The Cornerstone Academy Trust partners with Kura for the school run of the future

The Cornerstone Multi-Academy Trust (TCAT) based in Devon is the first MAT to partner with Kura to provide technology-enhanced home to school shared transport services across its primary schools.

TCAT has an international reputation for using digital solutions in the classroom and beyond. Now the Trust is investing to provide parents with a technological solution to the age-old problem of the school run, enhancing safeguarding and convenience for parents and pupils.

The new service will be in place at Broadclyst Community, Westclyst Community, and Monkerton Community Primary Schools from September 2021 with parents of the 100 pupils who use the service able to track the vehicle and be notified when their children board or alight the service via the Kura parent app.

The schools will move from traditional paper registers of pupils on the service to a purely digital solution and will make use of the Kura back-office systems to identify efficiencies and improvements in running the service they provide with their own in-house minibus and driver fleet.

Jonathan Bishop, Executive Headteacher at Cornerstone says, “We have run a popular bus service for many years, offering parents a value for money service that also means less cars on the road at 9am and 3.30pm every school day. As our Trust has grown we have expanded the bus service to more routes, more buses and more children – having the use of Kura at this point in our growth is crucial to us in providing a professional, reliable and seamless service to our families.

“We are looking forward to automating a lot of our processes with Kura; for example, the ability for parents to know exactly where the bus is at any one time is so beneficial – removing the many phone calls when a bus is running late due to roadworks or traffic jams will be most welcome!”

Commenting on the announcement, Godfrey Ryan, CEO at Kura said, “This announcement follows close co-operation between Kura and TCAT to shape the future of the school run and deliver an effective solution for everyone involved.  As this marks our first engagement with a MAT, we are excited to partner with Jonathan and his team, a Trust that is widely known for being innovative and future focused”.