LiveClass blog
Running an online school, in practice
We build the system a few hundred pupils are taught on every week. These are the things we have learned about enrolment, fees, attendance, safeguarding and reporting when the school has no building.
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Recording lessons: when it helps and when it is a liability
Recordings are trivial to switch on and easy to regret. Who can see them, how long you keep them, and what to do about the children who cannot be recorded.
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Moving an online school off spreadsheets
Which spreadsheet to replace first, the order to migrate in so nothing breaks mid-term, and what to clean before you import rather than after.
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Communicating with parents who do not speak English
Online schools are more multilingual than local ones. Which messages must be translated, what machine translation should never touch, and why.
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Reporting to parents in an online school
Parents who cannot see the classroom ask a question others do not: is this working? What to report, how often, and the arithmetic to settle first.
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Zoom licences: how many does a school actually need?
Licences follow simultaneous lessons, not teachers. How to count what you need, and why flattening your busiest timetable slot cuts the bill.
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Spotting a pupil drifting, before they leave
Pupils rarely leave an online school suddenly. The signals that show weeks earlier, and why a flat attendance threshold misses most of them.
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Teacher cover when the lesson is in twenty minutes
No corridor to walk down and no adult in the room. How to answer who is free at 9am, and what to do when the honest answer is nobody.
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Running a waiting list for a full year group
A full year group is not a closed conversation. How to run a list that converts, and why a closed year group should still take names.
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Should lesson access depend on payment?
The case for and against payment-linked access, what the pupil must never be shown, and why the worst option is a policy you do not enforce.
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Running live lessons on Zoom for a whole school
Meetings that recur properly, join links that survive week one, licences that follow simultaneous lessons, and the settings to fix before day one.
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Online school admissions, from enquiry to first lesson
A pipeline that does not leak: the states an enquiry moves through, what to ask on the form, and the handover that decides whether a family stays.
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Taking school fees from families in another country
Cards that decline abroad, transfers that arrive short, and currencies where the numbers look wrong — collecting tuition across borders.
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Why school ERPs built for buildings fail online schools
Most school ERPs assume a site, a bell and a front office. Here are the five assumptions that break when the classroom is a Zoom room.
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Chasing unpaid school fees without falling out with parents
A fixed reminder ladder that ends, what to write at each stage, and why sporadic chasing collects less and costs more goodwill than automatic chasing.
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Do you need to register an online school with the DfE?
Registration is compulsory for some online providers and a criminal offence to skip — while accreditation is voluntary. Which one applies to your school.
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How online schools collect tuition fees
Billing cycles, card and bank transfer, whether access should depend on payment, and a chasing sequence that ends — for schools with no front office.
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How to run an online school: the operations guide
The admin side of running a school with no building — enrolment, fees, attendance, cover and reporting — and where each one quietly breaks.
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How to take attendance in a live online lesson
Why manual registers fail online, how to build one from join and leave data instead, and the edge cases that quietly produce a wrong register.
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