One sector is losing families. The other is losing days.

Independent schools have 30,000 fewer pupils than in January 2025 — the largest fall since ISC records began. In state-funded secondaries, 21.86% of students were persistently absent across the autumn and spring terms of 2024/25.

Butter is the school life platform. Clubs, teams, year groups and events, in one place a student can see and join — and one way for a child to reach a named adult. Sold to the school. The school is the data controller.

Contact What your DPO will ask

ISC, 3 June 2026 · DfE, published 23 October 2025

Aldermere College Joel · Year 8

What you are part of 4 of 15

Drama Societya club

Rehearsals every Thursday, 3.30pm in the hall.

Mr Hallam · head of drama

Footballa team

Training Wednesday. Matches Tuesday.

Miss Ahmed · PE

Year 8your year group

Year 8 assembly every Monday, 8.50am in the hall.

Mrs Reidy · deputy head, pastoral

Eco Cluba club

Tuesdays 12.40pm in the science block.

Miss Smith · wellbeing lead

Chess Club meets Friday lunchtime

Open to Year 8 · eleven more are open to you

Join

What a Year 8 student sees when they open Butter. No feed to scroll, no counts, no direct messaging.

Both start in the same place: a child who isn't part of anything.

Every school runs clubs, teams, trips and fixtures. Almost none can answer a simple question about them: which children are in nothing at all.

The information exists — in a teacher's head, on a sign-up sheet, in a WhatsApp group, in the back of somebody's planner. It just isn't anywhere you can look.

Butter puts the whole co-curricular life of the school in one place, and tells you who has joined none of it. Two numbers and one list, filtered by year, in front of the people who already know those children.

England sits twelve points below the OECD average on whether children feel they belong at school: 63% against 75%. 44% of 11- to 18-year-olds say they regularly feel lonely.

PISA 2022 · DCMS, 10 December 2025

Aldermere College · week four Two numbers and one list

In at least one

88%

In nothing at all

of 640 on roll

The list, filtered by year Year 7Year 8Year 9

N Niamh nothing since September

T Tomas left choir in week two

A Ayaan joined nothing yet

Nineteen more in Year 7. Your pastoral team already knows them.

What a student sees

Years 7 to 9, on mobile web. No app store, no download, no password to invent. It opens on what you're part of — not on a feed.

Communities

Every community has one adult against it. Clubs, teams and year groups. Staff create them and own them; a student joins, and leaves when they like.

Drama Society

A club

Mr Hallam · Head of drama

Rehearsals every Thursday, 3.30pm in the hall.

JPA

22 members

Year 8

Your year group

Mrs Reidy · Deputy head, pastoral

Year 8 assembly every Monday, 8.50am in the hall.

JCO

118 members

Discover

Ordered by what a student said they were into. Never by what is popular, and never by what the school wants filling.

artfilm+2

why this one

Because you said you are into singing.

Chamber choir

A club · 31 members

Twenty minutes of singing at lunch on Wednesday. No audition.

JoinLook inside

Art club

A club · 19 members

The room is open every Thursday lunch with the materials already out. Bring nothing.

Talk to someone

One named adult, chosen by the student. It goes to that person and nobody else. There is no thread, and no group chat.

Who would you like to speak to?

Miss Smith

Wellbeing lead · usually around at lunch

Mrs Reidy

Deputy head, pastoral · the office by the library

Miss Ahmed

PE · the sports office at lunch

Mr Hallam

Head of drama · in the hall before school

The wellbeing team

Notifications

What changed, not how popular anything is. Four kinds of thing arrive, and nothing at all between 9pm and 7am.

What you missed

Mr Hallam put the cast list up.

Drama Society · this morning

The options assembly moved to Monday, period one.

Year 8 · Monday

Miss Ahmed answered Callum in the school feed.

School feed · yesterday

Eco Club is planting the seed potatoes on Tuesday.

Eco Club · yesterday

Nothing arrives between 9pm and 7am

What a teacher does

Seven settings, and they move three arguments off our desk and onto yours. Who can start a post. Comments on or off. Reactions on or off. Words with a reaction. Who can join. Whether it shows in Discover. Whether it closes at the end of term.

There's no ask me first setting, because that's the one that manufactures work.

A teacher sees their own communities and not everybody else's. Every member of staff can see that a community exists and everything about it except what was said inside it. A second adult is the only route in. Your safeguarding lead can reach anything, and every reach is written down — which is what makes the exception safe.

Running a community takes under fifteen minutes a week. The console records how long moderation actually takes, so it's a number you can hold us to rather than one you have to believe.

Sixteen screens across six roles. It opens on what's waiting, with a minute estimate against it.

