Rollout walkthrough
An international school running two curricula
How a rollout sequences when a school runs more than one curriculum, and why the assessment model rather than the student count is the difficult part.
What this is, and what it is not
This is a composite, not a customer story. It describes how a rollout typically goes for this kind of school, drawn from implementation experience across several. No school is named, no figures are attributed to a customer, and nothing here is presented as a measured outcome. Named case studies appear on this page only with written consent and stated measurement methods, and none are published yet.
The school described: Around 1,200 students across two sections, two curricula with different assessment models, tuition billed in a local currency.
Starting position
What brings a school like this to look for a platform
The presenting complaint and the underlying condition are usually different things, and the difference decides the sequence.
The complexity is not the enrolment figure. A school of 1,200 is not meaningfully harder to configure than one of 600. The complexity is that two assessment models coexist, each with its own grading scale, weighting, and reporting format, and a student can be counted in one section while taking a subject taught in the other.
Most platforms handle one curriculum well and the second by approximation. The approximation usually surfaces at the first reporting cycle, when a report card has to express two grading scales without implying an equivalence between them that the curricula themselves do not recognise.
The second recurring issue is currency and payment. Tuition is billed locally, families pay locally, and a gateway priced and settled for another market turns a routine collection into a treasury question.
Sequence
What moves when, and why that order
Each phase states the reason it cannot sensibly come earlier or later. The reason matters more than the phase, because your school will need a different order for at least one of them.
- EvaluationStep 1
Prove the assessment model, not the feature list
Before signature, require a demonstration that generates a report card for a student in each curriculum against your actual templates, and a third for a student taking a subject across sections. Do not accept a description of how it would work.
Why here: This is the requirement most likely to be answered optimistically and most expensive to discover afterwards. Every other capability can be worked around for a term; a reporting model that cannot express your curriculum cannot.
- Term oneStep 2
Foundation with both structures represented
Configure the year, terms, and class structure for both sections, including subject option groups that cut across them. Import students with their section and curriculum recorded, not inferred from their class.
Why here: Inferring curriculum from class placement works until a student takes one subject elsewhere, at which point every downstream aggregation is wrong for that student and correct for everyone else — which is the hardest kind of error to notice.
- Term one, parallelStep 3
Local currency collection
Complete gateway merchant onboarding for a gateway that settles in your billing currency, configure fee structures per section, and run a full test cycle including a refund.
Why here: Merchant onboarding has an external lead time the school does not control. Starting it in parallel with foundation work rather than after it is the difference between a fee cutover that happens on schedule and one that slips a term.
- Term twoStep 4
Timetable across sections, then portal
Build the timetable including cross-section option groups, verify that a student taking a subject in the other section appears on the correct register, then open the portal.
Why here: The cross-section case is the one that breaks registers, and it breaks them quietly. Verify it deliberately with a named student rather than assuming a correct timetable produces correct registers.
- Term threeStep 5
Reporting per curriculum
Generate a full cohort per section against the real templates, verify aggregates by hand, and confirm that a cross-section student’s report expresses both scales without inventing an equivalence.
Why here: A full cohort surfaces the students who sit outside the common pattern. A sample of five never contains them, which is why sample-based sign-off is how reporting problems reach parents.
Friction
What reliably goes wrong
Not risks in the abstract. These are the things that recur, so they can be planned for rather than discovered.
Grading scales get flattened
The common failure is a platform that stores one grading scale and maps the second onto it. It appears to work until a report card implies that a grade in one curriculum equals a grade in the other. Test this explicitly with a real student and a real template.
The cross-section student
One student taking one subject in the other section is the single most reliable way to find the seams. Identify that student during evaluation and use them as the test case throughout.
Two offices, two conventions
Sections that have operated semi-independently have divergent conventions for names, admission numbers, and fee heads. Reconcile these before import, or the platform faithfully preserves both conventions forever.
Gateway onboarding is the critical path
It is external, it takes weeks, and it is nobody internally’s job until it becomes urgent. Start it first and assign it to a named person.
Limits
What a platform does not fix for this school
Stated because the alternative is a school discovering it in term two.
- It does not reconcile the two curricula. Where they genuinely disagree about how attainment is expressed, a platform records both faithfully rather than resolving the disagreement.
- It does not remove the need for section-level judgement at reporting time. Someone still decides what a cross-section student’s report should say.
- Single sign-on against a school identity provider is not available, so staff accounts are managed in the platform rather than centrally.
- Automated messaging over SMS or WhatsApp is not available. Notifications go out over email, and anything else is sent by a staff member.
An international school running two curricula: common questions
What schools in this position ask before committing to a sequence.
Is a second curriculum a configuration change or a limitation?+
It depends entirely on whether the platform models curriculum as a first-class property of a student or infers it from class placement. Ask which, and then ask to see a student who breaks the inference. That single question separates platforms more reliably than any feature matrix.
Should the two sections go live together?+
Usually yes for foundation and fees, because they share a roster and a finance function, and staggering them means running two conventions in parallel. Reporting can reasonably stagger, because the templates are genuinely separate work.
What about accreditation reporting?+
Ask specifically, during evaluation, with your actual accrediting body’s format in hand. It is a narrow requirement, it is frequently absent, and it is not something to discover in the term it is due.
Does enrolment size change the plan?+
Less than schools expect. The sequence for 1,200 students across two curricula is the same as for 600 across one, with more verification at each step and more people to train. Curriculum count drives complexity; student count drives duration.
Go deeper
Related planning material
Describe your own starting position
Tell us what your data looks like and which term you need to be live in. We will tell you what is realistic, including when the answer is not this year.
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