School communication platform

What a school communication platform does

A school communication platform is software for the messages a school sends and receives: to and from parents and carers, between staff, and sometimes with governors and volunteers. The school is the data controller for those messages, whichever product carries them, and the ICO’s guidance on official information held in non-corporate communications channels asks public authorities, which include maintained schools and academies, to use corporate channels for official business and to store official information on corporate systems “as quickly as possible” where they cannot. A platform the school chooses is a corporate channel; a teacher’s own phone is not.

Search for a school communication platform and the results mix products built for different jobs:

• Parent apps linked to the management information system (MIS). Letters, newsletters, alerts, trip consent, payments and attendance messages to whole year groups, with contacts drawn from the MIS. Strong at one-to-many.
• Classroom apps. A teacher’s channel to the families in one class, often with photos of pupils’ work and quick chat. Strong at engagement; check who in the school can see the chats.
• Staff collaboration suites. The chat that comes with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, for staff who have school accounts.
• Messaging services built to keep a record. Two-way conversations, including with people who have no school account, held where the school controls them.

Several products span more than one of these. The checks in the rest of this guide apply to all of them.

Start with the conversations, not the feature list

Before looking at any product, list who the school needs to reach and what is said. A typical school has five groups, and each needs something different:

• Parents and carers, one to many. Closures, trips, letters and reminders. Any parent app does this; the differences are reach, cost per message and how well it handles families with several children or separated parents.
• Parents and carers, one to one. A worry about a child, an absence, a complaint that starts as a question. These are the conversations most likely to be needed later, and the ones most likely to happen on a teacher’s own phone today.
• Staff with school accounts. Teachers and office staff can usually use the chat in the school’s existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licence, at no extra cost.
• Staff without accounts. Supply and peripatetic staff, coaches, lunchtime supervisors and volunteers, who are most likely to be added to a staff group on a personal phone.
• Governors. Often on personal email and messaging between meetings.

Pupils are a separate question. Messages between staff and pupils are governed by the school’s own rules, and Keeping children safe in education 2026 expects the staff behaviour policy to cover acceptable use of technology and communications between staff and pupils; our guide to the staff–pupil communication policy covers that boundary. A platform bought for parents and staff should not quietly become a route to pupils.

Ask staff, without blame, which apps they used last week to message parents, colleagues or governors about school matters. The answer is the specification. A platform that carries letters perfectly and leaves the one-to-one conversations on personal phones has solved the easier half.

Check one: the contact list and whether families can reply

A platform is only as good as its contact list. Ask how contacts reach it and how they stay current:

1. A live sync with the MIS, directly or through an integration service the school approves, keeps parents, pupils and relationships current without anyone handling a file.
2. A scheduled import of a contact export from the MIS works, but someone has to own it. Ask what happens when a parent’s number changes, a family leaves, or a contact is removed for a safeguarding reason.
3. Manual lists kept by teachers drift within a term, and they are where the wrong person ends up on the wrong list.

Then ask how a family receives and answers a message. Some products need every parent to install an app and create an account; others reach a family by text message, email or a link that opens in a browser. A platform that needs an app reaches the families who install it, so ask what proportion of parents use it at schools like yours, what happens to a family that never installs it, and what each fall-back text message costs. Ask about families who need messages in another language, and whether a parent with several children at the school, or in more than one school in a trust, sees one thread or several.

Finally, ask whether a parent can start a conversation, or only reply to one, and who it reaches when they do: a named teacher, a role such as the head of year, or the office.

Check two: who sees the replies, and who is protected

Two-way messaging changes the school’s risk. A reply from a parent is a conversation between the school and a family, so the school has to be able to see it, not only the teacher who received it. Ask:

• Oversight. Can the office, a senior leader or the designated safeguarding lead see conversations where the school’s policy says they should, and is that access recorded? Products built around one teacher’s class chat may keep those conversations out of the office’s view by default.
• Personal numbers. Can staff message families without giving out a personal number, and can families in a group message without seeing each other’s numbers?
• Working hours. Can staff set the hours they receive notifications, and can the school set and show an expected reply time, so a message at ten at night does not become an expectation of a reply at ten at night?
• Routing and cover. When a teacher is absent or leaves, who answers their families, and does the history move with the role rather than leave with the person?
• Safety tools. Can a member of staff or a parent report a message, and can the school end a conversation that has become abusive?

Staff will use whichever app is quickest at seven in the morning. Ask three teachers and a member of office staff to try each shortlisted product on their own phones before deciding, and pilot it with the least confident user, not the most enthusiastic.

Check three: the record, data protection, security and cost

Every message on the platform is personal data about families, staff and, often, pupils, and some of it is the first record of something the school may later have to account for. Five questions decide whether the school can.

