AI receptionist for schools and colleges: At 8:15 the absence line is engaged and forty parents are trying.
Prime Assist is an AI receptionist for schools and colleges. Nobody gets an engaged tone: it answers every absence call at once, records the reason in your MIS, takes admissions and course enquiries at any hour, and routes safeguarding to your designated lead.
From £150 a month including VAT
£125 plus VAT for 500 minutes, about 140 to 200 calls. New customers get the first three months free with a 12-month commitment.Note 1: new customer offer terms
- Absence line, all calls at once
- Recorded into your MIS
- Safeguarding escalation by design
- Course and admissions enquiries
I am calling to report my daughter absent, she has a temperature.
Of course. Can I take her full name and year group?
Amelia Grant, year eight.
Thank you. Amelia is recorded as absent today with illness, and her form tutor has been notified. If she is off tomorrow as well, please call again.
Can an AI receptionist run a school absence line?
Yes, and the morning absence peak is where it is most useful. Prime Assist answers every absence call simultaneously rather than queueing forty parents behind one engaged line, verifies the pupil, records the reason and duration into your management information system, and notifies the form tutor. Safeguarding disclosures, distressed callers and anything unusual are escalated immediately to a designated safeguarding lead, never handled by the assistant.
From the absence line to the admissions line.
Configured against your MIS, your term dates and your safeguarding policy.
Absence reporting
Every parent answered at once, reason and duration recorded, tutor notified.
Admissions and open events
Answers eligibility and catchment questions from your own information and books open-day places.
Course and training enquiries
Explains course content, dates, entry requirements and funding routes from your prospectus.
Enrolment support
Takes enrolment details, books the interview or assessment and sends the document list.
Term dates and logistics
Answers the routine questions that fill the office inbox and phone line.
Message taking for staff
Takes a structured message for a specific member of staff with the reason and urgency captured.
Where it hands over. Any safeguarding disclosure, welfare concern, allegation, distressed or angry caller, or anything about a child that is not a routine absence: escalated immediately to your designated safeguarding lead with the transcript. The assistant never handles a safeguarding conversation itself.
Calls arrive when the office is busiest, or empty.
08:10
The absence peak
One line, forty parents, all in the same quarter of an hour. Many give up and email instead.
11:30
Office as switchboard
Admin staff pulled off registers and reporting to answer questions the website already answers.
16:45
Course enquiries after work
Adult learners and parents research provision in the evening, when nobody is in the office.
A 1,100-pupil secondary school with a two-person office.
Illustrative scenario, not a customer result.Note 2: how this scenario was modelled
BEFORE
- Absence line engaged through the morning peak
- Absences arrive by voicemail, email and text and get reconciled by hand
- Office staff interrupted constantly with routine questions
- Evening admissions enquiries go unanswered
AFTER PRIME ASSIST
- Every absence call answered simultaneously and recorded directly in the MIS
- Tutors notified automatically
- Routine questions answered from your own information
- Safeguarding concerns passed straight to the designated lead
-
Every absence call answered at once
No queue and no engaged tone during the morning peak.
-
Absences recorded in the MIS during the call
While the parent is still on the line, not reconciled later.
-
Safeguarding concerns to your designated lead
Under your own policy, with the transcript attached.
Model your own numbers on the calculator, or read every sector scenario side by side on the example scenarios page.
Into the MIS, at the moment of the call.
Attendance records, enquiry logs and bookings written into the systems your office already runs.
Live today
- Microsoft 365
- Google Workspace
- Zapier
Connected through their API or Zapier, scoped with you before launch
- SIMS
- Arbor
- Bromcom
Confirm your own tools before launch. Anything with an API or a Zapier connector is in scope, including the MIS, diary or CRM you already run. All integrations
Built for the strictest front desk first. Pointed at the school office.
We built Prime Assist for GP and dental reception, where every call needs a script, a record and a fast route to a person. Your enquiries get the same three things.
Defined escalation
It knows the edge of its remit and crosses to a human instead of guessing.
Audit trail as standard
Transcript, timestamps and actions on every call. Useful when a caller disputes what was said.
Writes into your system
Not an email you re-key. The outcome lands where your team already works.
UK-built, UK or EU hosted
A UK or EU processing region, committed by contract, and it is built for UK accents, place names, postcodes and date formats.
Compare against answering services, IVR and in-house reception
Questions from schools and providers.
Ask us something elseHow does it handle safeguarding?
By escalating, always. Defined triggers route the call to your designated safeguarding lead immediately, with the transcript. The assistant does not attempt to handle a disclosure.
Can it record absences directly in our MIS?
Yes, where an API or connector exists for your system. Confirm your MIS with us before launch.
Will it verify who is calling?
It asks the verification questions you define, such as pupil name, year group and caller relationship, and flags anything inconsistent for a human.
Is this suitable for a college or private training provider?
Yes. Course enquiries, entry requirements, funding routes and enrolment bookings are a strong fit, especially outside office hours.
What about data protection for pupil data?
Pupil data is processed in a UK or EU processing region, committed by contract, under UK GDPR and a written data processing agreement, and records are written into your own MIS. We supply a DPIA template for your governors.
Can it handle a parent who is angry?
It acknowledges, does not argue, and escalates to a human immediately. Difficult conversations are not something to automate.
Also built for
Page last updated . Every figure and claim on it is on our facts page.
Three ways to test us. Only one of them involves talking to a human.
Buying voice AI on a slide deck is how people end up with something that fails on the first awkward caller. So we made the product itself easy to try before you commit to anything.
Hear it for yourself, right now
Ring the line, choose a scenario, for example a dental practice or a trades business, and talk to Prime Assist the way one of your callers would. Ask it to book you in, then try to catch it out. No form and no email address.
Call +44 20 3747 7785We only get in touch if you ask us to.
Put a number on your missed calls
Two questions show the calls you miss today next to the same calls with Prime Assist, where every call is answered at once. Add your own figures to see what they are worth, what answering them would cost from £150 a month including VAT, and how many of your bookings that price equals.
Run my numbersNo email needed: nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Watch it handle your calls
Bring the three calls that waste the most of your team’s day. We run them live, in your sector’s language, and tell you honestly which ones we would not take. One short form to book.
Book a demoNo card, no sales sequence, one human reply.
Do all three, in that order, and it takes a little over half an hour in total. We would rather you tested the product than read our claims about it.
Let AI answer the phone, so your team can answer the family on the line.
Bring your morning peak numbers and your safeguarding policy. We will show you how escalation is wired.
No card, no obligation, no follow-up sequence.
HEAR IT FIRST
Call +44 20 3747 7785 and put Prime Assist through its paces before you book anything.
Notes
- New customer offer: 12 months for the price of 9. When you sign, you commit to all 12 months, starting on the day you go live. Months 1 to 3 are free, then you pay your bundle price each month for months 4 to 12, from £150 including VAT (£125 plus VAT), with the price before VAT fixed for your 12 months. On 500 minutes, the bundle for your 12 months costs £1,350 including VAT (£1,125 plus VAT), plus any extra minutes, at 36p a minute including VAT (30p plus VAT) in every month, free months included. For new customers, switchers included, once per customer. A new customer is a practice or business that has not used Prime Assist in the 24 months before it signs. Switching? We do the switch, and a notice period of up to three months runs alongside your free months. Full terms on our pricing page. Back to text, note 1
- Illustrative scenario, not a customer result. Modelled on a school receiving 120 absence calls in a typical morning peak plus 200 general enquiries a week. Figures are worked examples, not measured results. Back to text, note 2