iSAMS review

iSAMS is a cloud-based management information system for independent and international K-12 schools. Alumni of Rugby School founded it in 2005, and it has been part of IRIS Software Group since 2020. iSAMS says more than 1,800 schools and school groups in over 95 countries use it, and it has an office in Sydney. It covers pupil records, registers, gradebooks, reports, timetabling, admissions and fee billing, with a parent portal and apps for parents and teachers.

Who it’s for

iSAMS fits fee-paying schools. The parts that state-school systems treat as extras, such as admissions, fee billing, bookings for clubs and wraparound care, and internal exams, are central to it. A prep school that wants to take an online application, invoice the family each term, book them into parents’ evenings and send end-of-term reports can do all of it from one system.

It also suits international schools and groups with campuses in several countries. iSAMS sells into Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Australia and New Zealand as well as the UK and Europe, so a group with schools in Dubai and Singapore can run the same system in both.

UK state schools have less reason to choose it. Systems such as Arbor and Bromcom are built around state-school funding, census and multi-academy trust work, while iSAMS leans towards the independent sector.

What it does well

The MIS is split into managers, each handling one job. Registration Manager takes attendance and sends alerts to staff, pupils and parents. Gradebooks hold marks and feed them into School Reporting, which produces interim, end-of-term and annual reports. Internal Exams Manager runs the school’s own exam cycles, Timetable Manager builds and publishes the timetable, and Census Manager handles government censuses and sector surveys.

Admissions is a strong area for a fee-paying school. Admissions Manager tracks each enquiry through to a place, and the Admissions Cloud Portal gives families a school-branded online application form. Once the child starts, Fee Billing Manager handles bills and invoices, so the bursar does not have to re-key family details from a spreadsheet.

The apps cover daily use. iTeacher lets staff take registers, look up a pupil’s profile and check their timetable and cover from a phone, which helps on a boarding-house evening or a sports fixture away from a desk. iParent shows parents attendance, exam results, timetables and reports, and the Parent Portal gives the same information on the web.

iSAMS offers REST and public APIs and an integrations marketplace, so catering, library, learning platform and fundraising tools can read from the MIS instead of keeping their own copy of the pupil list.

Where it falls short

All those managers take setup. A new school has to configure registration periods, gradebook templates, report layouts, fee structures and permissions, and decisions made in a rush before go-live are hard to unpick later. Give your data manager time and training, and test the setup with one year group before go-live.

The product range has grown into many separately listed areas, including bookings, communication, wellbeing, finance, HR and payroll, payments and analytics. That gives a school choice, but it also makes quotes harder to compare. Ask exactly which areas your price covers.

International schools that need data kept in a specific country should check carefully. iSAMS says it runs on Microsoft Azure with multiple geographic server locations, but its public pages do not say which region a given school’s data uses.

Pricing

iSAMS does not publish prices. Schools book a demo and receive a quote based on pupil numbers and the products they choose. Ask for the cost of each module, migration from your current MIS, training, and annual increases. Our guide to the total cost of school software covers the costs that are easy to miss.

Privacy and data

iSAMS says it holds ISO 27001:2022 certification from BSI and meets the UK Cyber Essentials standard. It describes the platform as fully cloud-hosted on Microsoft Azure, with hourly backups kept onsite and offsite. Its privacy notice says it acts as a data processor for schools’ data and lists sub-processors including Azure for hosting, Zendesk for support and SendGrid for email. It says it will not sell, distribute or lease personal information to third parties without permission or a legal requirement. IRIS publishes the customer data processing terms on its website.

The public pages do not say which Azure region holds your school’s data, so ask for it in writing, especially if local law requires data to stay in your country. Our student data privacy checklist lists the other questions to ask.

Verdict

iSAMS is a good choice for independent and international schools that want admissions, fee billing, reporting and parent apps in one cloud system. Plan the setup carefully and confirm where your data will be hosted. UK state schools and trusts will usually be better served by Arbor or Bromcom, and schools that want one record across admissions, development and academics should also look at Veracross.

See the best iSAMS alternatives