A management information system (MIS) outage at a major supplier has left schools unable to pay suppliers, run after-school clubs and respond to safeguarding concerns.
Leaders say the problems with the Bromcom system have also left them without access to timetables and prevented them from completing everyday tasks within working hours – with one MAT boss calling the situation a “car crash”.
The company has apologised for the start-of-term issues, but admitted it is unsure how many schools have been hit.
‘Simply not acceptable’
A Bromcom “status page” shows the incident impacted the company’s MIS cloud between September 4 and 9. Two days were hit by “100 per cent severe degradation”, with the system “degraded” for more than nine hours on two others.
The system was also listed as being offline for periods – but Bromcom stressed the system has “remained online” over the “four working days”. The page shows the MIS cloud has been “100 per cent operational” since Wednesday.
Sharples School in Bolton sent parents its formal complaint letter to Bromcom.
The letter said “poor and unreliable” service was having a “major impact on the day-to-day running” of the secondary. The school’s ability to “respond to safeguarding concerns logged on the system” was also impacted.
“As you will appreciate… we rely heavily on Bromcom for these functions, and not being to access the system is simply not acceptable.”
A boss at a trust whose schools were also impacted called the situation a “car crash”.
Pupils and staff were unable to access timetables online and were unable to print hard copies.
Meanwhile, one headteacher said staff were working early in the morning and into the evenings to rectify issues.
An ‘annual’ problem
Their school also decided to postpone after-school clubs, as parents were unable to book slots online.
“We haven’t been able to pay suppliers or raise the right invoices. We’ve had suppliers on our backs. It’s more the reputational damage – it reflects badly on us.”
A senior trust leader elsewhere said attendance teams had suffered the “single biggest hit”.
The chain was uncertain who was absent “until much later in the day and we’re having to tally which children have hit thresholds for home visits”.
The trust was also unable to contact parents to notify them their child had a medical incident.
“The bigger worry [is] this is becoming an annual problem as we faced the same chaotic issue this time last year. It’s just not good enough.”
Staff have added scores of posts to Reddit and EduGeek pages, with some sharing images of the error messages they received when trying to use the system.
‘We’re sorry’
Simon Walters, Bromcom’s chief operating officer, stressed that the platform was “now stable”, but the company continued to “closely monitor” the situation.
“We sincerely apologise for the disruption,” he said.
“Safeguarding is hugely important to us, and we deeply regret the strain this issue has placed on the affected school staff, pupils and the wider community, specifically at the start of the academic year.”
A notification sent to schools last Thursday said one of Bromcom’s “servers developed a serious fault”, which caused some “instability”.
The company would not say why the outage happened, but added that it was “working on a full root-cause analysis” and would tell customers and stakeholders its findings “within the next seven days to both restore confidence in the platform and to ensure it doesn’t happen again”.
The cause was “different” to the issues at the start of last year, even though “the disruption/impact is similar”.
Market shift in MIS world
The emergence of cloud-based suppliers such as Bromcom has led to big changes in the MIS world, estimated to be worth about £200 million.
Bromcom’s market share has risen to 16 per cent, analysis by the Bring More Data blog suggests, with accounts for 2024 showing the company’s turnover soared 50 per cent to £32 million. Net profit also rose 75 per cent up to £3 million.
Nick Finnemore, a consultant who used to work for SIMS, another supplier, said schools were now so reliant on these systems that “when they do go down it has a massive impact”.
“Schools need to be aware that anything can happen with software. For the high-risk, important processes, they should make sure they have a way continuing to do [them] without relying on the MIS solely.”
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