Cornerstones

About Cornerstones

Cornerstones was founded in 2010 by Primary curriculum advisor, Melanie Moore and primary headteacher, Simon Hickton. Frustrated at the lack of well-designed, curriculum relevant material and support available to primary schools, they were motivated to design a solution with a clear mission; ‘to transform children’s lives through a high-quality curriculum.’

In 2019, Cornerstones launched ‘Curriculum Maestro’; an online curriculum and assessment platform where schools could design, teach, assess and lead superior primary curriculum. 

Cornerstones has 1,600 primary schools accessing their platform.

The challenge

In order to enable their schools to connect their entire curriculum together using their own content or Cornerstones’, they needed to seamlessly connect to the school management information system (MIS). They had the option of doing this themselves – developing their own API and connecting to schools on an individual basis however felt this would take time and resources away from their core business.

The solution

Cornerstones have ‘absolutely no regrets’ in making the decision to work with Wonde to integrate with their schools. Due to Wonde being in such a high number of primary schools, and with their trusted solution, it made it ‘so simple to partner with them’. 

Curriculum Maestro’s integration with Wonde works well and the teams work effectively and collaboratively to solve any issues, albeit few and far between.

Wonde’s data sync solution enables Cornerstones’ schools to directly sync with Curriculum Maestro enabling them to update pupils and classes at the touch of a button. Their schools have the flexibility to change MIS providers with no impact to Cornerstones.

Ultimately, Cornerstones wants to save their schools time. And working with Wonde enables them to do this. “Even through changes, Wonde’s product is seamless. It’s vital the products schools use offer total simplicity. That’s what Wonde does.”

Cornerstones were required to transfer their schools across to Wonde with well over 1,000 moving directly across with minimal issue. All subsequent schools using Cornerstones are connected directly to Wonde. GDPR is of primary concern for schools and the fact Wonde’s security credentials match ours was essential – it helps reassure schools and LAs who are wary about sharing / connecting their data.

What’s next for Cornerstones?

We continue to focus on growing our customer base through listening to schools and developing solutions based on customer insights. 

Technology for schools needs to be simple and the ideal solutions can easily identify attainment gaps and follow what has been taught and assessed in real time. Looking forward, it is essential for schools to see children who aren’t or can’t learn.