1. Where is the record, and who sets retention? Can the school search and export a whole conversation, with who said what and when? A subject access request must normally be answered within one month, and the ICO’s right of access guidance makes clear that this includes information held in emails and messages. A maintained school or academy may also have to answer a Freedom of Information request from the same record. Ask whether the school or the product decides how long messages are kept, and what happens to them when the contract ends.
2. What does the contract say? A supplier that holds the messages is a processor, and Article 28 of the UK GDPR requires a written contract that covers its instructions, security, sub-processors and deletion or return at the end. Ask where data is stored and processed, which sub-processors touch it, and whether there are international transfers.
3. Has the school done a DPIA? The Department for Education’s guidance on procuring educational technology reminds schools that “You must complete a DPIA when the processing of personal data is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals”, and messages about children and families usually meet that test. Involve the school’s data protection officer from the start.
4. How are accounts secured? The Department for Education’s cyber security standard expects schools to “control and secure user accounts and access privileges”, including multi-factor authentication on staff accounts that reach cloud services. Ask how staff and administrators sign in, and what independent security certification the supplier holds today, not which it is working towards; check a certificate on the certifying body’s own register.
5. What does it cost in a full year? Prices are set per pupil, per user, per text message, per module or as one flat fee, and some messaging is bundled into the MIS. Count set-up, text message credits, training and the cost of the tools it would not replace.

Write the answers into the DPIA and keep them with the contract. A supplier who cannot say plainly who can read message content, and how the school gets its record back, has answered the most important question.

Where ComplyChat fits, and where it does not

Start with what it is not. ComplyChat is not a direct MIS connector, an absence message in it does not update the attendance register, and it is not for pupils to message each other. If your MIS-linked parent app already carries letters, payments and consent well, keep it: the question ComplyChat answers is where the conversations go.

It is built for the two-way conversations that today sit on staff members’ own phones. On paid plans, a school can point its published number at an open line: a parent or carer who texts it gets one reply with a secure link that opens their own on-the-record conversation, in their browser, with nothing to install and no Microsoft account. Families the school invites join a private line, where every parent or carer gets their own private thread, so families never see each other or each other’s messages, and their phone number stays private from other members. Staff answer in ComplyChat or from Microsoft Teams, and both see the same conversation. A private line can follow a CSV contact list exported from the school’s own system, checked daily, weekly or only on demand. Everyone added to a channel is told it is on the record and can object or leave. Open lines, private lines, guests such as parents and Microsoft Teams all come with paid plans.

On a connected paid plan, conversations are kept in the school’s own Microsoft 365 subscription, under the retention schedules it already runs, and the filed archive stays there if the school leaves. That needs the school’s own Microsoft 365: a school that runs its email and accounts elsewhere would not have that archive. Core messages are stored and processed in the UK, and the supporting services that may process data elsewhere are named on the service providers and locations page. ComplyChat is working towards Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001 certification and holds neither yet; our Why us page says so.

Prices are flat per tier. Foundation: £199/month or £1,990/year, 2 channels. Governance: £599/month or £5,990/year, 10 channels. Enterprise: from £1,500/month or from £18,000/year, unlimited channels. Yearly plans are invoiced in advance. All prices exclude VAT where applicable. No per-person or per-message charges. Setup included. Free is for personal conversations: one private group channel, direct messages and up to 25 people, three calendar months of recent history and no Microsoft 365 archive or Replay; guests, such as parents, and Microsoft Teams belong to organisational plans. If your organisation needs to meet its retention schedules, that needs a paid plan and your own connected Microsoft 365 subscription.

Whatever you choose, take one question to the next senior leadership meeting: when a parent messages a teacher about a worry on a Sunday evening, which system does that message land in, and could the school produce it next year?

Questions people ask

What is the best app for school communication?

The best app for school communication is the one that keeps official business in channels the school controls and suits who is in the conversation, and no single product is best at every job. The ICO tells public authorities, including maintained schools and academies, that “you should always ensure that you use corporate channels for official business” as far as reasonably practicable, and that auto-delete options on instant messaging “should be in line with the retention policies of your official systems”.

What are the best apps for staff communication in a school?

For staff with school accounts, the chat in the school’s existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace licence is usually the right answer, because the school already manages it. The gap is staff without accounts, such as supply staff, coaches and volunteers: the NCSC’s guidance on choosing an enterprise instant messaging solution warns that public sector organisations may need to audit staff communications or answer Freedom of Information requests, and “if data is held within IM applications that don’t permit enterprise audit, you may be unable to comply”.

Do schools need a DPIA for a communication app?

A school should expect to need a data protection impact assessment for a communication platform that carries messages about children and families. The Department for Education’s guidance on procuring educational technology says “You must complete a DPIA when the processing of personal data is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals”.

Can teachers message parents from their own phones?

No law names a phone, but the school is the data controller for those messages and has to be able to find them: the ICO’s right of access guidance includes information held in emails and messages, and a subject access request must normally be answered within one month. Messages on a teacher’s own phone are outside the school’s search, retention and leaver processes, which is why most schools’ policies route contact with parents through a school system.

Official guidance and your next step

Read the Department for Education’s data protection in schools guidance, including its section on procuring EdTech, the digital and technology standards, Keeping children safe in education 2026 for the staff behaviour policy, and the ICO’s guidance on non-corporate communications channels. The NCSC’s guidance on choosing an enterprise instant messaging solution is a good framework for the security questions. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 has amended UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 in stages, so check the date on any ICO or DfE page you rely on.

This is a buying guide for schools in England, not legal advice, and not an assessment of any particular product; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own guidance.

Then do one thing this half-term: list every route by which a parent reached a member of staff last week, and mark which of them the school could search tomorrow. That list is the brief for whatever you choose.