Schools searching this usually have an IB-aware system already and are weighing a change on breadth, on price at their size, or on how much of the school still sits outside it. These are the questions worth putting to every vendor on the list, us included.
Written for: IB schools evaluating whether one system can cover curriculum, assessment, reporting and the operational side without four separate contracts.
We do not publish feature claims about other companies' products. We have not audited them, and a comparison table we wrote about someone else's roadmap would be out of date within a term. Everything below describes skodle, and every question is one you should ask us and them.
Questions to ask every platform on your shortlist
Including us. If a vendor cannot answer one of these plainly, that is itself the answer.
Evaluation questions, what skodle answers, and how to judge the answer you get from any vendor including ManageBac
What to ask every vendor
skodle's answer
How to check any answer
Does it model your curriculum, or just store documents about it?
Linked records, so coverage is counted
Ask them to run a coverage report live, not show a planning screen
Does assessment reach the report card without anyone retyping it?
Marks flow to reports; no second entry
Watch someone enter one mark, then open the report it lands in
Does it cover the operational school as well as the academic one?
One record across academic and admin
Ask how many times a new child's name is typed on day one
Can it run more than one campus without merging them?
Campuses compared, delegated, rolled up
Ask to see two campuses compared, and one delegated admin
Does the AI act, or does it draft for a person to approve?
Drafts only; a named human approves
Ask who is recorded as the approver, and where that record lives
Can you prove what happened, months later?
Append-only audit on 150+ actions
Ask to see one real audit entry and the fields it carries
What happens to your data if you leave?
Full export or erasure, one admin action
Ask for a sample export file during the trial, not a promise
Who can see a given child's record?
Scoped by role and by what you teach
Ask them to sign in as a parent and try to reach another family
Can you evidence an authorisation or inspection visit without a scramble?
Evidence mapped all year; run a report
Ask to see last year's evidence, not a blank template
What does it cost as the school grows?
Per seat, three tiers, all features included
Ask for a written quote at double your current roll
Will it work with the systems you already run?
Modelled; needs your credentials to go live
Ask for a demo against your own SIS, with your data
We do not fill in a column for ManageBac — we have not audited their software. The last column is the next best thing we can honestly give you: how to test the answer, whoever it comes from. Use it on us too.
Why each question mattersThe questions in full
1.Does it model your curriculum, or just store documents about it?
A folder of unit planners cannot tell you which concepts a year group has actually met. If the structure only exists inside the documents, every coverage question becomes a manual audit.
In skodle: skodle links a programme of inquiry to concepts, to units, to the learning experiences that carry them. Because the links are real records rather than text in a template, coverage is counted rather than asserted, and a gap detector can show you which parts of the framework nothing currently touches.
How to check any answer: Ask them to run a coverage report live, not show a planning screen
2.Does assessment reach the report card without anyone retyping it?
Re-entry is where marking time goes and where errors enter. If the gradebook and the reporting tool are separate systems, someone rebuilds the same data twice a term.
In skodle: Marks entered against a rubric or MYP criterion flow into portfolios, progress reports and transcripts without a second entry. Report comments can be AI-drafted from the same records, and a teacher edits and approves them before anyone else sees a word.
How to check any answer: Watch someone enter one mark, then open the report it lands in
3.Does it cover the operational school as well as the academic one?
Admissions, fees, attendance, behaviour and staff records end up in separate systems, and the student's identity is duplicated across every one of them.
In skodle: Admissions and enrolment, fees, timetabling and attendance, behaviour, library and staff records are modules of the same platform as planning and assessment, working from one student record rather than a copy of it.
How to check any answer: Ask how many times a new child's name is typed on day one
4.Can it run more than one campus without merging them?
A group that reports as one school loses the ability to compare campuses honestly; a group that runs separate instances loses the ability to report at all.
In skodle: Campuses are a real dimension in skodle. Performance can be compared campus by campus, administrators can be delegated to a single campus, and group-level reporting rolls up without flattening the underlying data.
How to check any answer: Ask to see two campuses compared, and one delegated admin
5.Does the AI act, or does it draft for a person to approve?
AI that sends messages, marks work or writes to a child's record without review moves professional judgement out of a teacher's hands and leaves nobody accountable for the outcome.
