Background
Rookwood is a coeducational "all-through" school of approximately 300 pupils. It functions as three fairly autonomous departments - Pre-Prep (including the Nursery School), Prep and Senior Schools - on the same site. Each has its own office and administrative staff, except that all enquiries and admissions are dealt with centrally by the Senior School office.

The Senior School first admitted boys as recently as September 2003 and the boarding provision has been extended to provide a new boys' House. At the same time numbers in the Senior School are growing and it has been necessary to provide new buildings that not only give extra space but also improve the facilities offered. The last few years have therefore been a time of change for the school.

Five years ago the school had no computerised system either to hold pupil records or to deal with admissions. For the newly-appointed Head, filling this gap was a priority, and within the year the precursor to SchoolBase®; was installed. This was an Access-based system, which has been updated at regular intervals in the intervening four years although to date the school has not wished to consider additional modules. Now there is the need to move to a broader management information system and the full SchoolBase®; suite will be installed, with complete data transfer, during the summer holidays. 
 
Requirements
The School's main priorities are:
a system which is easy to use both for data entry and for retrieving information
a system which will accommodate the “quirks” of a smaller school
a system which will deal equally effectively with the demands of the Foundation Stage Profile and GCSE examination entries  - and everything in-between!
a system which can be flexible as the School continues to change
a company whose staff are knowledgeable, approachable and who understand how a school operates.
 
Quotes from Rookwood School Staff
"Our current system is really easy to use and has been a great asset. You don't realise how much you both use and need the database until the day when the computer network is down and you can't get at it!" Vee Ball - Admissions Secretary

"During the past four years we have come to depend on the pupil database more and more. It has been invaluable in monitoring enquiries and helping us to deal effectively with Admissions. It has also made it much easier to share information across three different offices, thereby saving staff time.

The support we have had from the team at Furlong Business Solutions Ltd (or Logisoft as they were previously known) has been excellent, ranging from staff training to the addition of extra data fields or the provision of new reports - how often has the question been asked "Would it be possible to produce a list of ..?" and the answer has been "Yes". We regard the Furlong staff as colleagues because of their knowledge of schools in general and Rookwood in particular.

The system has been completely reliable and I am sure that we will not encounter any problems with the move over to SchoolBase®;. I am looking forward to the increased functionality it will offer in a number of different areas and particularly to the opportunity to give all the teaching staff access to the report-writing system. I am confident that SchoolBase®; and Furlong Business Solutions will meet our future needs with ease." Margaret Langley - Headmistress
 
 
For more details please contact : Margaret Langley – Headmistress
Telephone:                +44 1264 325 900     
website : www.rookwood.hants.sch.uk