Switching from Provision Map to Senflow: how the migration actually works

Most SENCOs we speak to don't stay on their current system because they love it. They stay because switching feels like a risk they can't afford to take in October.

That's a reasonable instinct. Your provision map isn't a spreadsheet you can rebuild on a wet Sunday. It's three years of plans, reviews, intervention records and EHCP outcomes, and a lot of it is the evidence you'd reach for in an Ofsted conversation or a tribunal. Nobody wants to be the person who moved it and lost half of it.

So this isn't a pitch. It's the actual process. Here's what moving from Provision Map (Edukey, part of Tes) to Senflow involves, who does which bit, and how long it takes.

The four things schools actually worry about

Whenever we run a migration conversation, it comes down to the same four questions:

1. Can we get our data out, and does it come out intact?
2. How much rekeying does my team have to do?
3. When in the year is it safe to move?
4. What happens with the contract we're still paying for?

We'll take them in order.

Step 1: Get your data out

Start here, before you commit to anything, including us.

You are entitled to it. Under UK GDPR your school is the data controller for your pupils' SEND records. Your software provider is the processor, acting on your instructions. Standard data processing agreements, including Edukey's, require the processor to return or delete your data at the end of the relationship. Asking for a full export isn't a favour you're requesting; it's a right you're exercising.

Ask for it in writing, and ask for everything. A useful request looks like this:

Please provide a complete export of all data held on behalf of [School Name], in machine-readable format (CSV or Excel), including: pupil records and SEN status; all plans (current and historical) with their outcomes, targets and review history; provisions and interventions with dates, staff, groupings and costings; uploaded documents and attachments; and any notes or logs attached to pupil records.

Two things worth flagging in advance, so they don't surprise you:

• Exports usually arrive as several files, not one. Plans, provisions and pupils tend to come out separately. That's normal and it's fine. The linking is our problem, not yours.
• Uploaded documents often come out separately from the structured data. EHCPs, reports from external professionals and old paperwork typically arrive as a folder of files. Ask for these explicitly; they're easy to forget and painful to lose.

Give yourself a couple of weeks for this. Chase it politely if it's slow, and keep the email trail.

Step 2: Connect your MIS

You're already used to this bit. Provision Map pulls pupil data from your MIS through a data extractor: Wonde, Groupcall or Xporter on Demand, depending on your setup.

Senflow uses Wonde. If you're already sharing with Wonde, approving Senflow takes your MIS lead about five minutes in the Wonde dashboard. If you're not, Wonde is free to schools and the setup is straightforward.

Once it's connected, your roster syncs automatically: names, year groups, classes, SEN status, joiners and leavers. Nobody types a pupil list into anything.

Step 3: We do the import

This is the part that usually gets quoted as a professional services fee. We don't charge for it.

Send us the export from step 1 and we handle the mapping. Structured records go in as structured records, so a target that was a target in your old system is a target in Senflow, with its review history attached.

For EHCPs and other plan documents, we extract the outcomes, targets and provisions from the documents themselves and load them in as structured data, rather than leaving you with a folder of PDFs that nobody can report on. If your previous exports are messy, and historical SEND data usually is, that's expected. We work through it with you rather than handing it back.

Timescale: for a typical primary, a fortnight from receiving your export to a populated, checked system. Larger schools and trusts, longer. We'll give you a real date rather than an optimistic one.

Verification: you get a check before go-live. Pupil counts, plan counts, spot checks on individual children you nominate. If something hasn't come across correctly, we fix it before you switch, not after.

Step 4: Pick your window

There's no bad time, but there are easier ones.

Best: the summer term / summer holidays. Plans are being reviewed anyway, the September roster is the natural clean start, and your SENCO has some capacity in the second half of the summer term that they will not have in November.

Also good: the end of a term. Christmas and Easter both work. Reviews land at term boundaries, so you're less likely to be mid-cycle on anything.

Perfectly workable: mid-year. We do these regularly. The trick is to keep read-only access to your old system for a few weeks after go-live so anyone can check something against the previous record if they need to. Which brings us to the contract.

Step 5: Don't cancel too early

Practical advice, even though it means you pay two providers briefly:

• Check your notice period now. Most school software contracts run annually with notice required in advance of renewal. Find your renewal date before you plan anything else. It's usually the constraint that sets your timeline.
• Run parallel for two to four weeks. Keep the old system live and readable while your team beds into the new one. The overlap costs a few hundred pounds and removes almost all of the risk.
• Take your own copy of the export and keep it. Store the raw export files somewhere safe in school. Once an account closes, that data goes. Having your own copy means you're never dependent on either provider to answer a historical question.

Step 6: Training your team

Realistically, this splits three ways.

Class teachers need about twenty minutes. They log in, see the children in their class, see the targets and provisions, and record what they've done. If a teacher needs more than one session to be functional, we've designed it badly.

Your SENCO needs a proper session of an hour or so, covering plan creation, review cycles, reporting and the bits that make their week faster.

Senior leaders and SEND leads usually want a separate look at reporting: provision spend, cohort views, review compliance, and what they can pull out for governors.

All of it is included. There is no training package to buy.

If you're a multi-academy trust

Don't move fourteen schools at once. Nobody should.

The pattern that works is a phased rollout: two or three schools first, ideally ones with a confident SENCO and reasonably tidy data, then the rest in waves once the first group is live and their SENCOs can vouch for it internally. Peer confidence does more for adoption across a trust than any amount of central mandate.

At trust level you also get the thing that's usually missing: a consistent view across all your schools, without asking each SENCO to fill in a termly return.

What the switch costs you

Nothing, on our side of it.

Migration, data import, EHCP extraction, verification, training and setup are all included. There's no onboarding fee and no professional services line. The work of getting you moved is part of taking you on as a school.

Ongoing, we price at a flat rate per school. Not per pupil, not per module, not per staff account, so the cost doesn't climb because your SEN register grew or because you wanted the reporting. Trusts get a discount across their schools. We'll give you a figure in the first conversation without making you sit through a demo to get it.

The only cost that's genuinely yours is the overlap in step 5: a few weeks of paying two providers while you run in parallel. Worth every penny of it.

The honest summary

Switching SEND systems is a fortnight of work that you mostly don't do yourself, and a term of your team getting used to something new. It is not the catastrophe it feels like in the abstract. But it is a real decision, and the right time to make it is when you have some slack, not when you're drowning.

If you're on Provision Map and wondering what the alternative looks like, the useful first step is to book a demo and we can help guide you through the process, free of charge.

Book a 20-minute conversation →

No slide deck. We'll look at your actual setup and tell you whether switching makes sense for your school this year.

‍