As the academic year begins to draw to a close, Double First Ltd is pleased to announce its most successful year to date, with continued growth from both the UK and International school markets.

Having spent considerable time developing its Engage school information management software, Double First has seen an increased demand as more and more schools recognise the importance of an effective school Management Information System (MIS).

Incredible Team

Commenting on the growth, Piers du Pré, Group Chairman, was very happy. “The core of Double First’s success is based in the staff. An incredible team which has worked tirelessly to propel Double First Engage into being the leading school information software for independent and fee-paying schools.

“It hasn’t been an easy project for them,” Piers continued, “but their development plan was, and still is, created by listening to schools telling us what’s important to them.

“In particular, we liaise regularly with our group of Development Partners made up from a group of progressive UK schools, which share their views on the developing needs of school management software. This is a major influencer of the development plan.”

Double First Development Partner Programme

For the last few years, Double First Ltd has worked very closely with a selected number of UK schools to understand both the strategic direction school software needs to take, as well as the immediate requirements in real school environments.

This has meant lengthy discussions with Heads, Bursars and other members of the Senior Management Team, as well as listening to other school staff who use the various features of the school software every day.

The result is having a school information management software today, but which is always being kept in step with schools strategically, whilst being continually improved to be more intuitive and straightforward to use.

Changing the approach to school software

Richard Jones, Group Sales Director, explained how the continued development has changed the way many schools approach their school software. “On the one hand, we’ve recently introduced ‘Group Engage’ to enable larger groups to have a complete dashboard view of all their schools.

“On the other hand,” Richard continued, “we’ve changed various screen layouts very subtly to make the software much easier for all school users, while also providing a web-portal for remote access to enable more flexibility in home-working. It’s all about listening to schools and adapting to suit them.”