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Central Edition
The Central edition adds MAT hub-and-spoke aggregation to Groundskeeper, giving a Multi-Academy Trust a single pane of glass across all member schools -- without any school's data leaving its own network.
Each school runs its own Groundskeeper instance as normal. The Central hub is a separate Groundskeeper install (at the trust or IT team level) that schools pair with. Once paired, the hub pulls a summary feed from each spoke school on a regular schedule and aggregates them into a unified trust-level dashboard.
There is no cloud layer. All communication is direct, school-to-hub, over your existing network or VPN. School data stays within the trust's own infrastructure.
- Trust overview -- RAG status across all member schools at a glance
- Per-school drill-down -- click any school to see its live feed
- Cross-school alerts -- critical events from any spoke surface at the hub
- Version tracking -- see which Groundskeeper version each school is running
- Install Groundskeeper on the server that will act as the hub (a trust-level server, or the IT team's existing Groundskeeper install).
- Enter the trust's Central licence key under Settings --> Licence. The server becomes the hub as soon as the key is active -- there is no separate role to choose.
- Under Settings --> Organisation, set this hub's address as schools should reach it (pre-filled from your browser's address bar), then add each school: its pairing bundle is generated in one step and carries that address. Share the bundle with the school.
At each member school:
- Open the school's Central page (
/mat). - Paste the pairing bundle the trust gave you (it begins
GK-PAIR-V1:and already carries the hub's address) into Pairing bundle from hub. - Click Apply pairing. The school will begin reporting to the hub.
The school's own dashboard continues to work exactly as before -- pairing adds hub reporting without changing anything for the local IT team.
Central is available as an annual subscription per trust group (see groundskeeper.rsjsoftware.com for current pricing). Each school in the group holds its own Pro licence; Central is a separate fee for the hub on top, so a group pays for each school's Pro plus one Central.
- The hub must be reachable by spoke schools over the network (direct or via site-to-site VPN). No inbound internet access is required.
- Keep every school on a current release -- the hub's views rely on what recent versions report.
- Windows Server 2022 at each site (the platform Groundskeeper is built and tested on).
Can a school still use its own dashboard after pairing? Yes. Pairing is additive -- nothing changes for the local IT team.
Does the hub store school data permanently? The hub caches a rolling summary feed from each spoke. Raw school data remains on the spoke's own server.
What happens if a spoke goes offline? The hub marks that school as unreachable and shows the last known status. The spoke continues to function normally for its own IT team.
Can we add schools to the trust after initial setup? Yes. Add the school on the hub (Settings --> Organisation) and apply its pairing bundle on the school's Central page, at any time.
Last updated: 2026-09-24 (v0.183.1)