SchoolStackAsk a school how many apps it uses and the honest answer is usually “we’re not sure”. Teachers sign up for free tools, departments buy their own subscriptions, and old contracts renew automatically. The result is a long list of apps with overlapping features, logins students forget, and student data spread across companies nobody has checked.
An app audit fixes this in a few weeks. Here is how to run one.
Step 1: find every app
You will not find everything from the finance system alone. Use several sources:
- Finance and purchasing. Every subscription the school or district pays for.
- Single sign-on logs. If students sign in with Google or Microsoft, the admin console lists the third-party apps they have connected to.
- Browser extension and app store records on managed devices.
- A short staff survey. Ask teachers to list the apps they use with students, including free ones. Make it quick, and make it clear nobody is in trouble.
Put everything into one spreadsheet with these columns: app name, what it is used for, who uses it, number of active users, annual cost, contract renewal date, whether it holds student data, and whether it has been privacy-checked.
Step 2: group apps by job
Sort the list by what each app does, not by what the vendor calls it. Common groups are:
- Assignments and course materials (learning management)
- Messages to families (parent communication)
- Quizzes and checks for understanding (assessment)
- Behaviour and rewards (classroom management)
- Subject practice (learning apps)
Overlaps become obvious once the list is grouped. It’s common to find two or three apps sending messages home, which means families get notifications from all of them and read none.
Step 3: check usage against cost
For every paid app, work out the cost per active user. Many apps report active users in their admin dashboards. Look for:
- Paid licences for far more users than actually log in.
- Apps used by one teacher, paid for at school level.
- Apps nobody has logged into this term.
Step 4: decide keep, merge or drop
Go through each group and decide:
- Keep. The app is the main tool for its job, it’s well used, and it passed a privacy check.
- Merge. Two apps do the same job. Pick one and plan the move.
- Drop. Low usage, a better option already exists, or it failed a privacy check.
- Allow for individual use. Some niche tools serve one subject well. Keep them, but with a privacy check and no school-wide licence.
When two apps compete for the same job, involve the people who use them. A decision made without teachers will be ignored quietly.
Step 5: retire apps properly
Dropping an app takes more than cancelling the subscription:
- Tell staff the date it will stop, and what to use instead.
- Export any data you need to keep, such as student work or grades.
- Ask the vendor to delete student data, and get confirmation in writing.
- Remove the app from single sign-on and managed devices.
Step 6: keep the list current
An audit only helps if it stays up to date. Put two things in place:
- A published approved-app list that teachers check before signing students up. Our privacy checklist covers what to check before an app goes on it.
- A yearly review a month before most contracts renew, so cancellations happen in time.
What you get from it
Schools that finish an audit usually end up with fewer logins for students, fewer messages for families, lower spending on unused licences, and a clear record of where student data lives. Teachers also get a clear answer to “which app should I use for this?”, which saves everyone time.