Swift Academies are a Multi-Academy Trust who provide each child with a first class education and a range of extra-curricular experiences. The 3 schools are based in Darlington and as they continue to grow, they approached iTCHYROBOT as WordPress and web specialists to work alongside their CFO and IT department to broaden the skills base available within the trust.

Swift Academies have a well-established internal IT Team who care for the day to day running of the trust IT. Part of their remit was maintenance of the trust and school websites. With ambitious plans, the trust approached iTCHYROBOT to add their skills alongside the IT Team, bringing expertise in areas including specialist WordPress Multisite hosting, marketing, social media management, video production, graphic design, training, content support and web development.

Updates

We are now working alongside Swift and each of their academies to provide continued website, content, digital media production and social media support. We are specialist WordPress experts and we can help manage, fix and update both technical and content queries on the site.

To support the IT Team we created a dedicated support request form for the Swift staff, making it quick and easy for them to get in touch with us. Our 24 working hour response time means that they’re guaranteed to receive updates on their query promptly too, offering additional peace of mind. Our reporting solution has been developed on the Google Platform with Data Studio, providing a live dashboard view of all tickets.

By choosing to expand their department by outsourcing tasks to external specialists, the internal IT team have more time to focus on core IT work and have the reassurance that their website provision is in safe hands. Swift have increased the skills base of their IT department without having to spend additional funds on recruitment and salaries, allowing them to save money whilst acquiring the knowledge and expertise of our team. This includes access to graphic designers, video editors, drone pilots and marketeers.

What We Did

We worked with the Trust, as well as a key contact from each school, to ensure the design was representative of each school’s vision and values.

Every site needed to be easy to use for the school’s staff. Fortunately, our simple back-end system, combined with great training sessions, made it very straight-forward for users to edit content and images. The functionality in the site includes:

• Our Parents’ Evening system which allows schools to quickly and easily set up an entire event, invite parents and teachers and arrange it all online. This is utilised trust-wide.
• Customisable forms, allowing the school to be able to collect any data they need.
• Policy Manager to make it simple to keep policies updated across individual school sites and the Trust as a whole.
• Full training to help admins make the most out of the site.
• Access to our dedicated support inbox and platform, giving them priority for changes or fixes.

What They Think

Since initially working with the Trust over 5 years ago, we have continued to maintain a close bond with the Trust and each individual school. Ironstone Academy Trust have continue to use some of our other services, including branding. We created the Ironstone brand, as well as carrying out a brand refresh for Nunthorpe Primary.

We design all of their signage and school signs too, ensuring the designs remain consistent throughout.

What We Did

We knew how important functionality and accessibility was to the school from both a front- and back-end perspective, so we made sure to utilise our suite of custom-built, schools-focused features and skills, including:

• Our Parents’ Evening system which allows schools to quickly and easily set up an entire event, invite parents and teachers and arrange it all online
• Customisable forms, allowing the school to be able to collect any data they need
• Embedded social media feeds to share the latest news on the website easily
• Policy Manager to make it simple to keep policies updated
• Full training to help admins make the most out of the site
• Access to our dedicated support inbox and platform, giving them priority for changes or fixes

What They Think

Working closely with Benedict Biscop since the launch of their website, they’ve always been over the moon with iTCHYROBOT’s friendly and consistent service. They were ecstatic about the new design and how much it has elevated their online presence and what they’re able to do online.

What We Did

Working alongside Billingham South was an absolute joy. We quickly realised how they’d earned their title as Britain’s first outstandingly happy school! Their excitement was infectious and we knew this would be a special project.

It was decided that the homepage would feature fun videos of the pupils and staff. These help to express exactly how the school feels to attend and are prominent on the home page. We combined this with the joyous rainbow icons, which mirrored their logo, and a lighter version of their old colour, to create an inviting and friendly website.

On top of this, we made sure to include a whole host of our school-focused functionality, including:

• Our Parents’ Evening system which allows schools to quickly and easily set up an entire event, invite parents and teachers and arrange it all online
• Customisable forms, allowing the school to be able to collect any data they need
• Online learning facilities which were vital during lockdowns
• Policy Manager to make it simple to keep policies updated
• Full training to help admins make the most out of the site
• Access to our dedicated support inbox and platform, giving them priority for changes or fixes

What They Think

The school were absolutely over the moon with the website, going on to create even more videos for other areas of the site to carry the branding on themselves! We’ve worked closely with staff there since to deliver additional training and features for the site.

What We Did

Keeping their goal of being friendly and welcoming in mind during the design phase, we incorporated illustrations and playful colours throughout the site.

Combining this fun design with our useful suite of schools-focused features, we created a functional website that fit their design criteria. Functionality included:

• Our Parents’ Evening system which allows schools to quickly and easily set up an entire event, invite parents and teachers and arrange it all online
• Customisable forms, allowing the school to be able to collect any data they need
• Online learning facilities which were vital during lockdowns
• Policy Manager to make it simple to keep policies updated
• Full training to help admins make the most out of the site
• Access to our dedicated support inbox and platform, giving them priority for changes or fixes

What They Think

Since the site launched, we’ve continued to support Ryhope with training and assistance. They were over the moon with the website and continue to make changes to the site themselves thanks to their prior training, and the ease of administrating the site.