Miss Smith · wellbeing lead Aldermere College · week four

Waiting for you

Two posts need review

Both are in Year 8 — about two minutes

Review

Joel wrote to you

4.12pm yesterday · unread · about a minute

Open it

Nobody yet

Two people are in nothing yet

Your communities only

N Niamh Year 7 · nothing since September

C Callum Year 9 · left football in week two

Six minutes spent this week. The ceiling is fifteen.

615

What a child does when something is wrong

One way in. It's a door, not a chat — and every part of it is built so a child never has to classify their own problem before they can reach an adult.

They pick a person. A named adult — photograph, name, role, when they're usually around — or the wellbeing team. Seven optional openers write the first few words for them. They don't route, tag, triage or prioritise, and the screen says so: the moment a chip changes what happens to a message, the child is classifying their own crisis.

Then one acknowledgement, and never a thread. An automatic receipt names when it will be read — quoted from your setting, not ours. After that the student sees status only: sent, read by Miss Smith, closed.

We tell them what this isn't, before they write. An unavoidable screen says plainly that nobody is watching around the clock, and gives Childline and 999.

Quiet hours pause notifications and nothing else. Nothing arrives between 9pm and 7am, and the child is told so. Talk to someone is reachable at any hour.

1 They pick a person

Who would you like to speak to?

Miss Smith

Wellbeing lead · usually around at lunch

Mrs Reidy

Deputy head, pastoral · the office by the library

Mr Hallam

Head of drama · in the hall before school

Miss Ahmed

PE · the sports office at lunch

Or the wellbeing team

2 Before they write

One thing first, so you know what this is.

Nobody watches this all the time. Miss Smith reads messages during the school day, and you will see when she has.

If you need someone right now, call Childline on 0800 1111 — any time, free, and it will not show on the bill. In an emergency, 999.

I've read that — carry on Go back

3 One acknowledgement out

Sent to Miss Smith

Sent 4.12pm yesterday

Read by Miss Smith 8.40am

Closed by Miss Smith

There is nothing to reply to here. If there is more to say, write again.

Quiet hours pause notifications. Nothing arrives between 9pm and 7am.

One way in. One acknowledgement out. Never a thread.

Everything else it does

Nineteen features across three products, plus eight supporting items. These four are the ones people ask about second.

The school feed

One pin, staff only, expiring on a date you set. Everything else in the order it happened. A student can ask a question and a member of staff has to put it up before anyone sees it.

Miss Ahmed

PE · yesterday, 5.10pm

Year 8 football beat Ashcombe 3–1 at home in the first match of the season.

Can people come and watch the away leg? — Callum, put up by Miss Ahmed

From the office

Up to ten links the office owns: lunch menu, term dates, bus times, uniform, lost property. Each row says what it is, warns when a link leaves Butter, and carries a review date. It holds no student content.

This week's lunch menu

Two-week menu · PDF · reviewed 1 Sept

Term dates and INSET days

The year, on one page

Uniform and PE kit

What you need and where to get it

Seven more, all owned by the office

The safeguarding inbox

Triage, assign, act, close with a note. It goes to the whole team when your published window is missed. Re-authenticated rather than merely role-gated, and reading it is itself written down.

Niamh, Year 7

Wrote to Miss Smith

New Unassigned · 14 minutes

Callum, Year 9

A post in Year 9

With an adult Mrs Reidy

Every read is recorded

The parent view

A link, not an app. Consent at the start and a weekly digest. No account, no password, nothing to install, and no parent feed.

Aldermere College · Friday, 4pm

What Joel did at school this week

Joined Drama Society on Tuesday and went to the rehearsal on Thursday.

Eco Club met on Tuesday. He is in it and did not go this week.

One link, and it expires.

There is no private channel between children. Anywhere.

Everything a child writes to another child is a post, in a named community, with a named adult in it, in a queue, in an audit trail.

Direct messaging is disabled by configuration rather than by policy. There's no setting for a future member of staff to switch on.

Five ways a child can reach an adult. Three of them carry words the child typed. Each is listed with where it goes — because either that list is stated or the one way in claim isn't true.

Bullying inside a joined community is possible, it is accountable, and it is logged. We say that in the room too.

Where a message lives

Aldermere College — the school the data controller

Drama Society — the community a named adult is in it

The post in the audit trail

Mr Hallam

Head of drama · Tuesday, 4.15pm

Drama Society needs a set designer. Come to the hall on Thursday at 3.30pm and have a look at what we need.

Every reply is a post in this room, and it is queued

What does not exist

Aldermere College — the school Unbuilt

Joel

Year 8

Callum

Year 9

There is no direct messaging in Butter. Not off by default — not built, and there is no setting to switch it on.

What your DPO will ask, in their order

Your designated safeguarding lead and your data protection officer will both read this before you sign. It is written to be read without us in the room.

