Trust and procurement
Ask the questions that survive implementation
Use evidence-led trust pages to turn vague procurement promises into specific controls, owners, deployment checks, and contractual questions.
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Start with the page closest to your decision
Each page includes workflow steps, responsible teams, implementation detail, boundaries, evidence links, and FAQs.
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Schoolyi security architecture
Review authentication, role-based access, data boundaries, sessions, audit visibility, and operational controls before rollout.
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Data residency and backups
Where a Schoolyi deployment actually stores school data, what the backup does and does not cover, and the recovery questions we cannot answer for you yet.
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DPA and subprocessors
The full list of third parties a Schoolyi deployment can send data to, which of them are optional, and which are off unless you switch them on.
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Availability and support
What the product gives you for monitoring and scheduled jobs, which of those jobs you must wire up yourself, and why there is no uptime figure on this page.
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Accessibility for school portals and public pages
Evaluate keyboard access, readable content, mobile layouts, form errors, contrast, and family support across public and portal journeys.
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School software procurement questionnaire
A practical questionnaire for evaluating school software across workflows, data, security, implementation, support, and total cost.
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How to use this directory
Guidance before you pick a page
Read this first if you are not sure which page answers your question.
Turn assurances into specifics
Procurement language in this sector is unusually vague. "Enterprise-grade security", "fully compliant", and "bank-level encryption" are not claims that can be verified or contracted. The useful version of each is a specific control, a named owner, a location, and a retention period.
These pages convert common assurances into the questions that have a checkable answer, so a security review produces evidence rather than adjectives.
Student data raises the stakes
A school holds minors’ identity data, guardian contact details, attendance patterns, assessment records, medical notes, and sometimes safeguarding information. That combination attracts a higher standard than a typical business application, and in many jurisdictions a legal one.
Ask where data is stored, who can access it in support scenarios, how access is logged, what happens on contract termination, and how a data subject request is handled operationally rather than in policy.
Ask what the platform does not do
A vendor willing to state its boundaries is easier to trust than one that answers yes to everything. Roadmap items presented as current capability are the most common source of post-contract disputes in school software.
Each trust page distinguishes what exists today from what is planned, and we would rather lose a deal on a boundary than fail an implementation on one. Our own pages name several: there is no single sign-on and no multi-factor authentication, group reporting does not aggregate across campuses, and the backup that ships is a rollback aid rather than a disaster-recovery plan.
Apply the same test to us that you would apply to anyone else. Ask for the specific control, ask when it was last verified, and treat any answer that arrives as an adjective rather than a fact as an unanswered question.
Questions about this directory
How to use these pages during an evaluation, and what they deliberately do not claim.
What security questions should a school ask a software vendor?+
Where is data hosted and in which jurisdiction; who at the vendor can access production data and under what approval; how is that access logged; how are passwords stored and what authentication options exist; what is the backup schedule and has restore been tested; what is the breach notification commitment; and what happens to your data if the contract ends.
Record the responsible administrator and verify the control in the target deployment before production data is loaded. Keep the evidence with the school’s procurement or access-review record.
What should a data processing agreement cover?+
The categories of personal data, the purposes of processing, the list of subprocessors with notice of change, transfer mechanisms if data crosses borders, security measures, assistance with data subject requests, breach notification timelines, audit rights, and deletion or return of data on termination.
Record the responsible administrator and verify the control in the target deployment before production data is loaded. Keep the evidence with the school’s procurement or access-review record.
How do we verify claims rather than accept them?+
Ask for the artefact rather than the statement: the backup restore test date, the subprocessor list, the access log sample, the penetration test summary, the incident response runbook. A vendor that has done the work can produce a document; a vendor that has not will offer reassurance.
Record the responsible administrator and verify the control in the target deployment before production data is loaded. Keep the evidence with the school’s procurement or access-review record.
Is a certification enough evidence?+
A certification tells you a scope was audited at a point in time. Read the scope statement, check the date, and confirm the audited systems are the ones your school will use. Certification is useful supporting evidence and a poor substitute for the specific answers above.
Record the responsible administrator and verify the control in the target deployment before production data is loaded. Keep the evidence with the school’s procurement or access-review record.
What happens to our data if we leave?+
Establish this before signing: the export formats available, whether historical records are included, how long the vendor retains data after termination, how deletion is confirmed, and whether export assistance carries a fee. Exit terms agreed at the start cost nothing; exit terms negotiated during a dispute cost a great deal.
Before the first collection cycle, reconcile one paid, partially paid, and overdue student account so the family receipt and finance view agree. Keep any tax, gateway, refund, or accounting boundary as an explicit deployment decision.
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