The business was founded by Richard Nichols and Jonathan Reynolds in 2001. The new company sought to combine the commercial expertise and exemplary design talent of the two founders.
Richard has ongoing links in the public sector, including a central role in the development of Versatile Solutions 4 Education (VS4E). Initially this manifested itself in the form of many requests to develop websites for schools. However, the Company quickly identified the particular web-based requirements of the Education Sector and every school's need for significantly more functionality from their websites.
With the help of other members of VS4E, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Specialist Schools Trust (SST), the Company then started to develop its concept of a "Virtual School". The key features to this were affordability, security, scalability and simplicity of use. In 2002, the Company invited Kings' School, Winchester to become its National Centre of Excellence (NCE) for the development of Virtual Schools. At the same time, Virtual Schools pro-actively worked with Kings' to utilise their unique position as NCE in order to help them secure Specialist Business and Enterprise Schools Status.
At the start of 2003, the Company secured a contract for the use of a web-based content management system (CMS) within the Education Sector. Several months of work, both in-house and with Kings' School, followed in order to refine the software into the "Virtual Schools platform". In September 2003, King's School were the first school to go "live" on the Virtual Schools platform.
In response to the growing needs of schools to satisfy e-learning and remote learning environments, an extended and updated Virtual Schools platform was launched in 2006.
Commercial relationships have been forged with Firstserv, WorldPay, RBS, Ixaris, VS4E, Siemens, NEC, Turoc, Versatile Solutions and others whereby all companies have agreed to work together in pro-actively promoting Virtual Schools along with other leading edge Technology Solutions within Schools.
While the company continues to push the functional boundaries of its platform, the other core focus of design excellence is still an uncompromised priority. Jon still demands that every site his team creates is a true reflection of the personality, aims and aspirations of the educational establishment it serves. This, combined with the challenge of meeting high accessibility requirements, had demanded ever more creativity in design to achieve the highest standards without losing inspiration and appeal.
The company is based in Eastleigh, Hampshire and has client schools in most of the English regions as well as projects with national education administrators.
There are plans for offices in Bristol, Manchester, Northampton, Halifax and London. Further plans will see offices in Belfast ,Edinburgh and Cardiff.
