The transition from traditional SIMS to SIMS Next Gen is entering an important phase, with ParentPay Group indicating that its programme to recreate SIMS functionality within its cloud-native platform is approaching completion.
SIMS has offered cloud access since 2022 and, according to ParentPay Group, more than a third of SIMS schools now access the system through the cloud. Alongside this, the company has been progressively developing cloud-native versions of existing SIMS functionality through its Next Gen programme.
ParentPay Group says SIMS Next Gen now provides around 80% of the functionality available within SIMS, alongside newer capabilities such as Class View and Group Hub. The stated target is for Next Gen to incorporate all existing SIMS functionality by the end of 2026.
What is already available?
SIMS Next Gen and the existing SIMS platform share data in real time, allowing schools to introduce Next Gen functionality progressively rather than undertaking a conventional MIS data migration.
Functionality already available within Next Gen includes:
- analytics and insights;
- student and staff records;
- assessment;
- attendance;
- behaviour;
- statutory returns;
- seating plans and classroom management;
- intervention management; and
- course management.
Recent additions include Group Hub, aimed particularly at MATs and school groups, providing aggregated reporting and centralised policy management.
A new Pupil Overview brings together information including attendance, conduct, assessment, interventions and safeguarding, while the new Interventions functionality enables schools to establish starting points and targets, monitor participation and attendance and evaluate outcomes.
A Pupil Communications Log has also been introduced, bringing pupil-related communications into one location. ParentPay Group says this will subsequently be integrated with its Schoolcomms parental engagement platform.
Further Census functionality has also been released, with schools now able to undertake Census activities within SIMS Next Gen.
What comes next?
Several further developments are identified for release during 2026.
These include enhanced Attendance Management, allowing administrators to manage unauthorised absences, enter attendance marks for individual pupils or groups and identify incomplete registers.
For secondary schools, Post-16 Programme of Study and Course Management is due to follow the Exam Seating functionality released earlier in 2026.
Another potentially significant development for secondary schools is Nova T6 integration, which is scheduled for September 2026.
These developments form part of the wider objective of reaching functional parity between SIMS and SIMS Next Gen by the end of 2026.
What about 2027?
The detailed 2027 SIMS roadmap has not yet been published.
However, ParentPay Group has indicated that the next stage will move beyond reproducing existing SIMS functionality and introduce additional capabilities.
Artificial intelligence is one area specifically identified for development, with plans to use AI to automate tasks and generate insights. The company says AI functionality will be introduced where it can demonstrate value and operate within its data governance and security requirements.
The detail behind this will be important. There is a considerable difference between adding AI-assisted features to individual workflows and embedding AI more fundamentally across an MIS, so schools will want to understand the practical applications as the 2027 roadmap emerges.
A wider ParentPay ecosystem
Another clear direction is closer integration between SIMS Next Gen and other ParentPay Group products.
The roadmap points towards greater integration with ParentPay, Schoolcomms, Cypad and SchoolHire, including common login, automatic data sharing and cross-product workflows and alerts.
This suggests that ParentPay Group increasingly sees SIMS not simply as a standalone MIS, but as part of a broader suite of services surrounding the school management platform.
For schools and MATs, the important question will be how this strategy balances the benefits of integration within the ParentPay ecosystem against the need to maintain straightforward interoperability with third-party products.
FMS is moving too
The modernisation programme also extends to SIMS FMS.
A new cloud-native version of FMS is due to be rolled out to more than 5,000 existing customers. ParentPay Group expects the transition of existing FMS customers to be completed by the end of March 2027.
The new version uses the same underlying database, enabling schools to retain historic information and transition without a conventional finance-system data migration. ParentPay Group says existing FMS finance functionality and MIS integrations will be retained, with additional capabilities aimed at MATs and school groups planned for 2027.
The WhichMIS? view
The most significant message in this update is perhaps not an individual new feature, but that SIMS Next Gen appears to be approaching the point where it can finally be judged as the successor to SIMS rather than as a cloud layer operating alongside it.
Reaching the stated target of full SIMS functional coverage by the end of 2026 would therefore represent an important milestone. For existing SIMS schools, the ability to adopt Next Gen progressively while retaining their existing data potentially removes one of the major practical hurdles associated with changing MIS.
But functional parity is only part of the story.
The more interesting question for 2027 will be what ParentPay Group does once the process of recreating SIMS in Next Gen is complete. AI, improved group/MAT functionality, cloud-native finance and closer integration across the ParentPay portfolio provide some indications, but the detailed 2027 roadmap has yet to be published.
There are also some important questions for schools and MATs to consider.
How open will the Next Gen ecosystem remain to third-party suppliers? How far will integration with ParentPay Group products influence the future direction of SIMS? What will the emerging AI functionality actually do for schools? And, perhaps most importantly, once functional parity is achieved, how quickly will users see genuinely new capabilities rather than cloud-native replacements for functionality they already have?
The next published SIMS roadmap should therefore be particularly interesting.
For many years the discussion surrounding SIMS Next Gen has understandably focused on the journey from legacy SIMS to a modern cloud-native MIS. If ParentPay Group delivers its end-of-2026 target, 2027 could mark the point at which the conversation changes from migration and functional parity to innovation, interoperability and the future direction of SIMS itself.