St Clare’s, Oxford, choose iTrent to build a modern HR and payroll platform

The largest section is the International Baccalaureate (IB) 6th form, but the school also runs courses for adults in the fields of University Foundation, English as a Foreign Language and as a centre for students wishing to complete modules from degrees in their own country in an English environment.

They also run courses in how to teach the IB as well as training educators in how to teach English as a Foreign Language (Celta). In addition, it runs its own summer courses primarily for students of any age wishing to improve their English language skills.

To help deliver value to their students, St Clare’s started to evaluate how they were handling their HR and payroll systems. Like many others educational institutions, they faced unique challenges around their HR and payroll, with a lot of manual oversight required. This added a lot of work and stress to their payroll team. Pensions were a particular concern, as there was a large amount of variance between different employees with different contracts.

With a strong reputation among the education sector, particularly in independent schools, iTrent can be customised to account for highly complex payroll and pension needs. This is what drew St Clare’s towards MHR. In addition to the HR and payroll package, which has ensured different pensions can easily be organised from a single source of data, they also chose a few other modules to enhance even more key procedures.

For example, they also selected a BusinessObjects subscription. The team can now build any custom report they may require, analysing data at a granular level. This combines with Single Central Record (SCR) reporting, meaning the school can easily produce a report from a secure database, in line with legislative standards whenever they are audited.

All of this will result in much stronger security, as all the data can be held in one centralised and secure location.

Richard Edwards, Financial Controller, St Clare’s said: “We have had an exceptionally professional experience from the team at MHR throughout the entire process. They confirmed their reputation and expertise in the education sector to us. This certainly made our decision to use iTrent an easy one, and we’re delighted to see how our trust is paying off.”

Anton Roe, CEO, MHR said: “iTrent has an extensive and strong reputation within the education sector. While this is what drew St Clare’s to us, our track record of consistent delivery of innovative products, aimed at supporting our customers, has helped St Clare’s make their decision. We look forward to working with them as they optimise their day-to-day HR operations.”