing for every school.
Build orders from a trust-approved catalogue, so every school buys the same vetted kit at the same negotiated price instead of thirty browser tabs of alternatives. Every purchase then follows the same visible journey — quote → purchase order → delivery tracking — so a school business manager can see exactly where an order is without emailing anyone. Supplier management sits in the same place, keeping your approved-supplier list and order history together for procurement governance and audit trails.
An illustrative example: your central team raises one quote for 90 devices split across three schools, converts it to a purchase order once approved, and each school tracks its own delivery to its own front door. Committed spend then flows through to Horizon’s IT Finance view, so your five-year projections reflect what has actually been ordered — not what a spreadsheet remembers.
Illustrative demo data
Talk to us about trust procurementSee the service, school by school: Helpdesk Reporting
Every trust has heard a provider insist the service is fine. Helpdesk Reporting exists so you never have to take our word for it. It is our live reporting platform — included with our service — and your trust gets its own filtered view of exactly how support is performing at every one of your schools.
The Executive overview gives trust leaders the whole-estate picture at a glance, with per-trust filters isolating your schools from everything else we do. KPI Insights breaks performance down school by school — response times, resolution times, ticket volumes and trends — so a termly service review compares like with like across your estate. Training insights shows where tickets cluster, highlighting which staff teams would benefit most from training rather than another fix. And the AI Assistant lets a non-technical leader ask a plain-English question — “which school raised the most tickets last half-term?” — and get a straight answer.
For illustration only: a per-school table might show School A resolving 96% of tickets within target and School B at 89%, prompting a conversation about why — an ageing device fleet, a staffing gap, a training need. That is the point: the same numbers we see are the numbers you see, at every weekly or termly review. Our ticket priorities are published, so what “within target” means is never a mystery either.
Dashboard figures are illustrative and static. Your trust's live view sits behind your login.
See how transparent IT support worksSolutions for your Multi Academy Trust
Cloud Solutions
With wholly owned data centres, we can offer a variety of solutions for your Multi Academy Trust to help make learning more collaborative and efficient. We understand that each Trust is unique, and will require a custom service solution which has been configured to meet the needs of your schools. With bespoke architecture designs, we can provide you with ongoing advice, support and strategic planning.
IT Strategy
Regular review meetings and audits make sure that your networks and service stay on track, but it’s important that we look beyond the day to day management and work together to create long-term IT strategies for your Trust; from the current school estate to new onboarding schools. Your dedicated account manager will support your central Trust team in developing and implementing long-term development roadmaps that position your Trust as a forward-thinking innovative organisation with clear IT direction.
A Unified Approach
Thanks to having dedicated internal departments within AIT, we can offer Multi Academy Trusts a truly unified approach to all aspects of IT. From custom designed WAN Infrastructure to integrated multi-site Access Controls, we can develop leading solutions that unify your schools to a fully collaborative solution. With leading partnerships from Microsoft to Paxton, AIT have development a unique network of experts who can implement exciting, cost-effective solutions for your estate.
Onsite & Remote Support
We have an amazing support team at AIT who are on-hand to support your Trust with onsite or remote support as required. Whether that’s weekly scheduled visits for your schools, or a more flexible approach, we’ve gained an agile and dedicated approach as a provider. Our in-house team of technicians can support your staff, and our pro-active support teams solve many IT technical issues before you’re even aware of them. We run a suite of daily checks to ensure your IT is ready for you to hit the ground running, so we keep it in tip-top shape!
Safeguarding & Filtering
The internet is a fantastic tool for students to collaborate, learn and share, and they should be able to explore online safely and securely. AIT have an in-house safeguarding officer who works closely with Smoothwall to ensure that we are always pioneering leading filtering and monitoring solutions for our Trusts and Schools. All our team are extensively trained on Keeping Children Safe in Education, and we encompass this into our solutions. Our monitoring tools come with live safeguarding alerts, including telephone calls direct to nominated contacts and immediate notifications.
