"We're Not Missing Anyone Anymore". How OpenApply Gave Woodland Star Eyes on Every Inquiry

When Rory Parkinson became Head at Woodland Star, he joined a school that had been doing extraordinary work with the tools it had. The admissions spreadsheet was, in his words, "cleverly set up", but it had reached the limits of what any spreadsheet can do.

For a school whose entire identity is built on knowing each individual child’s strengths, challenges, and story, losing visibility of an inquiry became both an administrative misstep and an ethos problem.

As Rory commented, "It's just making sure we're not missing anyone. That's the biggest thing."

A Head Who Knows What Good Edtech Looks Like

Rory had seen the alternative before. As IT Director at the International School of Uganda, he had brought OpenApply into the school himself and watched what it did to the admissions function. Across Cognita's 110-school group and schools in Zimbabwe, Ukraine, and the UK, he had developed a clear view of what good edtech looks like, and what it doesn't.

Rory offered an analogy, stating, 

"Some products are BMWs, some are Ferraris. It depends on what you need. For admissions, OpenApply has that Ferrari feel. That level of precision and visibility you want when you're tracking every family from inquiry through to enrollment."

Within months of arriving at Woodland Star, he had moved the school off spreadsheets and onto OpenApply.

From Silos to Situational Awareness

The shift Rory describes most often isn't about product features. It's more about visibility. Before OpenApply, admissions information lived in fragments: rows on a spreadsheet, threads in inboxes, conversations in WhatsApp and Signal, paperwork in folders. No one person had the full picture, and the school was growing fast enough that the gaps were starting to show.

OpenApply gave the team a single conduit. Inquiries, tours, applications, documents, communication history, all in one place, visible to whoever needed it. For Rory, that visibility extends beyond admissions itself. "It's not just for the admissions team. It's powerful from finance, through to HR, through to the person who hands out the supply lists. Everyone can see what they need to see."

That clarity changed how the leadership team operates. "If something gets dropped, we know where it's getting dropped. Was it finance forgetting to invoice? Was it a checklist item? You can see it."

Building Admissions as a Function, Not Just a Task

With OpenApply in place, Rory was able to restructure how admissions worked at Woodland Star altogether. Where the work had previously been spread across the senior leadership team - squeezed in around teaching, operations, and pastoral care - he repositioned a member of the team into a dedicated admissions role.

"For her, she's starting to take off in terms of maximising the software," Rory says. "And then for the senior leadership team, they're appreciating the situational awareness."

It's a change that small schools often struggle to justify: a dedicated admissions function only makes sense when the role can actually deliver value, and that's only possible with the right systems behind it. For Woodland Star, OpenApply made the case.

An Ethos of Inclusion, Built into the Workflow

Of all the ways OpenApply has changed how Woodland Star operates, the inclusion workflow is where the system most directly serves the school's identity. Woodland Star actively welcomes neurodiverse learners and gifted students with additional learning needs, which is a commitment that requires careful capacity planning and rich information from the moment a family makes contact.

The benefit is twofold. The Head of Learning Support has a single point of truth for every learner with additional needs, with all documentation, such as IEPs, educational reports, OT and speech assessments, alongside the application itself. And Rory, as Head, gets the strategic view he needs.

Marketing, Measured

OpenApply's CRM and marketing functionality has also started to shape the school's outreach efforts, though Rory is candid that this is still new territory.

For a school that has historically relied on reputation and personal recommendation, that visibility is new. "As we look at our budget for the following year, we can say: this is what's working. That's pretty powerful."

The CRM is the next chapter. "We haven't fully harnessed it yet," Rory admits. "We've just touched the edge of it. But the potential is clear."

The Honest Middle: What's Been Hard

Any transition has friction, and Rory is refreshingly honest about Woodland Star's. Two themes stand out.

The first is the cultural shift away from email. "We're trying to move people away from direct email with potential parents and making sure that they're pushing it back through the system. Or if it's coming in a different channel like Instagram, Signal, copying that data onto the CRM so we're aware of where each family is."

The second is a lesson learned about re-enrolment. "On re-enrolment, we tried to capture too much data. We built out custom forms for medical information, passport bio pages, the rest of it. In hindsight, that slowed down our re-enrolment because some parents just thought: I haven't got time to do that right now. We're learning as we use it."

It’s important to note that OpenApply hasn't magically solved admissions at Woodland Star; it's given the team a much better foundation to build from, and the team is learning what to ask, when, and from whom.

The Time Piece

Asked to put numbers on the time saved, Rory is careful, and credible, in his estimate. "It depends on the role. For the admissions officer, potentially up to 10 hours a week. For the senior leadership team, probably a couple of hours each. If we were a larger school, that ratio would increase."

But for him, the headline isn't hours saved. It's information managed.

A Partnership, Not a Transaction

One theme that surfaced repeatedly in conversation with Rory was how the relationship with Faria had felt, particularly given Woodland Star's size.

"We're not the biggest school," he says, with characteristic directness. "But I feel equally valued.”

He continues: "It's a small world. When people talk to me and ask about solutions, I can say: this [Faria] is a great company. They're genuine. Not just out to make money from you. I felt very valued and honoured through the process."

For Rory, that pragmatism is what made the project possible at Woodland Star's size. And it's what makes him an advocate for OpenApply when other heads ask.

What's Next

Rory is clear that Woodland Star is still early in its OpenApply journey. The foundations are in. The team is finding its rhythm. But there's a roadmap.

"CRM is one of the next big chapters for us. How we harness it, set up our campaigns, make sure that data is useful. Then the automation piece. And we'll be looking at our ecosystem more broadly over time."

For other heads considering OpenApply, Rory’s advice is grounded….

"Do a baseline of where you are. What are your workflows? What are you using? Look at the wider ecosystem you're already in. Talk to other schools your size who use it. Engage with the team. Find out what pain points it'll solve and what it brings to the table. And then make a call."

"It's Just Making Sure We're Not Missing Anyone"

When asked what advice he'd give another head choosing a system like OpenApply, Rory returned to the line he keeps coming back to throughout the conversation. "I'd just say: situational awareness. Make sure you're not missing anyone."

It's a sentence that says as much about Woodland Star as it does about OpenApply. In a school built on the conviction that every child should be seen, the admissions system has become one of the subtle ways that promise is kept.

To learn more about OpenApply or to explore its features in more detail, schedule a demo with one of our friendly experts today.