Academies and language schools
Maintenance software for academies, language schools and training centres: classrooms, projectors and teachers who are in for four hours
Maintenance software for academies is there so that the projector that will not switch on at five to six is fixed before the next day's lesson, and so that you know whether this is the first time or the fifth. A language school, a tuition centre or an exam-preparation academy has little to maintain and very few people to see to it: some classrooms, one air-conditioning unit per room, two toilets, a reception desk. The hard part lies elsewhere. The one who sees the fault is a teacher who does four hours a week and leaves, lessons are in the afternoon and on Saturdays, and often there are two or three small sites with a single person responsible for them all. Here is what breaks, what to ask whoever shows you a product and what Bedel does.
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What breaks between one lesson and the next
The classroom is a work tool that changes hands every hour. If something fails at five and nobody says so, at six another teacher inherits it with another group, and at seven a third. What fails is nearly always the same: the projector or the interactive screen, the cable that connects to the laptop, the speakers for the listening exercise, the board, the blind that will not come down when the sun is in, the cold radiator in January and the air conditioning dripping in June, the door that will not shut, the broken tablet-arm chairs, the cistern in the pupils' toilet.
None of that is serious on its own. Added together, it is the impression a family takes away when they come to enquire, and the reason a teacher ends up bringing a speaker from home. And in an academy, unlike a school, there is no caretaker and no maintenance staff: there is a receptionist, a director of studies and an owner who also teaches.
The fault, who finds it and who fixes it
| Fault | Who finds it | Who fixes it | Where it gets lost today |
|---|---|---|---|
| The projector will not switch on or the interactive screen freezes | The teacher walking in | The trusted IT person or the device's service firm | In an “I'll tell reception later” that is forgotten on the way out |
| No sound for the listening exercise | The teacher, with the group waiting | IT | She uses her own phone and does not report it |
| Cold radiator or boiler stopped | The first group of the afternoon | The heating engineer or the boiler's maintenance firm | The thermostat gets turned up, people wait and the call is made the next day |
| The air conditioning drips onto a desk | A pupil, who changes seat | The air-conditioning technician | A bucket goes underneath; it drips again a week later and looks new |
| A cistern that will not fill or a blocked basin | Pupils at the break | The plumber | Reception is told while also being asked for an attendance note |
| A shutter or blind that will not come down | Whoever teaches facing the sun | A blinds fitter | Sheets of card stuck to the glass for months |
| The lock on a classroom or on the entrance | Whoever locks up after the last slot | The locksmith | Only one person knows, the one with the keys |
| A flickering fluorescent tube | Everyone, all afternoon | The electrician, or somebody with a ladder | Too small to ring about; nobody notes it |
| Wifi down at the second site | The only teacher who is there | The internet provider or the IT person | The main site does not find out until Friday |
In rented premises, the building's shared boiler, the façade or the downpipes may belong to the landlord or to the residents' association.
The third column is full of sole traders and small firms who get called a few times a year. There is no maintenance contract and no need for one; what there is, is an address book on one person's mobile.
Teachers who are in for a few hours and sites nobody sets foot in daily
Two traits set an academy apart from almost any other business. The first is the staff: teachers on few hours, native speakers who have just arrived and write better in English than in Spanish, cover teachers, people who teach at three different academies. None of them is going to remember a password or open a program to say the speaker is silent. If reporting takes more than a message, they keep quiet, and rightly so.
The second is the sites. It is common to have the main centre and one or two small premises in other neighbourhoods or nearby towns, open only in the afternoon and sometimes with a single teacher inside. There is no reception there. What breaks at the small site reaches the main one by word of mouth, days later, or does not arrive. And the person responsible, who is the same for all of them, needs to know which one is meant without having to ask.
There is a third matter that is not about maintenance but shapes the tool: a good share of the pupils are minors. A fault channel should not collect pupils' names, or photos they appear in, or anything other than the classroom and the device.
Six questions for whoever shows you a product
- How does a teacher who comes in two afternoons report? Ask to see the whole journey from their phone, with no account created beforehand.
- What happens to the report sent at five to eight? Reception has already gone. Does somebody read it that evening, or does it wait until tomorrow with the time noted?
- Does it know the projector is IT's and the radiator is heating's? The teacher says what is wrong and in which classroom; the rest is not their business.
- How are three small sites handled? Whether they go together or apart, and how the person responsible knows which one each report comes from.
- What does the self-employed technician need? The plumber you ring twice a year is not going to register for anything.
- Which pupil data does it touch? The right answer is none.
A CMMS in an academy: hardly ever, with two exceptions
A CMMS was conceived to register machines, plan their maintenance and measure a technical team's work. An academy with six classrooms has neither the machines nor the team. Setting one up means entering every projector and every air-conditioning unit and then never opening the software, because whoever sees the fault is not a user and neither is whoever fixes it. Which other kinds of product exist, and who each is for, is set out in maintenance software.
