The second campus is where the program stops being what you teach and becomes what each site remembers. Not because the new site is worse. Because you can't be in both rooms, and the program was living in yours.
Two sites, two versions
It starts with photocopies. Site one has the folder you built. Site two gets a copy, and within a term the copy has drifted: a set skipped because the new tutor didn't see the point, a different pace because the Thursday group is stronger, a key corrected at one site and not the other. Nobody decides to run two programs. It happens by Term 2.
Then the parents talk to each other. A family at site two hears what a family at site one is getting, or the other way around, and the question arrives: why is it different? There's no good answer, because you didn't know.
Reporting drifts too. At the site you're at, parents hear from you. At the other one they hear from whoever's there, or they don't. The second campus becomes the one where nothing goes home.
The owner can't be at both
Every fix that depends on you being in the room fails at the second site, by definition. A monthly visit catches the big things and misses the drift. A site lead helps, if you've got one who taught at site one for a month first, but a site lead running from a photocopied folder is running their own version of the program too, just a better one.
The instinct is to fix it with people: hire better, visit more, write a manual. People fixes leak, because casual tutors change every term and the manual goes in a drawer next to the folder.
Fix it at the material.
One program, converted once
If the program lives on a platform rather than in a folder, there's only one of it.
The central program is converted once, approved once, and published to every campus. Update a key at site one and it's updated at site two, because there is no site two copy. A tutor at either campus sets this week's work from the same material, students at either campus are marked against the same answers, and the worked solution follows the same method.
Each campus has its own classes and tutors. Site two's Year 6 Tuesday group is its own class, with its own students, and its tutors see only their classes. A campus can add its own sets, visible to that campus alone, for the extension group or the local school's exam. The program underneath stays central.
And the owner sees across all of it. A second campus shows up on the tutor dashboard as another column, not another login. Who did the work at both sites, which topic each site's class struggled with, which students at either site have gone quiet for two weeks, and the parent reports due this Friday at both.
The multi-site groups page has how this is priced, which is per campus on top of your base plan, and the shape of the week across sites.
The parent report at the site you're not at
The report covers the other half. Every second Friday, every parent at every campus gets the same one-page report, with your logo, from your address, about their own child: what they worked on, what improved by topic, what's next, signed by their tutor.
Site two's parents now hear from the centre as often as site one's, in the same words, whether or not you were there that fortnight. When parents compare across sites, they're comparing two reports in the same format, and the difference they find is about their children, not about which site they picked.
The Friday scorecard across sites
Consistency is a habit, and it's checked on a Friday. Five numbers, both sites, side by side:
| Number | Site one | Site two |
|---|---|---|
| Completion rate this week | ||
| Class accuracy on this week's topic | ||
| Parent reports sent this fortnight | ||
| Students gone quiet for two weeks | ||
| Tutor hours rostered |
The point isn't the numbers themselves. It's the gap between the columns. Completion at one site and not the other is a tutor who isn't setting work. Accuracy diverging on the same topic is a method drifting. Reports sent at one site and not the other is the second campus going dark. Every one of those is visible a week after it starts rather than a term.
On the platform the first four fill themselves in from the owner view. By hand, it's an hour on Friday with two registers. Do it either way.
Before you open
Most of this is easier if it's set up before the lease starts than after. Ninety days out, freeze the program: every folder that will be taught at site two is final and central, and there are no site-specific copies. Sixty days out, the site lead teaches at site one for a month. Thirty days out, every enrolled family at both sites gets the same welcome and the same homework policy, in the same words.
The second campus launch checklist is the ninety days before and after as a printable page. The guide to opening a second campus is the long version, including the parts that aren't about material.
What to do this week
If you've already opened, put the five numbers on a whiteboard this Friday for both sites and look at the gaps. If you haven't, freeze the program now, before the copy is made. And whichever it is, pick the folder that will be taught at both sites first and convert that one, because a program that exists once can't drift.