EVOLVE has transformed the school’s approach to managing trips, clubs and payments. By centralising processes, reducing administrative burden and improving safeguarding and parent engagement, the system has become an essential part of daily school operations.
Overview
Woodhouse Grove School is an innovative independent day and boarding school situated in a 70-acre campus between Bradford and Leeds. Diane Tanner, Office and Health & Safety Manager, sought a more efficient and reliable way to manage school trips, clubs and payments. With multiple disconnected systems causing administrative strain and gaps in information, the school turned to EVOLVE to centralise processes, improve safeguarding and enhance parent engagement.
The Challenge
Before adopting EVOLVE, the school relied on several systems that didn’t integrate with one another. This created a number of issues:
- Time-consuming administrative work to extract and cross‑reference information
- Risk of overlooking key details due to fragmented data
- Lack of a single, reliable source of truth for trip, club and payment information
The team needed a centralised platform that could bring everything together and provide consistent, accessible information for staff and parents.
Why EVOLVE?
The school chose EVOLVE because of its flexibility and scalability. The modular design meant they could start with core features and expand their use of the system as their confidence and understanding grew.
Key deciding factors included:
- Add‑on modules to support future development
- A unified system for trips, clubs and payments
- MIS integration for accurate, up‑to‑date student information
Implementation
EVOLVE was introduced through web‑based training sessions for staff responsible for organising trips. Once staff were confident, parents were onboarded to use the system for booking and paying for trips and clubs.
The transition was smooth, supported by EVOLVE’s help team, and staff quickly adapted to the new processes.
Initial Reactions
As with any change, there was some initial apprehension among staff and parents. However, familiarity grew quickly, especially as EVOLVE became the central platform for payments, clubs and trip bookings. The school community now uses the system confidently and consistently.
Benefits and Impact
Since adopting EVOLVE, the school has seen significant improvements:
- Operational Efficiency
- Reduced administrative workload
- Faster access to key information
- Uniform trip setup, including medical details, consent and risk assessments
- Safeguarding & GDPR Compliance
- Up‑to‑date medical and contact information pulled directly from MIS templates
- No need to download or store paper copies from multiple systems
- Quick visibility of student attendance for out‑of‑hours activities
- Financial Improvements
- Easier tracking of payments
- No missed collections
- More timely and accurate financial management
- Parent Engagement
- Parent uptake has been extremely positive. Families now expect to book and pay for clubs, trips and school shop items through EVOLVE, demonstrating strong trust and satisfaction with the system.
What Impressed Them Most
Diane highlighted two standout aspects:
- The ease of transition
- The responsiveness and support of the EVOLVE help team