The Department for Education tells schools what to obtain from a supplier before purchase. This is that list, answered, in the order they ask it.

Nothing here is behind a form.

Controller or processor

The school is the controller. Butter is the processor. Stated per processing activity, dated, in writing.

Where the data sits

The United Kingdom. Storage region, backup region, and who can see it from where, including support.

Sub-processors

Named, with what each does and where it is, and a commitment to tell you before that changes.

Retention and deletion

Actual periods, not “as long as necessary”. Deletion confirmed on exit, in a format you can keep.

Whether any child’s data trains a model

It does not, and that is contractual rather than a statement of current practice.

The Children’s Code

Our position, written out rather than asserted.

The four fields we read

Name, year and form, school email, and for staff which forms they tutor. Not attendance, not behaviour, not special educational needs, not free school meals, not medical, not addresses, and no household information of any kind. The field list is contractual and it cannot widen without a variation you sign.

A DPIA you don’t start from nothing

Pre-filled, with the facts you need to finish it.

Breach notification

Stated in the processing agreement.

How you'd know it's working

Participation is the thing Butter counts, and it's the thing no school can currently produce. Everything else you already measure.

Week two

End of term one

Across the year

Published

In the first fortnight — Every form and year group exists, five to ten communities are running, and you can see the proportion of students in at least one of them. That number has never existed at your school before.

Aldermere College · week four

88% are in at least one community

78 of 640 are in nothing yet.

By the end of the first term — You can see it by year group, and you can see the list of students in nothing. Your pastoral team works that list the way it works any other.

By year group

Year 7 91%

Year 8 86%

Year 9 78%

No ranking, no engagement figure, no trend line.

Across the year — You can see whether the list is getting shorter. You hold your own attendance data and you can put the two beside each other yourself, at any point, without asking us.

In nothing, term by term

78 Aut

41 Spr

22 Sum

Taking part is associated with better attendance. Butter does not claim it causes it.

And we publish what we find. Butter runs an evaluation with the first cohort of schools, registered in advance — what we’re measuring, how, and what would count as it not having worked. Whatever it says, it goes up.

Registered in advance

What we measure, how, and what would count as it not having worked — all fixed before we start.

Whatever it says, it goes up.

The first fortnight, the first term, the year, and what we publish.

Same product, same price, two different arguments

The same thing, said twice

One product. One price book. Two problems it happens to answer.

Independent schools

In an independent school it shows up as a family leaving. A child with nothing to come back for is a child whose parents are already comparing. Butter is where the clubs, the teams and the trips live — and the list of who has joined none of them.

30,000 fewer pupils than in January 2025

The largest fall since ISC records began. ISC, 3 June 2026.

State secondaries

In a state secondary it shows up as days missed. You already track attendance. What you can't currently show is which children are part of something and which are part of nothing. Butter shows you.

21.86% were persistently absent

Across the autumn and spring terms of 2024/25. DfE, published 23 October 2025.

One product. One price book, banded by roll, identical in both sectors — because a price book that behaves differently in the two sectors gets found out the first time a bursar who has worked in both compares notes.

Independent State

One price book

Banded by roll

Getting started

How to bring Butter to your school

Phase 0 — spring and summer 2027

Six schoolsTwo termsOne flat fee

Six schools, four independent and two state, running Butter across two terms with us. Obligations run both ways: you get the product and our full attention; we get weekly structured feedback, a named case study, six reference calls a year for two years, up to three hosted visits, and your part in the evaluation. It's paid, and it isn't a trial. One flat fee, the same for all six, for both terms. Places are limited to six and we're talking to schools now.

Four independent, two state

Standard licences — from September 2027

Priced by pupil rollQuotable now

Priced by pupil roll, the same in both sectors, quotable now for a September 2027 start. Nothing in the safeguarding architecture is ever gated or sold separately, and there's no per-pupil metering — no child's use is ever a billing event.

The same price in both sectors

Safeguarding is never a separate line

No per-pupil metering

Quotable now for a September 2027 start

What buying looks like

1 One conversation

to see whether it fits.

2 One with your safeguarding lead

who reads the architecture first and can say no.

3 One with whoever signs

and then a setup call.

Talk to us about Phase 0 Then a setup call, and you're live inside a week.

If you want to talk.

One route. Tell us who you are and what you'd like to talk about, and a person replies. Not a form that goes into a system.

Write to us with who you are, your school, and what you would like to talk about. Simon reads it and replies himself.

hello@butter.school

We use what you send us to reply to you and for nothing else. We keep it for as long as the conversation is live and then for two years, and you can ask us to delete it at any point.

What there is not

No demo to book. No download to unlock. No newsletter. No chat widget. No call from somebody who is not us.

Who replies

Simon Seward, Founder and CEO, simon@butter.school.