Build it properly or not at all
We would rather ship one module that genuinely works than five that technically exist. Schools have enough half-finished software.
Company
Building the world,
block by block.
Block is a small software company with a deliberately narrow focus: build the management information system that UK schools should have had a decade ago, and build it well enough to last the next one.
Why a school MIS, of all things?
Because it is the system every other decision in a school depends on, and because the people who use it every day have quietly put up with it for years.
A register should take seconds. A pastoral lead should be able to see a pupil's whole picture without opening four systems. A business manager should not need a consultant to get their own data out. None of that is technically hard — it just requires somebody to treat school software as a serious engineering problem rather than a captive market.
That is the entire premise of Block. MyPortal is the first thing we have built on it, and it is where our attention stays until it is unambiguously the best option a UK school can choose.
What we hold to
Four things we will not trade away.
Be straight with people
Honest timescales, honest limitations, honest pricing. If MyPortal is not right for your school yet, we would rather tell you than sell you.
Respect the school day
Every extra click is multiplied by thirty teachers, five periods and a hundred and ninety days. We design against that number.
Earn the trust each time
A school hands us its most sensitive data. That is not a one-off decision to win — it is something we have to keep deserving.
Team
The whole company.
Small enough that you will know everyone's name by the second call, and that nothing gets lost between departments — because there are not any.
Rowan Richards
Chief Executive Officer
Sets product direction and writes a great deal of the code. Built the first version of MyPortal out of a conviction that school staff deserve software that respects their time.
Courteney Sheehan
Chief Operating Officer
Runs delivery, onboarding and support. Turns the messy reality of a school data migration into something a business manager can actually plan around.
Chris White
Chief Security Officer
Owns security, data protection and safeguarding controls. Reviews every change that touches pupil data before it ships.
How we work
What being our size actually buys you.
You talk to the people who build it
There is no tier-one support script standing between you and an engineer. The person who answers your question can usually fix the thing you are asking about.
We build with schools, not at them
Requirements come from watching a real office at 8:40am, not from a feature matrix drawn up to match a competitor.
We keep the exit open
Full export, documented schema, no charge. If we want to keep your business, we should have to keep earning it.
Come and pick holes in it
We learn more from an hour with a school business manager who thinks we have got something wrong than from a month of planning. Book a call and be as blunt as you like.