In skodle: Every AI output in skodle is a draft with a named human approver. The grading assistant writes to a suggestion record and has no path to the awarded mark. The student tutor guides towards the next step instead of supplying answers, and a message that reads as distress gets a fixed reply and a flag for staff rather than a model-generated one.
How to check any answer: Ask who is recorded as the approver, and where that record lives
6.Can you prove what happened, months later?
Safeguarding questions, data-protection requests and inspection findings all arrive after the fact. Without a trail you are relying on memory.
In skodle: skodle writes an append-only audit record for over 150 distinct actions, including who read a child's tutor transcript, who exported a record and who was refused access to something above their role. Each entry carries the actor, the role, the time and the address it came from.
How to check any answer: Ask to see one real audit entry and the fields it carries
7.What happens to your data if you leave?
The answer determines whether this decision is reversible. A platform that makes export painful has made your next evaluation for you.
In skodle: A full export of an individual student's record is a single admin action, and erasure is a separate one with its own confirmation and audit entry. Both exist because data-rights requests are a legal obligation, not a feature we would like to sell you later.
How to check any answer: Ask for a sample export file during the trial, not a promise
8.Who can see a given child's record?
In a school this is a safeguarding question before it is a technical one, and vague answers usually mean 'more people than you think'.
In skodle: Access is scoped by role and by what a member of staff actually teaches, and every school's data is isolated from every other school's at the query level. A parent portal shows one family their own child and nothing belonging to another.
How to check any answer: Ask them to sign in as a parent and try to reach another family
9.Can you evidence an authorisation or inspection visit without a scramble?
Evidence assembled in the fortnight before a visit is evidence about the fortnight before the visit.
In skodle: Artefacts are mapped to standards as they are created through the year, so the evidence for an IB authorisation, a Cambridge review or a CBSE inspection is a report you run rather than a folder you build.
How to check any answer: Ask to see last year's evidence, not a blank template
10.What does it cost as the school grows?
Per-student pricing and per-module pricing behave very differently at 400 pupils versus 1,400, and the difference usually surfaces at renewal.
In skodle: skodle is priced per seat across three tiers, with the cap set per account. The modules are not sold separately, so adding reporting or portfolios later is not a new line on the invoice.
How to check any answer: Ask for a written quote at double your current roll
11.Will it work with the systems you already run?
A platform that cannot read your student information system becomes a second place to type the same names.
In skodle: skodle models connections to student information systems, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, payment providers and messaging tools, and the connection management is built. Moving live data requires your provider credentials, so treat this as a setup conversation during evaluation rather than something that works the moment you sign in — ask us to demonstrate it against your own stack.
How to check any answer: Ask for a demo against your own SIS, with your data
Where ManageBac may suit you better
You would be moving an IB school off a platform built for IB schools, with years of programme data in it. If your coordinators are happy and your evidence questions are answered, the honest advice is to stay.
We would rather you read that here than discover it three months in. If it describes your school, say so on the call and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth continuing.
Before you move anything
This list is useful whoever you choose, and we would rather you had a clean migration to someone else than a bad one to us.
Get your historical report cards and transcripts out first — they are the records families and universities will ask for years from now.
Establish where alumni and past-student data will live, and under what consent.
Check how each system prices at your actual roll, not at the bracket above or below it.
Agree which system is authoritative for the student record during any overlap period. Two sources of truth is the expensive failure mode.
Test a full reporting cycle in the new platform before you retire the old one.
Common questions
Can skodle produce transcripts for university applications?
Yes. Transcripts and progress reports are generated from marks teachers have already entered, using the format the relevant curriculum expects, and they carry forward across academic years and terms.
How does skodle handle a group of schools?
Campuses are modelled explicitly. You can assign students and staff to a campus, give an administrator authority over one campus only, compare campuses on the same measures, and report at group level without merging the records.
Is student data from one school ever visible to another?
No. Every record is scoped to its school at the query level, and we test that boundary directly rather than assuming it: the current cross-tenant isolation suite runs 21 checks against a second school's admin credentials aimed at real record identifiers.
How is skodle priced?
Per seat, across three tiers, with the seat cap set per account. Modules are not licensed separately, so the scope of the platform does not change as your invoice does.
See it against your own curriculum
Bring a unit you already teach and an export from whatever you use now. Thirty minutes, run by someone who has taught the programme.
