Every school that has bought educational software has at least one subscription nobody uses. It was demonstrated impressively, approved enthusiastically, used for a few weeks and quietly abandoned when the person driving it got busy.
That pattern is consistent enough to be predictable, and it is rarely about the software being bad. It is about questions that were not asked before the invoice, and every one of them is answerable in a single meeting.
What problem is this solving, in one sentence?
If the answer is a category — "it's for assessment", "it's for engagement" — the purchase has no success condition and therefore cannot fail visibly. It will simply fade.
A usable answer names something specific that is currently going wrong: reports take a fortnight to compile, nobody can tell which students are behind until the end of term, marking a particular subject is unsustainable. Those can be checked in a term.
Who owns it, and what are they giving up?
Every system needs someone responsible for setup, data, accounts and the questions that follow. That person almost always already has a full timetable.
Naming them is not enough — the question is what comes off their plate to make room. A system whose owner has no time is a system that will run for as long as their goodwill lasts, which is usually about half a term.
Name the specific problem, name the owner and what they are giving up, confirm it works on the devices and connection the school actually has, ask what happens to your data if you leave, and run a time-boxed pilot with one department before committing the whole school.
Does it work on what we actually have?
Demonstrations are given on good hardware over a good connection. The relevant test is the school's own laboratory machines, the teachers' own phones, and the connection on a Tuesday afternoon when everyone is online.
Ask specifically whether it works offline or on an intermittent connection, and what happens to work in progress when the connection drops. If the answer is vague, test it before buying rather than after.
| Ask | A weak answer | What you want |
|---|---|---|
| What does it fix? | "Assessment and engagement" | A named problem you can check in a term |
| Who runs it? | "The ICT teacher will help" | A named person with time freed up |
| Will it run here? | "It's cloud-based" | Tested on your devices and connection |
| What about our data? | "It's secure" | Written terms on ownership and export |
| What is the real cost? | A per-student price | Renewal terms, training and increases |
| How do we stop? | "You won't want to" | An exit and an export in the contract |
Who owns the data, and can you get it out?
A school putting student records into a platform is handing over information about children. That raises two separate questions: who may access it, and whether you can retrieve it in a usable form if you leave.
Ask for the answer in writing rather than in conversation, and ask specifically what format an export comes in. Data you can only see inside the product is data you do not really have.
What is the cost after the first year?
Introductory pricing, discounted first years and free pilots are normal. What matters is the renewal figure, how far it can rise, and what is excluded — training, support, additional users, the module the demonstration actually showed you.
A subscription is a recurring commitment against a budget that has other claims on it. It should be assessed on the three-year cost, not the first invoice.
Ask the teachers who would use it
Purchasing decisions are usually taken by leadership after a demonstration given to leadership. The people whose week the system will change are often shown it once it has been bought.
Put it in front of two or three teachers from the department that would use it and ask them a plain question: would you use this every week, and what would you stop doing to make room? Their answer predicts adoption far better than the demonstration does, and it is free to obtain.
Pilot it small, with a real end date
One department, one term, with the success condition written down before it starts and a date to decide on. That is a cheap way to find out what a full rollout would cost in staff time.
The end date is the part that gets dropped, and it is the part that matters. A pilot with no decision point becomes a rollout by default — which is exactly how schools end up with subscriptions nobody chose and nobody uses.
