Free student management software, on your own computer
Student records, admissions, attendance, timetable, exams, report cards, library and the front office — all of it running locally on a school computer, with no per-student charge, no annual maintenance contract and no time limit.
The attendance register, marked by exception. Illustrative data.
What the free app manages
This is the whole offline half of SCHOOL OS, not a cut-down trial edition:
Student and staff records — full profiles, documents, siblings, transport and house allocation
Admissions — the enquiry register and the pipeline through to seat blocked
Fees — receipts, cash and cheque entries, the day book and the printed register
Attendance — exception marking, so a teacher touches only absentees and late arrivals
Timetable — conflict-free period allocation with substitutions and room capacity
Examinations — marks entry grids and board-compliant report card printing
Library — catalogue, issue, return, overdue fines and member cards
Front office — visitor register, gate passes, enquiries and the call log
What "free" means here, precisely
No charge per student, at any strength. No annual maintenance contract. No licence that expires. No internet connection required to open it. The records it holds sit in a local database on your machine, and you can export them whenever you like, including on the day you decide to leave. We would rather earn a renewal than hold a school’s records hostage.
Where we do charge, and why
Everything that leaves your building costs us money to run — servers, payment rails, telecom. So the cloud licence is the paid half: the parent app, online fee collection with automatic reconciliation, live bus tracking, the teacher app, multi-campus reporting, cloud backup and sync across devices, and QR-verifiable credentials. You can run free and offline for a whole session and only turn it on when the parent app becomes the thing you need.
What it needs from your machine
Windows 10 or later, or macOS 12 or later; around 4 GB of memory and 2 GB of free disk. The database is included, so there is no Windows server to buy, no database licence and nothing for a local IT contractor to configure. Any office computer from the last six or seven years runs it comfortably, including one that has never been on a network.
Straight answers
Questions schools ask about student management software
Is there a limit on the number of students?
No. There is no student cap on the free desktop edition and no charge that scales with your strength.
Is this a trial that expires?
No. There is no time limit and no card needed. It is the offline half of the product, and it stays free.
Where is our data stored?
In a local database on the computer you installed it on. Nothing leaves that machine unless you take a cloud licence and choose to sync.
Can we move our existing records in?
Yes. Send us the exports and spreadsheets you have and our onboarding team cleans, maps and imports them — students, staff, classes, fee heads and historical ledgers — then hands it back for you to verify.
Start free today. Decide about the cloud in April.
Install SCHOOL OS Desktop on one office computer this week and run your admissions, receipts, attendance and report cards on it for nothing. When you want the parent app and online fees, we are one call away.