Background
Update to Advertising Codes (7 April 2025):
On 7 April 2025, the Advertising Codes were updated to reflect the revocation and restatement of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs – the legislation from which the majority of the CAP and BCAP rules on misleading advertising derived) by the Unfair Commercial Practices provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA). On that date, the wording of a number of the rules in the Advertising Codes was changed to reflect relevant changes introduced by the DMCCA on 6 April 2025. Given that the complaint that formed the subject of this ruling was received before 7 April 2025, the ASA considered the ad and complaint under the wording of the rules that existed prior to 7 April 2025, and the Ruling (and references to rules within it) should therefore be read in line with this wording, available here – CAP Code and BCAP Code.
Ad description
A website, https://involveeducation.com/, for Involve Education, a management information services (MIS) software provider for schools, seen in December 2024.
The Involve School Portal page featured a comparison table entitled “Why Schools Love Involve”. The table listed various features of three software products: Involve, Schools; Sports Ltd (SOCS) and a third provider under headings which included “ATTENDANCE”, “INTEGRATIONS” and “COMMUNICATION”. All features were ticked for Involve but considerably fewer for the other two providers.
The Involve for Performing Arts page featured a similar table which compared music lesson software from Involve, SOCS and two other providers. Headings included, “Scheduling and Timetabling”, “Calendar” and “Attendance and Tracking”. All features were ticked for Involve but considerably fewer for the other three providers.
Issue
- Schools’ Sports Ltd (SOCS) challenged whether the comparison tables were misleading because they misrepresented the capabilities of SOCS’ software and omitted other key functions the software offered.
- They also challenged whether the claims were verifiable.
Response
1. Practice Pal Ltd t/a Involve Education (Involve) said the comparison tables were intended to help school leaders make informed decisions by highlighting key differences between their platform and others on the market. They said school leaders and buyers would have a working understanding of the functionality of software such as theirs, and would interpret the language used in the claims differently from consumers in general. They said the features shown reflected those most frequently raised by schools as important during procurement conversations and were not intended to represent a full or exhaustive list of available functionality. In response to SOCS’ concern that the tables omitted key features of their software, Involve pointed out that their own platform also included many more features than those shown. Their intention was not to obscure competitors’ features but rather to offer clarity. They said the tables were designed to focus on key differentiators relevant to school leaders and had not been presented as a full side-by-side feature list. They added that where concerns had previously been raised by SOCS, they had responded constructively and made changes.
They said the content of the tables had been informed by feedback gathered over a number of years from schools during demonstrations, training and support sessions. The claims about SOCS were based on that feedback, alongside information available in SOCS’ publicly accessible help documentation.
Involve commented on entries highlighted by SOCS where the feature was ticked for Involve but crossed for SOCS. For “Integrations – daily automatic syncing from MIS”, they said SOCS modules synced at different intervals and that they wished to reflect that difference. The comparison had not been intended to suggest that SOCS lacked synchronisation entirely, but to reflect differences in how consistently and reliably that function was delivered across modules.
The claims “Mobile apps – Student app, teacher app and parent app (Play Store and App stores)” on the School Portal page and “Mobile apps and portals – Student app, teacher app and parent app (Play Store and App stores) on the Performing Arts page reflected the fact that Involve offered native apps for iOS and Android, downloadable from the App Store and Google Play, which included features such as push notifications, biometric login and offline access. Involve believed that to be distinct from SOCS’ web-based apps, which required regular re-login and did not support native mobile functionality.
“Communication – Fully automatic email notifications (all users)” and “Automatic curriculum teacher alerts for student absences” highlighted that their communication tools included automatic email notifications to all relevant users, including parents, staff and students, including but not limited to absence alerts, and dynamic alerts to curriculum teachers when a student was absent. They said that functionality differed from SOCS’ approach and had been highlighted as a key benefit by schools using their platform.
“Calendar – real-time event attendee clash detection” reflected that Involve’s software flagged attendee conflicts at the point events were created, while SOCS’ platform highlighted clashes later via registers. “Calendar – curriculum impact reduction scheduling (based on minutes missed per subject)” indicated that Involve’s scheduling tool applied across departments and used an automated algorithm to minimise missed learning time by calculating minutes lost per subject. They understood that SOCS did not offer an equivalent scheduling tool.
In relation to “Reporting dashboards – Segmented participation insights (by EAL, PP etc)” Involve understood those insights were not available in SOCS.
2. Involve said the claims were based on publicly available information at the time the ad appeared. They said they had added a signpost in May 2025 to source documentation on SOCS’ website in order to meet the requirements for verifiability. They added that they would update explanatory notes in the tables.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The ASA considered that the audience was likely to understand the comparison tables as a broad summary of the relative functionality of the platforms. We also considered that, where a tick did not appear under SOCS’ name in the comparison table, they would understand that the listed feature was not part of SOCS’ software. We further considered that an audience of school leaders or buyers would not necessarily have advanced technical knowledge and that the claims were likely to be understood from that perspective.
We considered that the audience was likely to understand from the cross against “Integrations – daily automatic syncing from MIS” on the School Portal page that SOCS did not offer any daily automatic syncing. We noted Involve intended to highlight that their own software offered automatic daily synchronisation across all modules. We understood from SOCS that some key data, such as academic timetabling, was refreshed automatically and synced regularly throughout the day. Some modules synced data every 10 minutes in some schools, while other data was synced throughout the day as required or less regularly depending on the data type. Because they offered some daily automatic syncing, we considered therefore that the entry did not accurately represent the capabilities of SOCS’ software.
