SIMS review

SIMS is a management information system for UK schools. It holds pupil records, attendance registers, behaviour, assessment, exams and census data, and independent schools can add fee billing. A teacher at Lea Manor High School in Luton first wrote it in the early 1980s, Bedfordshire County Council developed it further, and Capita owned it from 1994 until it sold the business to the private equity firm Montagu in a deal announced in December 2020. It now belongs to Education Software Solutions (ESS), part of the ParentPay Group. For decades it was the default MIS in English and Welsh schools, and a great many office staff learned their job on it.

Who it’s for

SIMS suits schools that already run it and want to stay with what their staff know. A data manager who has built census returns, exam entries and behaviour reports in SIMS for ten years carries a lot of knowledge that a switch would throw away, at least for a year or two.

It also suits schools that rely on a local support partner, often a local authority team or a traded service, that knows SIMS well. Ask your partner what they support before you decide anything.

A school choosing an MIS from scratch today will usually compare SIMS with cloud systems such as Arbor and Bromcom, which were built for browsers and phones from the start. Our student information system rankings list other systems to compare.

What it does well

SIMS covers the statutory work in depth. School census returns, attendance codes, exam entries and results, and behaviour records all have mature, well-tested tools, and the people who run them know the quirks. When the DfE changes a census field, there is a large community of data managers and support partners who have already worked out what to do.

The modular design lets a school buy what it needs. A primary might take registration, assessment and the parent app. A secondary will add exams, behaviour, timetabling and options. An independent school can add fee billing.

The integration network is large. Because SIMS was the main MIS for so long, most UK school tools, from cashless catering to homework platforms, already have a SIMS connector. If you switch to a newer MIS, check that every tool you depend on supports it too.

Where it falls short

SIMS 7 shows its age. It runs as a Windows program against a Microsoft SQL Server database, either on a school server or hosted by a partner, and some parts, such as the Nova-T6 timetabling package, are older still. Office staff need Windows PCs, upgrades need planning, and access from a phone depends on separate apps and online services. Compare that with a browser-based system where updates arrive overnight and nobody installs anything.

ESS changed its plans for the next version. It planned a new version, SIMS 8, but a review after the Montagu sale in 2021 found serious technical problems and the company replaced it with SIMS Next Gen, a cloud product. Before you renew, ask ESS which parts of your current SIMS setup are available in Next Gen today, which still need SIMS 7, and what the move will cost and when.

Integration costs other vendors money. Under the ESS partner programme, third-party companies pay a yearly fee to connect to SIMS, while schools with a SIMS licence get free or reduced-price API access.

Pricing

ESS does not publish prices. Schools get a quote based on their modules and pupil numbers, often through a support partner that adds its own support and hosting charges. Get the licence cost, the support cost and the hosting cost as separate lines, and ask how they change if you move to SIMS Next Gen. Our guide to the total cost of school software explains what else to count, including the staff time spent on upgrades.

Privacy and data

Where SIMS 7 runs on your own server, the school controls where the data sits and is responsible for patching, backups and access control. Where a partner hosts it, that partner does those jobs, so the data processing agreement needs to name them. For SIMS Next Gen, ask ESS where it hosts the data, which security certifications it holds, and for its data processing agreement under UK GDPR. We could not confirm those details from ESS’s public pages for this review.

Old SIMS databases tend to hold years of former pupils’ records. Use any migration as a reason to check your retention schedule and delete what you no longer need. Our student data privacy checklist covers the questions to ask.

Verdict

SIMS still does the statutory work of a UK school, and staying put can make sense for a school with an experienced data manager and a good support partner. Its Windows-based core and the coming move to SIMS Next Gen are real costs, so get a clear plan from ESS before you renew. Schools that want a browser-first system with simpler upkeep should compare Arbor and Bromcom.

See the best SIMS alternatives