Data Navigator for Schools

Data Navigator for Schools is the essential benchmarking and scenario planning tool for independent schools developed by Barnett Waddingham in collaboration with ISBA. Core benchmarking features are provided free of charge to participating schools.

Finance summary

Education ‘product’ summary

Education summary with custom benchmark group

Income - Fees detail page

Forecasting

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Introduction to Data Navigator by ISBA and BW

View a brief (less than 5 minutes) introduction by John Murphie, COO of ISBA, and Allan Engelhardt, Principal at Barnett Waddingham.

A longer version of the introduction with a demonstration is available here: Demonstration and introduction video.

The essential tool for independent schools

David Woodgate, the CEO of ISBA, calls Data Navigator the essential tool for independent schools:

As the business environment and trading conditions for independent schools become more and more challenging, owing to the continuing cost of living crisis, pressures on operating costs, the threat to the taxation position, and pressures exerted by the need to accommodate investment in artificial intelligence and ecological sustainability, schools need to be able to review regularly their financial performance and measure this against schools of a similar type both locally and nationally.

The tool developed in collaboration by ISBA and BW gives schools this ability with the capability of looking at both high level and detailed aspects of your school’s financial performance and to benchmark in an anonymised way again your chosen peer group.

Data Navigator provides a dynamic data dashboard with updated information available whenever it is required and not merely on an annual or termly basis. Displayed graphically, the data is easy to understand to inform decision making and support sensitivity analysis and scenario planning.

In launching this product, ISBA sees it as an essential tool when it comes to accurate predictions for future performance, analysis of past performance, and data-driven and well-informed decision making.

An industry resource

The data collected not only powers the Data Navigator product but is a resource that is also available to ISBA to further its purpose and for the benefit of the whole industry. Over time, this data set becomes a valuable industry resource documenting the changes year on year.

All use is subject to strict confidentiality and strong data protection. ISBA will only use the data in aggregate and the Data Navigator tool enforces minimum size of the comparison groups to preserve commercial confidentiality and anonymity.

Key advantages

This is a joint proposition with ISBA, which means that ISBA has access to the data and will over time build a valuable resource for the industry.
It has been developed with bursars and for bursars and will continue to be developed over the next decades based on bursar feedback. Both BW and ISBA are in this for the long haul.
For the bursars it provides material benefits, including:
- A modern interactive dashboard to explore the data and insights and produce quality graphics for governors and other stakeholders.
- Ability to define your own benchmark groups at the touch of a button. Compare with what is relevant for you while still preserving commercial confidentiality. “No consultants required.”
- Your core forecasting and scenario planning built in for your business plan developments.

We believe it represents a major step forward for the sector.

Note that all the core benchmarking capabilities are provided free of charge to participating schools.