We considered that the audience was likely to understand the crosses against “Mobile apps – Student app, teacher app and parent app (Play Store and App stores)” on the School Portal page as showing that SOCS did not offer mobile apps that could be downloaded from a store. SOCS said their modules could be downloaded to phone home-screens as a web app and provided real-time updates, with the only significant difference being the absence of push notifications. We understood that web apps were accessed on a phone as saved shortcuts to a browser. Although we acknowledged that there were similarities in functionality between web and native apps, we considered that the School Portal page accurately represented the web-based access offered by SOCS, which did not offer offline access or push notifications.
We considered that the crosses against “Mobile apps and portals – Student app, teacher app and parent app (Play Store and App stores)” on the Performing Arts page were likely to suggest to consumers that SOCS did not offer any app-based access to their software. We further considered that the reference to the App Store would be seen as indicating where Involve’s product could be downloaded from. We considered that the audience would be likely to understand that a browser shortcut to a web app, although not a native app, could be defined as a “portal”. Because SOCS offered web apps, we considered that the Performing Arts page did not accurately represent SOCS’ functionality on that point.
We considered that the audience was likely to interpret the cross against “Fully automatic email notifications (all users)” in the ad as indicating that SOCS did not provide automatic email notifications to all users. SOCS said if a pupil were marked absent from an event, for safeguarding reasons, designated adults would automatically be notified via email, and that it was not appropriate or necessary for all users to be notified in that circumstance. We noted SOCS’ view that some situations might not require all users to be notified, and that SOCS sent automatic notifications to relevant parties when a pupil was absent. However, we understood that SOCS did not send automatic notifications to parties in situations other than pupil absence, nor did it notify all users. We therefore understood that the entry was accurate on that point.
We considered that the audience would understand the cross against “Automatic curriculum teacher alerts for student absences”, in the ad as indicating that SOCS did not provide automatic absence notifications to teachers. We understood that SOCS provided automated email alerts to designated adults such as ‘house parents’, teachers and parents but that Involve believed advance dynamic alerts to teachers to be a key difference in their technology. However, we considered that the audience would not necessarily understand from the comparison that this was being highlighted and were instead likely to infer that teachers were not notified when a student was absent. We considered therefore that the entry did not accurately represent the capabilities of SOCS’ software.
We considered that the audience would understand the cross against “Calendar – real-time event attendee clash detection” on the School Portal page to mean that SOCS did not detect event clashes at the time the event occurred. We understood from SOCS that, at the time the register was taken, it would flag when and where a pupil was attending another activity. We acknowledged that Involve wished to highlight that their software flagged clashes when an event was created, rather than at the time of the event. However, because SOCS detected clashes when the register was taken, we considered that the entry did not accurately represent the capabilities of SOCS’ software.
We considered that the cross against “Curriculum impact reduction scheduling” on the School Portal page was likely to suggest to the audience that SOCS did not offer feedback on potential lost lesson time. We also considered that the additional information in the claim “… (based on minutes missed per subject) …” was insufficient to counter that overall impression. SOCS said their platform enabled schools to identify which previous classes had been missed. We considered that this constituted curriculum impact information. We considered therefore that the entry did not accurately represent the capabilities of SOCS’ software.
We considered that the audience was likely to understand the cross against “segmented participation insights (by EAL, PP etc)”, in the ad to mean that SOCS lacked reporting capability that identified specific categories of pupil. We noted SOCS’ reports could group pupils by characteristic such as those who were in receipt of the Pupil Premium allowance and those for whom English was an additional language (EAL). For that reason, we considered that the entry did not accurately represent the capabilities of SOCS’ software.
As well as assessing the individual entries, we considered whether the ad was misleading by omission. We acknowledged that the tables were not intended to be exhaustive, however, we considered that traders would expect an accurate reflection of the main areas of functionality. We further acknowledged that different schools were likely to have differing requirements from their software and that there was therefore a subjective element to the features traders would consider to be the most important. We understood, nevertheless, that SOCS provided a range of features that was not reflected in the tables. We noted, for example, the “Communication” section on the Performing Arts page listed six features, all of which were ticked for Involve and only one for SOCS. Because they presented only a narrow subset of features in a tick–cross format, and omitted key elements of SOCS’ platform, we considered that the tables gave an unbalanced picture of the relative capabilities of each provider. In the absence of any explanation that the topics picked were prioritised on the basis of the opinion of Involve, we considered that the ad was likely to mislead.
We also considered that the repeated use of ticks for Involve and crosses for SOCS gave the overall impression that Involve offered more comprehensive functionality, and that SOCS lacked a number of important features. Because the tables exaggerated differences by showing crosses where equivalent functionality was available, and because they omitted key areas of functionality, contributing to the overall impression that Involve’s software was comprehensively superior, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.33 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
2. Upheld
The CAP Code required that objective comparisons with identifiable competitors must be verifiable. That meant the basis of the comparison must be clear and sufficient information made available to allow traders or competitors to check the claims.
The ad did not include any information to ensure the details of the comparison could be verified by traders and competitors, nor did it direct them to where it could be obtained. We therefore concluded that the ads breached the Code.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.35 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Practice Pal Ltd t/a Involve Education to ensure that future comparative advertising did not mislead by omitting equivalent features available in competitors’ products or by inaccurately representing differences in functionality. We also told them to ensure that their comparative claims were verifiable.