There are two exceptions. One is the vocational or employment training centre with workshops: kitchens, welding booths, lathes, vehicles, simulators. There you do have costly equipment with inspections of its own and a history worth keeping per machine. The other is the group with many sites and a facilities department that wants to see them all on one dashboard. If that is you, look at CMMS for small businesses. And if what you run is a mainstream school, with a playground, a canteen and a caretaker's office, your page is maintenance software for schools.
The part Bedel does in an academy
The report and its follow-up. Bedel is not a CMMS: it is the academy's WhatsApp number, attended in such a way that every message about something broken ends up on the mobile of whoever fixes it. Staff are signed up (reception, teachers, the director of studies) with their name and phone number, from a sheet. From then on, the teacher who finds the projector dark takes a photo, types “room 3” and gets on with her lesson.
Bedel opens a numbered ticket with the time, works out that it is an IT matter and sends it to whoever you have for that; had it been the radiator, it would go to the heating engineer. The technician, self-employed or not, receives it on their usual WhatsApp and replies there, with nothing to install. The teacher gets one message when someone accepts it and another when it is sorted, so the next slot is not caught by surprise. Whatever you have marked urgent, being unable to lock the street door for example, rings the on-call mobile even on a Saturday afternoon. A ticket whose deadline runs out goes up to the director of studies or to management.
What remains is an Excel file with one row per fault and three times in each: report, acceptance and closure. With the room on every row, the air conditioning that drips for the fifth time stops looking new. And whoever runs maintenance receives once a month, on WhatsApp, the reminder of dated inspections, such as the fire extinguishers; which ones premises in Spain have is gathered in the calendar of mandatory inspections.
The limits, so that nobody gets a surprise: pupils and families do not write, only the staff on the list. It does not manage enrolments, timetables, attendance or classroom bookings. It holds no equipment inventory and no orders with materials and costs, it does not store certificates and it does not connect to your management system. And each site is one account, with its own number: there is no screen that brings them together, although the Excel file from every site has the same columns. Data is stored in the European Union.
You can see it running in incidents in academies. The approach common to every sector is in incident management on WhatsApp, and the comparison with products where repairs are requested through a form, in maintenance request software.
Frequently asked questions
What is maintenance software for academies?
A program for noting what breaks in the classrooms, telling whoever repairs it and checking it was fixed. In an academy, ease of reporting counts for more than the inventory, because the one who sees the fault is a teacher passing through.
Does an academy or a language school need a CMMS?
Hardly ever. It has little equipment and no technician of its own. The exception is training centres with workshops and machinery, or groups with many sites and a department that manages them.
Who should report the faults?
Whoever sees them: the teacher in the classroom, reception at the entrance. If everything has to go through one person, whatever happens while that person is away gets lost, and in an academy that is half the afternoon.
How do you organise several small sites?
With the same routing and the same names in all of them, so the person responsible knows where each report comes from. In Bedel each site is one account with its own number, and there is no combined view.
Can pupils or their families write in?
Not in Bedel. It is a staff channel, and a report only needs the classroom and what is wrong. Anything affecting a pupil carries on through the academy's own channels.
Does Bedel work as maintenance software for an academy?
For reports, yes: a message to the centre's WhatsApp, the ticket on the technician's mobile and the times in an Excel file. It is not a CMMS: no inventory, no enrolments or timetables, and one account per site.
Comparisons
- CMMS: what it is and which one fits your premisesWhat a CMMS is, what a team really needs from maintenance, how corrective and preventive differ, and when WhatsApp is enough and when you need dedicated software.
- Maintenance software: types and how to chooseThe three kinds of maintenance software, six questions to choose yours, what planned and reactive maintenance each need, and the software for each sector.
- Automatic incident handling on WhatsAppWhich part of an incident can be answered and moved on its own over WhatsApp, what a person still does, and how it differs from an auto-reply or a chatbot.
- WhatsApp for hotels: guest customer serviceThe four types of WhatsApp software for a hotel, what each one solves, and why guest service usually fails after the conversation: when what the guest asked for has to be fixed.
- Maintenance software for hotels in Spain, 2026Six criteria built for a hotel, ten products described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
- Maintenance software for restaurants, 2026Six criteria built for a kitchen, nine products described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
- Maintenance software for buildings in Spain, 2026Six criteria built for a building, ten products described with what their websites say, from CMMS to block management, and where Bedel fits.
- Incident management software in Spain, 2026Six criteria so you don't buy a help desk when what gets lost is faults, eight products described with their own websites, and where Bedel fits.
- Incident management app in Spain, 2026Eight incident apps described with their own websites, six criteria to choose, and the question almost nobody asks: who has to install it.
- Gym maintenance software in Spain, 2026Six criteria built for a gym, seven products described with what their websites say, from CMMS to membership software, and where Bedel fits.
- Clinic maintenance software in Spain, 2026For clinics and clinic groups, not hospitals: six criteria, seven products described with what their websites say and where Bedel fits.
- Store maintenance software in Spain, 2026For a shop or a store network: six criteria, five products described with what their websites say and where Bedel fits.
- School maintenance software in Spain, 2026For state and private schools: six criteria, seven products described with what their websites say and where Bedel fits.