Cyber Security
Cyber Security at AIT goes beyond the typical monitoring, backups and disaster recovery solutions. With all the uncertainty and vulnerability surrounding data protection online, there is a need for a service that can empower schools, with the knowledge that they’re safe from cyber threats, and are capable of handling these threats when they present themselves. We believe in educating all users on how to spot malicious attack attempts, and provide expert training for all our clients. From penetration testing to phishing simulations, we stress test your networks, and ensure data is kept safe, compliant and most of all – secure.
Hear What Our Clients Had to Say…
Competitive prices and great service!
As CFO for a Multi-Academy Trust I am always looking for ways to ensure we get best value for money from any procurement. AIT are really transparent when it comes to pricing, and always deliver competitive quotes. Anything we order is always delivered promptly and supported by additional user training and helpful guides.
J Richardson
Experienced & Reliable
AIT support all the schools within our Trust, and their service is always reliable, on time and technicians always try to resolve as quickly as possible. The communications from the central team are always very good, and weekly strategic meetings keep everything on track.
A Adams
They know schools
We’ve worked with AIT for a number of years now for all our networking infrastructure and 3rd line support. They are always quick to react, and on hand whenever we need them. We now have full connectivity throughout our estate of schools. The projects team are always up to date with the latest guidelines and specifications, and their advice and guidance has been invaluable.
M Premdjy
Thorough, comprehensive support.
Advanced IT Services have gone above and beyond for our Trust. AIT were chosen the successful contractor as part of our tender process, and we are thrilled to be working with them. I have worked for various Trusts and organisations over the years, and the teams capabilities have been very impressive. The onboarding process was thorough and our needs diseccted to form a compressive strategy which is now being implemented. I cannot recommend AIT enough.
S Cox
One login for your whole trust
The Customer Portal is your trust’s front door to everything AIT: AIT Horizon for leadership, Helpdesk Reporting for service transparency, AIT Ordering for procurement — and the helpdesk itself for raising and tracking tickets. Behind the scenes, AIT Atlas — the operations platform our own 75-strong team runs on (“Navigate. Manage. Deliver.”) — schedules the engineer visits, projects and installations you see delivered on the ground. One bookmark for every school office, one login for the central team.
IT support for multi-academy trusts — your questions answered
Yes. AIT supports 249 schools across 20 multi-academy trusts UK-wide, and we have been doing this since 2000. Day-to-day cover blends scheduled onsite engineer visits at each school with remote helpdesk support from our 75-strong in-house team, so a school's location changes the travel plan, not the service. Trust-wide platforms like AIT Horizon and Helpdesk Reporting work the same wherever your schools are, because they are cloud-based and come with the contract.
No. All four of our platforms — AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Atlas and AIT Ordering — are built in-house and included with our service, not sold on top of it. There are no per-seat platform licences and no modules held back for an upsell. We design service contracts around the individual needs of both the trust and each school; the platforms are simply how we make that service visible and accountable.
No. Most trusts phase the transition, often school by school or in clusters around term boundaries. We audit each school's infrastructure, connectivity, devices and contracts, agree a day-one support plan with your central team, and add each school to your Horizon dashboard and Helpdesk Reporting view as it comes onboard — so your trust-wide picture builds as the migration progresses rather than appearing at the end. The same playbook covers schools that join your trust later.
Through Helpdesk Reporting, which every trust client gets as standard. Its Executive overview and per-trust filters show support performance for your schools only, and KPI Insights breaks response times, resolution times and ticket trends down school by school — the same data we bring to your service reviews. Our ticket priorities are published, so the targets are as transparent as the results. (The figures shown on this page are illustrative examples, not live data.)
Yes — that is exactly what AIT Ordering is for. Your central team builds a trust-approved catalogue, raises quotes that convert to purchase orders once approved, and every school tracks its own deliveries through the same quote → PO → delivery journey. Supplier management keeps your approved-supplier list and full order history in one place for governance, and committed spend feeds Horizon's IT Finance projections so budgets stay accurate.
LETS TALK
Speak to Us
Ready to embark on your digital transformation? Get in touch with our team for a friendly chat.
Call us on 0115 9170 197 or use the form below — or contact us any time.