Computer vision for schools, colleges, and universities.
You have cameras in the corridors, the car park, the lecture theatres, the workshops. Most of them only get watched after something has gone wrong. I build vision systems that read what's already there, quietly, with safeguarding and data protection built in. Attendance, occupancy, equipment use, safety in practical spaces. Built on your hardware, code in your repo.
Or copy: [email protected]
What's actually happening in your setting right now.
The fire register takes too long to update. Workshop tools go missing and nobody knows when. The lecture theatre that seats 300 had 47 students in it last Tuesday and you only found out because someone mentioned it in a meeting. Parents email asking why their child wasn't on the bus, and the answer involves three people checking three different lists.
The cameras you already have, the ones procured for safeguarding and security, can answer most of this without any new hardware. They're not doing it yet because nobody's wired them up to ask the right questions. That's what this is.
What I build for schools, colleges, and universities.
Attendance and headcount
Knows who is in the building and where, from existing entry-point cameras. Pairs with your MIS or student record system to flag unexpected absences. Useful for safeguarding, fire registers, and trip headcounts.
Quoted on scope.
Fixed price in writing before any work starts. Hardware, on-site installation, and any opted-in subscriptions quoted separately at cost.
Room and space occupancy
How many students are actually in each room, lecture theatre, library, or social space across the day. Helps with timetabling, energy use, and capacity planning.
Quoted on scope.
Fixed price in writing before any work starts. Hardware, on-site installation, and any opted-in subscriptions quoted separately at cost.
Workshop and lab safety
Practical spaces, design technology rooms, science labs, art studios, engineering workshops. PPE checks, exclusion-zone alerts around machinery, equipment headcount at lesson end.
Quoted on scope.
Fixed price in writing before any work starts. Hardware, on-site installation, and any opted-in subscriptions quoted separately at cost.
Vehicle and visitor management
ANPR at car parks and entrances. Logs staff, contractors, deliveries, and visitor vehicles. Pairs with your existing visitor management system.
Quoted on scope.
Fixed price in writing before any work starts. Hardware, on-site installation, and any opted-in subscriptions quoted separately at cost.
A few of the situations this system handles.
A school doing a fire drill or genuine evacuation, needing an accurate roll-call fast. The system maintains a live headcount per building from entrance cameras, with faces blurred before any image is stored or sent. The duty teacher sees a number, not individuals.
A workshop or science lab with expensive tools and a recurring loss problem. The system runs a quick end-of-lesson check on the tool layout and flags spaces where something has changed materially. Faces blurred throughout.
A college or university with lecture theatres and study spaces of varying capacity. The system counts occupancy across the day, helping with timetabling, energy management, and the room-utilisation conversation the estates team has every year.
A multi-academy trust with several schools under one DPO. Each school runs the system locally with its own safeguarding configuration. Trust-level reporting is available to the DPO and head of estates without exposing individual student data.
Why this, why me.
Safeguarding-first design.
Faces blurred at the camera level by default. The system reads behaviour and presence, not identity. Any identification capability is added as a deliberate, governed step with the right consent and oversight.
Works with your DPO, not around them.
Every build includes the documentation your data protection officer and safeguarding lead will need. Data protection impact assessment, retention policy, access controls, all written up properly.
Runs on your existing CCTV.
No replacement cameras in most cases. Clip review confirms suitability for your setup.
The code is yours.
No subscription with a per-pupil or per-camera fee. The system stays in your IT estate.
Fixed price, in writing.
A call, then a build.
We talk
Thirty minutes. You walk me through your setting, your cameras, your safeguarding framework, and the questions you want answered. Your DPO is welcome on the call.
I build
Four to eight weeks for most education installs, allowing time for safeguarding sign-off.
Every quote breaks out the build fee, hardware, install labour, and any subscriptions in writing before you commit. One total, every line visible.
The things people ask before we start.
Is this compliant with safeguarding and DfE guidance?
The technology supports compliance, but compliance is always a function of your policies and processes. I provide the technical documentation. Your data protection officer and safeguarding lead review and approve. We work through this properly in the scoping call, with your DPO welcome to attend.
Can it identify individual students?
Not by default, and not without specific, governed consent. Most use cases (attendance, occupancy, safety in workshops) don't need identification. They work from anonymous presence and behaviour, with faces blurred at the first processing step before any record is created.
What about GDPR for under-18s?
Children's data is treated with the strictest controls. The default position is anonymous monitoring with faces blurred before any image or alert is stored or sent. Any identification capability is opt-in, parent-consented where appropriate, and documented as part of the build.
Will this work in higher education and FE colleges?
Yes. The buyer in HE and FE is usually facilities, estates, or the IT director rather than a safeguarding lead. The use cases skew toward occupancy, energy management, and timetabling rather than child safeguarding, but the underlying technology is the same.
Can it integrate with our MIS, like SIMS, Bromcom, or Arbor?
Most modern MIS platforms have an API and we can connect attendance data, occupancy data, and visitor logs directly. We discuss your specific setup on the call. Where direct integration isn't possible, the system delivers data as a daily file your MIS can import.
What about cameras in classrooms?
Classroom cameras are sensitive and most schools wisely avoid them. Where they exist, they're typically for safeguarding incident review only, not live monitoring. This system is designed around the cameras you already have in shared spaces, corridors, entrances, and external areas, not classrooms.
How quickly can it be running in my school?
Four to eight weeks for a single setting, allowing time for safeguarding sign-off and DPIA documentation. Multi-academy trust rollouts run faster per site after the first because the policies, documentation, and configuration are reused. A ten-school trust typically completes inside ten to fourteen weeks, depending on how consistent the camera estate is across the schools.
Tell me about your setting.
Email me a sentence about your school, college, or university and what you'd most like the cameras to tell you. I reply the same day with a rough scope and a fixed price in writing within a few days of a call.
Or copy: [email protected]