- Warehouse maintenance software in Spain, 2026For factories, warehouses and logistics sites: what to check, six CMMS summarised from their websites and the gap left by reporting from the workstation.
- Preventive maintenance software: how to chooseWhat a preventive plan holds, the three kinds of recurring task on a site, how a CMMS handles them and how a reminder tool does, and when each is needed.
- Corrective maintenance software: what to ask of itThe journey of an unplanned fault in five moments, what goes wrong at each without software, how urgency, deadline and escalation are set up, and which times are worth measuring.
- Work order management: full order or simple ticketWhat a work order is and where it comes from, what a full system holds, how it differs from a fault ticket and the signs that a business with premises needs one or the other.
- Fault management software: how to choose oneThe path of a fault from whoever reports it to whoever repairs it: the reporting channels and what each one loses, sorting by trade, the outside supplier, the photo and the status sent back.
- Maintenance app: who actually opens itThe four phones a fault passes through, what an app asks of each, why it is dropped where staff turn over, seven demo questions and the no-app alternative.
- Maintenance request software: intake channelsThe six channels a maintenance request comes in through, the four details it needs, who sorts it and how the person who made it gets an answer.
- CMMS with WhatsApp: add-on alert or the way inThe two things sold as a CMMS with WhatsApp (an added notification or the entry point), five questions to tell them apart and who each one suits.
- CMMS for small business: what you need and don'tWhat a small business with premises asks of maintenance, what it can leave out of a full CMMS, a yes-or-no test to see if you need one and five steps to start.
- CMMS software: what it is and who needs all of itWhat CMMS software is, why it is the same thing as a GMAO, what each part is called by country, what it holds and which businesses need all of it or only the report.
- Facility management software: what it coversThe areas of a facility management suite, which ones weigh on a small or mid-size company's facilities team day to day, and the only one Bedel covers.
- Mandatory inspections software for premisesThe inspections Spanish law dates for premises, who carries them out, what is left to the owner and how far a program and a WhatsApp reminder can go.
- Maintenance software for offices: what to checkWhat breaks in an office, whose job each repair is between tenant, landlord and supplier, what to demand of a product and the part Bedel does.
- Residents' association fault reporting softwareFaults in the common areas, who reports them, which trade fixes them, what the managing agent needs to know about each one and the part Bedel covers.
- Maintenance software for coworking spaces: a guideA coworking space's faults seen from the operator's side: who reports them, whose they are, what to ask in a demo, when a CMMS is worth it and Bedel's part.
- Maintenance software for franchises: site by siteMaintenance in a franchise network, with its two owners: what falls to the franchisee, what head office watches, what to ask in a demo and the part Bedel does.
- Maintenance software for sports centres and poolsSports centres, clubs and pools: what fails in the water, the changing rooms and the courts, which checks the rules ask for, when a CMMS suits and what Bedel does.
- Maintenance software for veterinary practicesThe faults of a veterinary practice or hospital: kennels and climate, theatre, autoclave and X-ray, each with its official service; questions for the demo and Bedel's role.
- AI for hotels: what to buy, bookings to repairsA buyer's guide: the four areas of a hotel where AI works today, who decides in each, the questions for the demo and the stretch Bedel covers.
- WhatsApp at work in Spain: group or incident managerWhatsApp groups at work in Spain: what the AEPD has ruled, what the right to disconnect adds and how a group compares with an incident manager for faults on business premises.
- CMMS or Excel for maintaining business premisesWhen a spreadsheet is enough and when a CMMS is needed, how to build the preventive plan in Excel and which records the law says to keep.
- Best CMMS for businesses with premises: criteriaSix criteria built for premises, seven CMMS described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
Rules by sector
- Restaurants and barsThe obligations of a restaurant or a bar in Spain: what is specific to the kitchen and the checks on the premises, each with the condition that triggers it, how often it applies and its article.
- GymsA gym: no national law; qualifications, insurance and notices under each region's sports professions act, plus low voltage, Legionella, pool, RIPCI and defibrillator as premises.
- HotelsA hotel: guest register and reporting within 24 hours, regional classification, low voltage and lift as a public-assembly venue, RIPCI, Legionella, pool, kitchen and defibrillator.
- Residents' associationsThe obligations of a Spanish residents' association: upkeep, reserve fund, owners' meeting and administrator under the Horizontal Property Act, building logbook, building inspection and the checks on each communal installation.
- Shops and franchisesA shop: responsible declaration up to 750 m², opening hours, prices, franchises with no register since 2018, complaint forms, accessibility adjustments and the inspections of premises open to the public.
- OfficesThe obligations of an office in Spain: temperature and upkeep of the premises, screen work, health and safety, coordination with contractors, internal reporting channel, right to disconnect and building checks.
- SchoolsA school: minimum facilities, protocols against violence and a wellbeing coordinator, canteen and menus from April 2026, self-protection and the building inspections.
- Industrial unitsAn industrial unit: fire inspection every five years under the 2025 regulation, chemical storage (APQ), air receivers, work equipment, low voltage, cooling towers and self-protection.