What 7,000 Schools Leaving SIMS Tells Us About The Future of Education Technology
The UK’s MIS market is experiencing something unprecedented. Not a shift. Not a trend. An exodus.
SIMS has lost nearly 7,000 schools in just four years 44% of their entire customer base. Their market share has collapsed from 67% in 2021 to just 40% today. Thousands more three-year contracts are set to expire in March 2025, and schools must give notice by the end of December if they don’t intend to renew.
We’re witnessing the largest upheaval in UK education technology history.
The Scramble for Market Share
Arbor gained 764 schools in a single term. Bromcom’s market share jumped from 9% to 15% in 2024-2025 alone. According to WhichMIS data, 26% of all UK schools are actively considering changing their MIS provider in the next 12 months.
The mainstream MIS providers are fighting tooth and nail for those schools. Marketing budgets have exploded. Sales teams are working overtime. Everyone wants to be the “post-SIMS solution.”
But here’s what’s being lost in all the noise
Not one of these mainstream providers was built specifically for Alternative Provision and SEND.
The AP & SEND Blind Spot
Let me be direct: mainstream MIS systems were designed for mainstream schools. They handle mainstream workflows, mainstream attendance patterns, mainstream reporting requirements.
Alternative Provision? Special Educational Needs? Those were afterthoughts. Features bolted on later. “Yeah, we can do SEND too” checkboxes on feature lists.
And that creates real problems:
For AP Providers:
- Generic systems don’t understand dual registrations properly
- Referral workflows require manual workarounds
- Multi-site tracking is clunky at best
- LA reporting for AP-specific data becomes a manual nightmare
- The new February 2025 AP guidance requirements? Most mainstream systems aren’t ready
For SEND Settings:
- EHCPs scattered across multiple platforms
- Provision mapping requires separate systems
- Outcomes tracking is manual and time-consuming
- Complex attendance patterns don’t fit the “mainstream” model
- Safeguarding data integration is fragmented
The Result? You’re using 5+ different systems to compensate for what your “all-in-one” MIS can’t actually do.
The Census Nightmare
Ask any AP or SEND school administrator about census time, and you’ll hear about late nights, multiple system exports, and manual data reconciliation that mainstream schools simply don’t face.
Mainstream MIS systems handle mainstream census requirements reasonably well. But AP-specific data collections? SEND-specific reporting requirements? That’s when the spreadsheets come out. That’s when your team works late into the night manually manipulating data exports.
Because mainstream systems weren’t built to handle the complexity of your world.
The Real Cost
Let’s talk about what this actually costs you not in money, but in time.
Your staff are:
- Logging into multiple systems daily
- Manually entering the same data in different places
- Building reports from scratch every time the LA makes a request
- Chasing data across fragmented platforms
- Working weeks to prepare submissions that should take minutes
That’s not administrative work. That’s a full-time job being stolen from supporting students.
When 40,000 teachers quit in 2023, with many citing administrative overload as a key factor, we need to ask: how much of that burden comes from using systems that weren’t designed for the work they’re being asked to do?
March 2026: The Perfect Storm
Here’s why December 2025 matters so much:
If your SIMS contract expires in March 2026, you need to give 3-months’ notice if you don’t intend to renew. That means decisions are happening right now. Over the Christmas period. At the same time, you’re trying to wind down for the year.
And schools are making those decisions in a landscape that looks very different from three years ago:
- The mainstream MIS market is in chaos
- New AP guidance brings additional compliance requirements
- Staff are burnt out from administrative overload
- Generic MIS systems are showing their limitations
The question every AP and SEND leader should be asking:
“If I’m going to switch anyway, why would I choose another mainstream system that treats my requirements as an edge case?”
What Purpose-Built Actually Means
There’s a difference between a system that “can handle SEND” and a system that was purpose-built for AP and SEND from day one.
Purpose-built means:
- Dual registrations aren’t a workaround, they’re a core feature.
- AP referral workflows are native to the system, not jury-rigged.
- SEND provision mapping is integrated, not a separate module.
- Census submissions understand AP-specific requirements automatically.
- Safeguarding data flows naturally because that’s how it was designed.
- Staff training takes hours, not weeks, because the workflows match how you work.
Purpose-built means understanding that “attendance” means something completely different in an AP setting than it does in a mainstream primary school.
Purpose-built means the system adapts to your work, not the other way around.
The Specialist Alternative
At Bitnet Solutions, we watched the mainstream MIS market evolve over the past decade. We saw SIMS dominance give way to new challengers. We saw Arbor, Bromcom, Integris, and others fight for market share.
And we saw that every one of them was fighting for mainstream schools.
So, we made a different choice: we built EDART exclusively for Alternative Provision and SEND settings.
Not as an adaptation of a mainstream system. Not as a “we can do AP too” add-on. As a purpose-built platform that understands your world from the ground up.
The result?
Over 300 users across AP and SEND settings have made the switch to EDART. Tasks that took their teams weeks now take minutes. Five different systems have been replaced with one unified platform. Staff who dreaded census time now get it done in a fraction of the time.
But more importantly: they’re spending their time on what matters. Supporting students. Not fighting their MIS.
The Decision You’re Facing
If your contract is expiring in March 2026, you’re facing a decision right now.
You could choose one of the mainstream providers fighting for your business. You’ll get a system that handles the basics reasonably well. You’ll probably need to supplement it with additional platforms. You’ll likely spend considerable time working around its limitations. But it will work, sort of.
Or you could ask yourself:
“What if there was a system built specifically for how AP and SEND settings actually work?”
What Comes Next
The UK MIS market is going through its biggest transformation in history. 7,000 schools have already left SIMS. Thousands more will make switching decisions in the coming months.
But for AP and SEND schools, this isn’t just about joining the migration from one mainstream system to another.
This is about asking whether you deserve better than hand-me-down technology designed for a different world than the one you work in.
The answer should be obvious.
About the Author
This article was written by the team at Bitnet Solutions, creators of EDART the only MIS platform built exclusively for Alternative Provision and SEND settings.
Working with AP and SEND schools across the UK, we’ve learned what happens when you give professionals tools designed for their actual workflows rather than adaptations of mainstream systems.
If your MIS contract expires in March 2026 and you’re tired of fighting systems that weren’t built for your world, let’s talk.
Visit our website or connect with us here on LinkedIn to learn how EDART is helping AP and SEND schools replace weeks of administrative work with minutes of actual productivity.
#EdTech #MIS #AlternativeProvision #SEND #EducationLeadership #SchoolManagement #EdArt #BitnetSolutions #UKEducation
The Great MIS Exodus isn’t just about market share. It’s about whether the education technology sector finally recognizes that AP and SEND schools deserve purpose-built solutions, not mainstream hand-me-downs.