School Gateway vs SIMS Parent
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
School Gateway
This app streamlines communication and management of your child's school life. It allows parents to receive messages, make payments for school items, manage dinner money, book clubs, and view academic reports and attendance. All your children's school information is consolidated in one place.
- Receive school messages
- Make school payments
- Manage dinner money
- Book school clubs
- View reports and timetable
- Monitor attendance
- Update contact details
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School Gateway, the easiest way to interact with your child’s life at school. Designed to support schools in achieving outstanding parental engagement, School Gateway helps you manage school communications, payments, clubs, dinner money and more all in one simple, easy to use app. Key features: • Receive push notifications and in-app messages from your school • Easily pay for items using your preferred payment method • Top-up your child’s dinner money and select meal choices • Book before and after school clubs • View your child’s timetable and end of year reports • Monitor attendance • Update the contact details your school hold for you • All your children across multiple schools in one account Things you need to know: • Your school must be subscribed to School Gateway before you can use this app • Your school controls the information shared with you • To register/login, your school must have your email address and phone number on their system. If you can’t log in, please check these details are up to date at your school • Your account will automatically display information for multiple children /schools as long as the schools use School Gateway. Please check that your email address and mobile number at all your schools match • You must turn on push notifications for the app to receive messages and updates from your school
SIMS Parent
This app allows parents to actively engage with their children's education by providing access to homework, calendars, timetables, and assessment results. Parents can also track progress, view behavior reports, and communicate with schools via secure messaging. It consolidates information for children attending different schools, enhancing safeguarding and parental involvement.
- View homework and assignments
- Access student calendars and timetables
- Track assessment results and reports
- Monitor attendance and behavior
- Secure messaging with schools
- Manage multiple children across schools
- Update safeguarding information
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Please note: For security, this app requires an invitation code from your child's school. Be proactive Engaging with your children's education is key to their success. Help them stay on track with due dates by seeing their: - Homework - Calendar - Timetable - Extra-curricular activities Track progress See the information needed to understand your children's education and their overall performance better. Securely view your children's records: - Assessment results - Truancy - Behaviour: good and bad - School reports Stay connected Get alerts. Send and receive messages. Schools can send you alerts and messages straight to your phone. All your children in one place across schools With SIMS Parent, you can see all your children's data even if they attend different schools. (Requires schools to set up access for SIMS Parent) Safeguarding Help keep your children safe. In an emergency, up-to-date information helps schools meet their safeguarding obligations. Manage what information the school holds right from your phone. About SIMS SIMS: the School Information Management System at the heart of 21,000 UK schools.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: School Gateway at 2.5 against SIMS Parent's 2.2. School Gateway also leads on review sentiment (16% vs 2%). SIMS Parent's advantage is update cadence (fortnightly vs every 6 weeks) and monetization model (free vs ad-supported). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
School Gateway holds the better App Store score, 2.5 against 2.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SIMS Parent has 19 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 16% of School Gateway's written reviews are positive against 2% of SIMS Parent's.
School Gateway ships an update every 6 weeks, SIMS Parent fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | School Gateway | SIMS Parent |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 2.5 (2 ratings) — better | 2.2 (19 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 15.7% of reviews — better | 2.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 19 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 14 MB | 39 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | ISUZ Limited | Education Software Solutions Ltd |
Customer experience
School Gateway
SIMS Parent
Bugs and requests
School Gateway
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
SIMS Parent
Reported bugs
61 issues- App crashes frequently
- App logs users out unexpectedly
- Login details are not recognized
- Password reset functionality is broken
- App is very slow to load
Show 56 moreShow fewer
- App freezes or becomes unresponsive
- Notifications are not delivered or displayed correctly
- Unable to access certain features like dashboard or messages
- App does not work on iPhone
- Account gets locked without reason
- Password reset requires unprovided security questions
- App gets stuck in a login loop
- App does not load school pages
- App does not refresh data
- App is not updated for a long time
- Unable to reply to teacher messages on iPhone
- Login details are declined
- Cannot log in with new password after reset
- App requires re-registration every time
- App signs out or bugs out frequently
- App kicks users out randomly
- App does not accept activation codes
- Login details keeps getting declined
- App is unusable at best of times
- App is missing features after installation
- App is not sending password reset emails
- App is stuck on a specific date
- App is not user friendly
- App gets stuck in an endless loop
- Two-step authentication causes immediate lockout
- Password reset button doesn't work
- Black box covers typing area on iPhone
- App is buggy and in development stage
- Login page remains blank
- App is stalking and annoying
- App constantly asks to change password, then invalidates it
- App disables accounts and won't reset passwords
- App stalls loading on different sections
- App says account already exists after deletion
- App keeps loading and then logging off
- App shows error when trying to access messages
- App has issues with multiple children at the same school
- Tiles don't load
- Homework section has disappeared
- School dinner money account tab fails to load
- App acts as a hopeless gatekeeper to website
- App logs out and takes ages to log back in
- Recognition points take ages to load
- Session expired errors
- App asks for invitation repeatedly
- App does not allow marking homework as submitted
- Cannot open links for homework or attachments
- Random notifications with nothing to view
- App is not updated for weeks
- App is not fit for purpose
- App is a complete wind up
- App is utter garbage
- App is a joke
- App is dysfunctional
- App is a waste of time
- App is a horrible, wretched app
Requested features
13 requests- Fix login issues
- Improve app stability
- Update app regularly
- Better password reset functionality
- Improve communication features
Show 8 moreShow fewer
- Make app more intuitive
- Allow easier access to support
- Improve server capacity
- Allow linking multiple schools easily
- Fix message sending/receiving
- Make app work on all devices
- Provide clear error messages
- Allow easier login with fewer steps
In-app purchases
School Gateway
No in-app purchases
SIMS Parent
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is School Gateway free?
Is SIMS Parent free?
Which has better reviews, School Gateway or SIMS Parent?
Do School Gateway or SIMS Parent have ads?
Which is updated more often, School Gateway or SIMS Parent?
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