The main distinctive feature of the stand-alone setup is that administration need to only upload the list of teachers (see attached). Parents sign up and add their children by themselves. Also, every parent can reset/create their password in account settings. On the other hand, when a parent signs up for a conference on their portal, it shows the whole list of teachers, no matter whether they are linked to their children or not, so parents will have to know what teachers they want to meet.
To change the setup type to stand-alone: Admin site > Settings > Integration > None.